Customer Reviews

Coal Run

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Tawni O'Dell's lyrical, ambitious and tension-filled novel seems to emerge and explode onto the page. The story is rendered in such a tightly disciplined prose that the reader will probably be left overwhelmed by the strength of the author's vision. Ivan Zoschenko "the Great Ivan Z" is an aging, former football hero and drifter who has lost his father in a mine explosion that shattered the town of Coal Run thirty years ago. Now living in Florida he is sent a newspaper article telling him that an old teammate, Reese Rayner is about to be released from prison after fifteen years for murder and is heading back to the town. Reese had violently and brutally mutilated his wife, who was so badly battered that she remains hooked up to life support in a convalescent home run by Ivan's compassionate and kindly mother. Ivan returns to Coal Run a weather-beaten man intent on revenge - a man who remains bitter, angry, and with a penchant for wayward drinking. He scrapes out a living working as a local deputy, and sleeps either in his truck or on the sofa at his sister, Jolene's house. The story takes place over one week, from Sunday to Friday, as Ivan, conflicted with pent-up and astringent fury, begins to settle old scores, face the mistakes he made in his careless youth, and reconnect with the people he's either treated badly or ignored.

Packed into this bitterly powerful novel, is a dazzling array of well-chiseled, colorful characters: Ivan's former teenage idol Val Claypool, hangs around the town, and reminisces with a sense of palpable regret his time in the Vietnam War, where he lost his friends and his leg. The climate of mutual need is blended with a deep-seated contempt in the Raynor family, where Jeff Rayner, unemployed, desperate, and unable to provide for his wife, Bobbie and their children, is driven to the brink of fury and despair. The spent anger, the family dysfunction, the desperation, and the sense of disappointed lives going nowhere permeate this hard-edged story. Coal Run is not just a searing portrait of one man's chronicle of personal tragedy, but also a bitterly acute commentary on one community's disaffected and disparate inhabitants.

The book is strongest when it sticks to the poetic descriptions of and the destruction and the sense of hopelessness of Coal Run and the surrounding areas. The explosion in "Gertie," the local mine, left a town visibly on fire, and an entire community gone: houses raised, buckled sidewalks and driveways leading to nowhere and nothing, lawn ornaments and bicycles left behind in weed-choked yards. The coal that had once provided the town with life has turned to poison beneath it and caused its death. Questions of regret, disappointment, love, loss and the fragility of human life are woven together as Ivan tries to understand how he can dislike a town he still loves, how he can envy a way of life he doesn't necessarily want to have, and how he needed to leave his home in order to realize that it actually is his home.

Coal Run is richly and tautly rendered, and O'Dell has the shear narrative skill to present a story that is both complex and multi-layered. Her prose is meticulously whittled and surefooted and her powers of description are exacting and uncompromising - for one terrible instant Ivan feels he's been manipulated and pitted against the town for reasons he just doesn't understand and by forces beyond his control. Coal Run is narrated in a generous, patient, and intelligent voice, and the author almost presents the subject matter from the perspective of an insider, clear eyed and without sentimentality. This is a fine novel, about a man and a community who feels they have lost everything, and consequently, stands empty handed. Redemption and deliverance do come to Ivan and the townspeople of Coal Run, but only after much soul-searching, hurting, and pain. Mike Leonard June 04

Very well written, very thought-provoking. Interesting that it's written by a woman but the narrator character is a tough guy. Recommend this highly.

It may not be true that you can never go home again. Literature, as in life, is full of homecomings. What is always interesting is a person's motivation for returning home after a long absence, especially the motivation of a person who has deliberately distanced themselves from their hometown and past. What drove them away in the first place and what draws them back, and why now? What and where is home, really? These are questions explored in Tawni O'Dell's wonderful new novel, COAL RUN.

COAL RUN is the story of a small mining town, its inhabitants, its pride and shame, its tragic past and its hope for the future, all exemplified by the narrator, Ivan Zoschenko. Ivan, the town's most famous export, has returned home many years after leaving to play college and professional football. After a career-ending injury he moved to Florida hoping to leave his home and memories behind him. Ivan was one of the many residents who lost loved ones in a mining accident in 1967. But it wasn't really the loss of his father and other relatives that drove him away. Ivan carries a great and dark secret, and his return is partially inspired by the release from prison of Reese Raynor, a former teammate.

Ivan is not the only one coming home; his childhood hero, Val Claypool, has returned as well. As Ivan spends a week in the western Pennsylvanian town he thought he'd never live in again, he is confronted by all the hurt in his entire past and by the damage he feels he must inflict on another.

Why does Ivan want to kill Reese? Why has Val returned? What is Ivan's connection to the woman lying in a coma in a local nursing home? And who else knows Ivan's secret? COAL RUN is not a mystery, but as Ivan's story unfolds, these questions are answered and O'Dell gives the reader a vivid portrait of a small and wounded town, and a man struggling with his past and his future.

All of O'Dell's characters are interesting, intriguing and real. Ivan is a classic wounded hero, and the emotional journey he takes in the course of the novel is immensely readable. There are many sympathetic characters in COAL RUN, including Ivan's beautiful and independent sister, Jolene, her sons, his mother, the local doctor and the ghost of Ivan's father, who looms large throughout.

The coming home story is a genre unto itself. And O'Dell is perfect in her telling of this tale of redemption, family, regret, hope and home. She never resorts to the simple quirkiness of many "small town" tales or the morose and sappy stories of miners, although this is a novel set in a small mining town. Instead, COAL RUN is original and filled with wonderful humanity. Ivan Zoschenko is a likeable, though flawed protagonist. O'Dell has created a world that is touchingly real and that challenges the characters to sort out life's complexities and to face heartbreak and pain without giving up hope.

So many positive adjectives apply to COAL RUN: engaging, poignant, heroic. This is simply a great book.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

I enjoyed this book immensely. This was my first read by Ms. O'Dell, but definitely not my last. The story is set in a western Pennsylvania mining town, Coal Run, and begins with a very young Ivan Zoschensky telling us about the day Gertie blew...the mine where his father and 96 other townsmen were working when it exploded.

Fast forward to present day, the 'Great Ivan Z.' has returned to the small town after being away for many years. Once an exceptional football player, and the town's hero, he plays no more do to an accident that shattered his knee. But there's a reason Ivan has returned. His old teammate Reese Raynor will being getting out of prison soon. He was put there for beating his wife Crystal into a coma, and reducing her to a vegetative state. Ivan feels he has some unfinished business to take care of, but he's also got a very big secret that he's trying to come to terms with.

This storyline alone is enough to keep the reader going, but there plenty of side stories that are just as interesting, and include some great characters. Jolene, Ivan's sister, who has three children from three different fathers, but never married, the Raynor clan, Dr. Ed, the town Doc who meddles in everyone's lives for their own well being, and even the town itself, which plays an important part. I thought it was really interesting what ended up being the fate of Coal Run.

I definitely recommend this read, and am so glad I bought it. Ms. O'Dell's way of storytelling makes you feel like you're right there in the hills of western Pennsylvania. I'm absolutely going to pick up 'Back Roads'. I'm confident it'll be just as entertaining as Coal Run was.

I loved this book. The prologue about a mine disaster is a terrific piece of writing. The novel itself has such themes as the emotional pull of even a depressed small town, and the difficulties of adjustment, whether it be to Viet Nam experiences or a career ending accident or loss of income. Yet it is a "light", rather than a heavy novel. There is lots of humor, and it is peopled by characters who are warm, loving and smart, even if they often act dumb, and even if their entire lives seem so dictated by their high school experiences (the novel catches up with them in middle age). O'Dell's writing is witty, and her forte is her gift for dialogue. She is able to convey a strong sense of place. I understand from other Amazon reviewers that "Coal Run" is a sequel, but none of the allusions to the past was confusing. My only reservation about giving it 5 stars is that I felt that with some of her characters O'Dell sacrificed a bit of credibility: I am thinking of the sister and the police chief and even the young doctor. Great characters, especially the sister, but maybe heightened for effect.

Miss O'Dell's second novel, Coal Run, is an honest portrait of life in a small town in the now almost abandoned coal fields of Pennsylvania. The economic impact of a failed industry on the town members is played out in an engaging, well defined look at the lives of a small group of survivors, both those who stayed in the dying town, and those who left.

Ivan Zoschenko, former star high school football athlete, represents both groups, having left the town after a career ending injury. His need for an a new life takes him to Florida where everyone is a newcomer and there are very few roots of friends and family. His longing for the remembered security of his youth in Coal Run never leaves him. His return to his home and his reinvolvement with people from his youth is full of conflicting emotions as he deals with a culture not willing or wanting change in any form. The long history of dealing with the disasters that are part of coal mining has resulted in a tired, cynical population just trying to survive as best they can.Ivan understands their world, but can never rejoin it.

The release of a vicious prisoner and his impact on the town stirs up memories and secrets that affect them all.O'Dell masterfully lets the characters speak for themselves as they struggle once more to survive. Coal Run is honest, compelling and starkly realistic. It is headed for the best seller list, where it belongs.

Back Roads is my all time favorite book, so I was so excited that Ms. O'dell had written a new novel. She did not disappoint.
Tawni O'dell is masterful at examining the human condition. Relationships that are developed are poignant. The themes of reconciliation, acceptance, forgiveness,and self awareness(to name those that immediately come to mind)are addressed in a beautifully written prose. She gets it!! And she helps me understand and emphathize more with situations with which I've had no experience. We are our brother's keeper.
This book, along with Back Roads, took me longer to read than usual because I go back and reread paragraphs. I'm awed by her turn of a phrase. My book is full of colorful tabs. I can't wait for my book club to review it. So much meat. So much fun to read.

Overall I liked this book, it started very strong, but then turned somewhat flat...I guess partly it was because the repititiveness of some of the character's unsavory aspects, shooting, domestic abuse, drinking, maybe it is reality but reality doesn't always make great literature. I started losing sympathy for many of the characters I started out liking initially. And both the sister & the young doctor were rather unbelievable characters, & the sexual chemistry just was implausible to say the least. On the other hand, it had a great section on what real-life skills are & what makes people content, said by the young doctor.

I really enjoyed reading O'Dell's Coal Run. Ivan Z is an interesting character and O'Dell always let the reader know what he was thinking. I will certainly read another O'Dell's novels.

I had almost given up on another 'Tawni O'Dell' book, so imagine my delight when I found this book on the shelves. Just as I did BackRoads, I read this in one day. You just can't put it down.

No need to give a synopsis, other's have done so here, and the jacket cover pretty well gives you an idea of the plotlines. But, if you are looking for a book to get 'lost' in, try this one.

Now all I have to do is wait another 5 years for Tawni to write another one!!