Finding Caruso [Mass Market Paperback]

Kim Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2004

When Buddy and Lee Hope find themselves orphaned and broke in 1957, the brothers set off for the logging camps of northern Idaho. Though seven years apart, the young men are very close-that is, until Lee, the older of the two, falls hard for an older woman. But this experienced lover has someone else in mind: Buddy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The arrival of an older femme fatale in a hardscrabble Idaho town drives a wedge between two young brothers in Barnes's fiction debut, a solid, evocative effort that suffers from some muddled plotting but succeeds because of the author's poignant writing about first love. The story begins in Oklahoma in 1957 with the death of the parents of Buddy and Lee Hope in a car accident. After the funeral, the two boys move so that 25-year-old Lee can look for work to support his 17-year-old brother. Their journey takes them to Snake Junction and the logging camps of Idaho, where Lee, a talented singer, catches on with a band and wows the locals, eventually attracting the attention of an L.A. club owner. Buddy, meanwhile, is smitten when gorgeous Irene Sullivan arrives in town and astoundingly chooses him over handsome, charismatic Lee. But Buddy is overwhelmed by Irene's sophistication, and soon his love turns into jealous obsession. Sullivan, meanwhile, is involved in an effort to help a local Native American boy named Wolfchild who is accused of murder. The three principals in the romantic triangle are well drawn, and Barnes gets plenty of mileage from her unusual backdrop. But problems pop up in the subplot involving Wolfchild, particularly in an unlikely series of scenes in which Buddy encounters Wolfchild after hearing rumors that the boy was involved with Irene. Barnes's rich, multilayered prose makes this an engaging read, and the affair between Irene and Buddy is well rendered despite the flawed storytelling down the stretch.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Celebrated for her stories, poetry, and memoirs-especially In the Wilderness, a Pulitzer contender-Barnes tries her hand at full-length fiction. Two brothers fleeing 1950s Oklahoma after their parents' death wind up in a honky-tonk town on the edge of nowhere, where the teenaged Buddy soon becomes the prey of an older woman. A big tour, promises the publicist.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (January 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425193934
• ISBN-13: 978-0425193938
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,012,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars losing your way and finding your heart, September 1, 2003

By 

Cinnamon Girl "bonchocolat" (Winnetka, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finding Caruso (Hardcover)

Finding Caruso is a rare find - a book that carries you with it using both empathy and a clear hard eye on its characters. This book about two brothers, told by the younger brother Buddy, is about things lost along the road to growing up - in this case a literal road out of the shack in Oklahoma where the two brothers lived with a drunken abusive father and a shadowy suffering mother whose only offering is extra sugar in their tea when they suffer a beating, a heartbreak, a loss. Lee's way with a guitar and the ladies may take the brothers to LA and success some day, but this book is about the long stop the two make in a logging and mill town of Idaho. But as the title implies, this book is also about the things one finds even as one is letting things - and people - go. Loss is not simple, nor are the bonds that hold the brothers together - bonds that are at some times too binding and at others too loose and at times, all they have in the world. An older beautiful woman named Irene threatens to come between, as does the potential for Lee to be a big star and move on from the people in Idaho who have given them a start in life - the bar owner and bartender and band. When Irene chooses younger Buddy over Lee, it allows Buddy to see himself for the first time as someone with other options than playing the role of baby brother, of being a nobody son of a drunk farming cotton in the dust, destined to dead end jobs and deadened loves. For the first time he considers not just a limited life in which he must hide but a world in which he can act and grow. But her love is complicated by a hidden past, including an Indian friend accused of murder of a woman in Lee's band.
The progression of the tale is masterly - supple language combines with hard luck to create a story that draws one in. Buddy and Lee are characters we care about and believe in, even when we can see them hurting each other or acting foolish. Even their blindness to their own actions rings true. Minor or side characters are, with a few rare exceptions, fully drawn with a few lines or actions, so that one can almost smell the combination of stale smoke, Jack Daniels and soured dreams on the page. Irene is presented as the most complex character and is a bit more problematic. Her dialogue is far more stylized than the others, which marks her clearly as an outsider, but I often found trying to hear someone speak like that in my head would ring flat and affected. Her beauty and mystery attract Buddy, and provide much of the emotional heart of the story, but some of her actions towards the end feel forced into the plotline. Her character as written is both compelling and incomplete.
This first time novel by memoirist Kim Barnes is a real find!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finding Kim Barnes, April 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Finding Caruso (Hardcover)

This is a beautiful book: the writing is stunning, always smart and always insightful. And it is a great story, the story of a young man whose love affair with an older woman provides him with a way to live the rest of his life. It's a book about choices and possibilities. It's a book about doing the right thing and believing that it matters. It's a book that shows us, and Buddy Hope, its main character, that there is a way to be a happy, ethical human being in this complicated, often unfair, but beautiful world of ours. FINDING CARUSO will often leave you breathless. You might cry as you read, but you will also surely laugh. And you will not likely read a better novel any time soon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A mixed response, July 9, 2007

By 

Just_Karen (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Finding Caruso (Paperback)

This novel is so beautifully written and well-characterized that I tend to want to ignore the problems with the plot. The Hope brothers and their compatriots are perfectly drawn, and Barnes exercises her usual poet's touch with the Idaho countryside. Even the animals are well-realized (I love that so much in a book, when a writer gets animals right). Irene, however, remains a boy's fantasy object, overly sexualized and under-explored, and the plot is a recursive muddle. How many circles can a reader be asked to trace in one book? The tragedy at the center remains unresolved, in my opinion, and Irene's actions are melodramatic and unbelievable. I enjoyed the book, even so, and fans of Barnes' memoirs will want to read it for the pure pleasure of her prose.