Customer Reviews

Five Skies

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The description above of what FIVE SKIES is about belies its tenderness and its deep regard for men who have suffered enormous personal and emotional setbacks in life and who are trying to get back on track. This isn't a Hemingway novel, quite, because Carlson knows how to write about women as well. But the focus here is on men who turn to the common utility of hard work to begin the process of restructuring their lives . . . if such a thing can be done.

What drives this novel are the pasts of the three men who've come together in the Idaho wilderness on the edge of a canyon to construct a jumping platform for a motorcycle stunt that's to take place later in the summer. Arthur Key, the main character, is a sturdy man of middle age who blames himself for the death of his younger brother (this is not a spoiler, for it's revealed early on that Art is in Idaho to regroup and recover this one loss). Darwin leads the team, a man who is so powerfully angry at God for taking his wife that he's almost made inarticulate by it and all he can do is to find release in the everyday modes of the construction site and a day in the canyon fishing (it's this sequence that might remind some readers of Nick Adams in Michigan from IN OUR TIME but rendered more imagistically colorful by Carlson's astonishing prose). The younger boy Ronnie is barely fresh from being a juvenile delinquent and knows virtually nothing about the world (including the world of girls) and we follow Carlson as he is taken under wing by the two older men and shown "the ropes". Carlson has often written of families, focusing on the relationships between men and women; here he focuses on the fine art of fathers raising sons . . . and brothers looking out for one another.

This is what makes this novel so poignant--the way Carlson writes about these men; how they interact; what they can teach to one another. You see all three men grow (some more than others) as they interrelate and it's clear from the detail of the construction itself (building the ramp and the bleachers) that Carlson (like Hemingway) knows whereof he speaks. You get no real sense of plot, but you know that "somehing" is driving the book and it all falls about Art Key's shoulders. He's a man who, like all persons (not just men) who realizes that one must learn how to recognize stupidity in life and how to avoid it. At the same time Key learns that he cannot save those who cannot recognize such stupidities (though his one grand act in the end of the novel does much to show just what he's learned and how much he means to share it with the world). This is a wonderful book, written in a kind of prose that seems effortless yet clearly considered, word by word. Carlson is one of the few writers of his generation who seems not to be straining to be one of the Big Boys. He's just a naturally gifted storyteller and he's made this little swatch of Idaho (and the people who live there) come alive. I will remember these three men for quite some time to come.

Well into this novel, I was ready to give it six stars for the beauty of its vision and the strength of its characterization - in particular the way it describes exactly how men work together and guardedly learn to trust each other. The gentle needling humor in the sparse exchanges of dialogue and the focus on work to be done, plus the soul-satisfying nature of work well done, accurately represent a quiet masculine world that is seldom seen in fiction. I instantly recognized the three men in this story because I know them from life. Carlson has captured them, the way they deal with pain and loss of pride, and the way they slowly recover from both, in a way that is utterly believable.

Placing his three characters for a summer on a work site in southern Idaho, 20 miles from the nearest settlement, Carlson adds the healing effects of a vast, isolated environment under a big sky. The only thing that compromises the men is the dubious nature of the work itself - their time, energies and intelligence (though well paid for) serve the wasteful and ephemeral appetites of popular culture and its willing promoters. The river gorge that runs near their campsite eventually exacts a kind of toll for the hubris that drives the entire enterprise.

I haven't read a book so well written and so gripping in its portrayal of men since James Salter's "Solo Faces," which pursues similar themes in a world of physical extremes (alpine mountain climbing). And almost never does one read of the simple process of an older man taking under his wing a lost and troubled younger man and with gentle humor and mentoring setting his life back on track. By the end of the novel, a line like "Don't feed the rabbits, Ronnie," carries with it volumes of emotional meaning that can shake a simple reader like me to the core. I'm still struggling with the ending of the novel and not sure about those six stars anymore, but Ron Carlson has won me as a fan, hands down. My hope is that he is found by the many readers he deserves and who deserve him.

"Five Skies," Ron Carlson's exquisitely crafted and spiritually resonant novel about three emotionally-damaged men who discover themselves while working on a construction project in remote Idaho, illustrates the power of literary epiphany. The three protagonists initially know little of each other, each recognizing that the two others hold devastating secrets, unspoken pain and unalloyed confusion as to life's ultimate purpose. Carlson is little short of brilliant as he illuminates the hidden recesses of the human heart and draws the reader into the most important project the men are responsible for achieving: self-understanding. "Five Skies" is both moving and powerful; the novel has an integrity and dignity as broad as the expansive Idaho skies and as deep as the gorge near which his protagonists labor.

Foreman Darwin Gallegos impulsively hires two day laborers, Arthur Key and Ronnie Panelli, to help him build a stunt ramp. The summer-long project essentially isolates the three men and forces them to come to grips with the forces that drove them to such a location. Panelli is a two-bit juvenile delinquent, bewildered and ashamed at his criminal record and broken life. Gallegos flees from the shattering grief engendered by his wife's unexpected death; he is a human wreck -- angry, numb and frustrated. Key, who becomes the central character in the novel, is an over-sized, hands-on engineer, capable of visualizing a project and painstakingly careful so that every detail is in place. He is overwhelmed by guilt and shame, and Key's remorse eventually becomes the engine that fuels each character's journey to self-recognition and acceptance.

Integral to Carlson's treatment of epiphany is silence. Each protagonist struggles with language; often they find it impossible to articulate their anguish. Although Key senses that Gallegos would be a compassionate listener, the former takes weeks before finding the capability of speaking his heart. Then there is the awesome silence of Idaho's spellbinding environment. The gorge is so enormous; its sounds dwarf human voice and its deceiving perspectives mock human attempts to contain or control nature. Finally, there are the silences of the lengthy summer days spent at work, where unspoken companionship ultimately yields lasting relationships, and the vast silence of night, where star-splashed skies illuminate secrets and unleash constricted emotions.

"Five Skies" is no simple band-of-brothers adventure story. Spare and direct, this is a robust, trenchant novel, and Ron Carlson knows enough about torment to permit his characters to discover their own paths. As each man gains the moral courage to face himself, as the men slowly turn toward each other instead of away from their pain, the novel ascends its own heights. By its conclusion, "Five Skies" reaffirms our belief in human dignity.

This novel is a disappointment to many Ron Carlson fans. I've read his two most recent novels--not the newest due out this next week--and all the short stories. This novel feels under-imagined and over-scripted--as if someone who knew perfectly well how to write twenty pages were trying desperately to stretch it to two hundred. It's not a terrible novel, but he's a better writer than this. Though I usually prefer a novel over short stories, I love Carlson's stories more than almost any novel I can think of. They are funny, aching, and explosive with insight about the human heart. Read The New Yorker review excerpt above and then go read Carlson's brilliant short stories. A Kind of Flying is a good place to start, but also be sure to read At the Jim Bridger, which I've handed out like candy to my friends.

What appeared at first to be an endless lesson in heavy construction work turned out to be a novel of superb sensitivity - among three men. This unusual story showed how the three with major problems from their past were able to work together, bond firmly and yet give each other needed space to work out their own solutions.

The suspense of the story line is built up even as the trappings for a huge motocycle event are being built. One expects a tragedy - probably during the event itself. I don't want to reveal what happens, but the plot points line up naturally into place - logically and believably.

I suppose one could discuss endlessly the symbolism of the chasm waiting below and man's propensity for falling into trouble. But this book operates on a much more everyday, down-to-earth level, with all the details of the men's work, dealings with others, camp chores and other duties keeping the story within the understanding of anyone's experience.

Each of the three men has a hard lesson to learn and to live with, but young Ronnie's small yet growing satisfaction with what he is finally achieving is most heart-warming and unforgettable.

Be prepared to acquire an appetite when you read this book. The simple yet hearty meals the men fix and enjoy (freshly caught fish, baked turkey and Idaho potatoes) will make your mouth water. So - speaking of symbolism - I guess the blue table that Ronnie builds has some significance as the place where they break bread together over their delicious meals at the end of a day.

This book is for both men and women. Plot and character development will not disappoint you, and you'll remember the three men forever.

Impeccably written, superbly crafted, evocative of mountains, of living outdoors, of angles and trajectories, of machines great and small -- this is a novel that will be appreciated by fathers and sons and brothers, their mothers, sisters and daughters. It reveals the ways we handle great pain, the misconstructions of life, the trajectories of love. These three men are building a ramp out into the void and in so doing, rebuild the inner scaffoldings that allow them to regain their footing, to recover, if not heal. Can't recommend it enough.

While these characters build the ramp on the edge of the river gorge they get to know one another and as they relax their stories emerge. While these three don't know each other and don't realize they need each other at the beginning, they begin to find healing in their friendship and the isolation of the job in Idaho. The story is about everyone who is wounded or lost and unable or unwilling to heal. Despite each man's need to punish himself each finds friendship and acceptance. I'm not doing the book justice but read the book.

If you can accept the basic premise that a man will stop on an Idaho street corner and pick up the exact brilliant man he needs to accomplish the impossible, then you're halfway to an exceptional reading experience. If you can't accept that level of coincidence, try anyway. The book is worth it.

This is a novel of character and tone, of stripping away the jobs and women and shame and grief in a man's life and leaving only hard work, stunning scenery and good food. The characters are beautifully done; young Ronnie, with his bent sense of self and manhood, Arthur with his brilliant engineer's mind and tormented St. Augustine soul, and Darwin, who is carrying on a private war with God.

The language is pared down. The landscape is perfectly rendered, but there is next to no interior monologue, no fluff. There are way too many incomprehensible details of construction (for me). But the gentle revelation of what went wrong for Arthur and Ronnie, the revelation of what they're doing and why, these plot points are constructed as carefully as the structure that brings these men together.

It becomes clear that Ronnie is the real project of the summer, and the way the two older men bring this fatherless young man along is as complex, intricate and lovely as the ramp. With gentle teasing, intelligent instruction and the essential decency commented on by other reviewers, Carlson builds a beautiful story of masculine competency, grief and honor that left me a little broken, a lot hopeful.

Words not written play big a part in this wonderful novel. Space, silence and setting leave room for the imagination of the reader, and the wonderful prose does the rest.
It is refreshing to find a writer who can write, not just one who churns out the requisite numnber of words necessary to sell a book. You won't forget Ronnie, Arthur, and Darwin five minutes after you've finished reading the book as is so often the case with current best sellers.

"Five Skies" by Ron Carlson is a subtle and complex journey through the emotional landscape of three decent men trying to reconstruct their lives in the wake of personal turmoil and pain. It shows in great detail how men deal with emotional pain-how men intuitively know how to reach out with studied casualness and enormous subtlety to provide emotional support to other men in times of need.

The plot is simple. The owner of the Rio Difficulto ranch has agreed to lease a small portion of land located adjacent to 1,500-feet-deep river gorge to a group of entertainment investors who plan to produce a Memorial Day stunt jump across the gorge by a daredevil, Evel-Knievel-type woman on a motorcycle. To create the stunt, the investors first need to ready the site. Three workmen are found to build the launch ramp, a road, bleachers, and a temporary chain-link fence to protect the on-site spectators from any fatal missteps at the edge of the gorge.

The men who accept the job are Arthur Keys, Darwin Gallegos, and Ronnie Panelli. They will live and work onsite, surrounded by nothing but the primordial plains of southern Idaho. They will be working in the wilderness, without a sign of civilization in all directions. Mercy, the nearest town, is 20 miles away. Each man is attracted to the project because it offers the isolation they require to heal their emotional wounds. We know these men are scarred by life, but we don't know why. The facts about each man's past are slowly revealed over the course of the novel.

In this novel, we read a lot about the day-in-and-day-out details of the work site projects, together with the everyday details of how these men live together in their makeshift camp. In their isolation, sleeping in a tent and cooking outside under the 360-degree vastness of open prairie skies, they carve out a sheltering family existence. The book is infused with a deep love for the natural environment, especially the rugged western high plains plateaus. How the men interact with the natural environment plays a central role.

I've always been aware that men and women heal their emotional pain in completely different ways. Women seem to confront their emotional pain head on, typically relying on close women friends to help them understand and deal with their pain. On the other hand, men like to steal away to lick their wounds in private, or bury their pain in an avalanche of hard work. Rarely do men directly seek emotional support from anyone, particularly not from any of their male friends. Yet somehow, almost incomprehensibly, in acutely subtle ways, men do receive the support they need from their male comrades. "Five Skies" captures this process--the process of how men reach out, with extreme subtly, to help and heal their emotionally wounded colleagues.

This is a book that must be read carefully and slowly. If you are an astute reader, you'll recognize a lot of psychological healing going on between these hardened workmen, but it often appears so quickly and is gone again in a flash, that it can easily be missed--a gesture here, a few innocent but tender words there, a helping hand, a kind word of praise--all buried within the everyday tasks of living and working together. What a treasure it is to find a book that captures this process with such crystalline clarity!

Ron Carlson's prose is richly layered and literary. Sometimes, it takes on the rhythm and tenor of Annie-Dillard-like poetry masquerading as prose. This style stands in stark contrast to the everyday masculine simplicity of the events related through these words, but complements the emotional depth being captured. Together they work a magic synergy that gives the whole that much more impact. This is a carefully crafted work of literature, and I sincerely hope it wins a major literary prize so that a wider audience can learn about it and enjoy it. "Five Skies" has all the markings of a fine American literary classic. It is full of quiet wisdom. It is a book to be treasured and reread. It captured my heart, and I recommend it highly.