Customer Reviews

An American Outrage: A Novel of Quillifarkeag, Maine

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a rambling story about a woman who leaves her husband to live alone in the woods in rural northern Maine. She makes her living butchering and dressing meat for the local hunters. She is shot and killed by police, no one knows why and no one knows why she was shot so many times with over two hundred rounds fired. It's about the effect that her death has on some of the townsfolk of Quillifarkeag and their efforts to get their own kind of justice. That's the gist of the story. But it's remarkably well hidden as each plot point is drawn out with frequent asides and anecdotes. As each character is either introduced or reintroduced we are put through this bewildering, rambling type of tale. Many times these ramblings turn out to have absolutely nothing to do with the actual story and only serve to distract you from the story you're trying to follow. I found this a very frustrating book to read. Every time I thought the story was going to progress, I was sidetracked into some other irrelevant story that may have been happening at the same time, or may have happened years ago. All in all, it's a potentially simple story told in a very convoluted fashion.

This book is a roller coaster ride through some of the clearest yet quirkiest characters in the fictional world. The ride comes complete with drops from great height, as in the death of Ellen DeLay, and sudden dips and turns without warning, as in the truck box incident that starts it all. The characters could have stepped right out of Northern Exposure, if this were TV. They are certainly a memorable bunch. This town is Lake Wobegone with an attitude and an undelying nastiness that only makes it more interesting. The people are vivid creations, drawn from the neighbor next door, who do the unexpected whenever possible. Wuori's creation is wonderfully rich in detail, right down to the bullet that goes through a moose and takes off the top joint of a hunter's pinky finger, causing a whole chain of unexpected occurrences. At the heart of the book, though, lies an indictment of American apathy paired with our need to be voyeurs in the lives of our neighbors. Small town life will never be the same again once we visit Quillifarkeag.

This author has created a rural Maine village which resonates with the fictitious South of William Faulkner with the dense and evocative characters of Charles Dickens. Ellen Delay leaves her husband after spending days accidentally confined to the huge toolbox on the back of his pickup and moves into the woods. There she starts up a field dressing business, butchering the game hunters bring in; the business thrives. As an eccentric living on the edge of a fragile civilization, Ellen becomes a target for ridicule and eventually, of violence when she is gunned by four women, all law enforcement. Here author Wuori presents his insightful, if indeed outraged story of police excess and violence against the brutal beauty of the Maine woods. Stylistically and tonally, this is quite an edgy book; certainly not without humor, albeit often dark. Having spent some time in this area, unequivocally the author knows these people well and revels in their quirkiness. This reviewer expects much more from this author and greatly anticipates a return to Quillifarkeag, Maine.

I looked forward to reading this book after meeting the author; I thought he was bright, funny, and I admired his determination to publish a work that took over five years to write. But upon reading "An American Outrage," I was left with nothing but outrage myself at the way he depicted Maine and its residents. I can handle a fellow Mainer picking on other Mainers, we all pick on people we know. But knowing Mr. Wuori was not a Mainer by birth but merely by employment, having come from the Great Lakes area and having returned there since, I was appalled at how he stereotyped his "Quilli" citizens as a bunch of backwoods idiots who dance naked in gardens and slaughter hunters' fresh kills in the buff. Give me a break, we may have to live with the nickname of "Maineiacs" but we, as a whole, are intelligent, hard-working, mostly kind and considerate souls who do things for a reason. I'm sick and tired of shows like "Northern Exposure" and "The Fugitive" and books such as this depicting those living a rural lifestyle as nothing more than morons--good only for making a buck at the expense of others' feelings. This book was very loosely based on a true tragedy that happened in Maine, but I want it made perfectly clear that this book in no way is representative of Mainers as a whole--or even a very minute number of Mainers. The only redeeming quality I found to this book was that it had an ending--one that I gratefully looked forward to, being the type that no matter how bad the book, if I start it I finish it. If Mr. Wuori continues to poke fun at Mainers in future works, they may sell to out-of-staters who believe such characters truly exist, but I'm afraid he will lose readers from within the vary state he writes of--Maine; he's already lost my readership. What a disappointing read this was for me.