Customer Reviews

Go With Me: A Novel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

What a little gem.

Summary, no spoilers.

This is the story of a young woman, who refuses to back down and leave after the town bully torments her, and runs off her boyfriend. She seeks the help of the sheriff, who directs her to a colorful group of locals from this small Vermont town. They send her off with two of their own - a wily old man, and a big strapping young guy who works with him.

The action alternates between the girl and the 2 men seeking out the villain, and the small group that had sent them off. The latter group serves as the Greek chorus, and their dialogue is funny, profound, and clever. It's a neat trick.

I highly recommend this novel. It's short, but there's not a wasted word. It feels like a much bigger book. It was very suspenseful, and I was tense and nervous as I got near the end. When I turned the last page I felt satisfied.

Highly recommended.

"Chivalry isn't dead; it has just retreated to the backwoods of Vermont. Far beyond the range of leaf-peepers, quaint B&Bs and wealthy liberals lie millions of acres of dark forest, the kind of rich soil that chivalric romance has grown in for centuries. James Fenimore Cooper first saw the possibilities of moving the knights errant of medieval Europe to New England's woods, and now Castle Freeman Jr. performs an equally radical transplant with Go With Me, his oddly witty tale of a damsel in distress." Ron Charles

Remember Daryl, Daryl and their brother, Daryl of the old television series with Bob Newhart? Quadruple their force and you have the setting for a small group of townsmen who gather every day at the old chair mill. They discuss, they foretell and they are the old Greek wise men. Throughout this novel, they speak and reminisce and give each other advice. Whizzer is the leader of the group. He was a logger until one of the trees got him, and now as a paraplegic, his job is to keep this group together, with and without beer, on a daily basis.

Lillian, a young woman with long brown hair to her ass, as we are constantly reminded, comes to this group one day. She has been harassed by Blackway, the area's mafia bad guy. He sent her boyfriend scurrying out of town, broke her car window and then killed her beloved cat. She went to the local Sheriff Wingate who told her he there wasn't anything he could do to help her. He advised she leave town, she said no. A 'pistol' he thought, she was. He sent her on to Whizzer for help.

Whizzer looked for volunteers and Nate the Great, "a tall, long-boned, heavy-wristed kid: not a scholar, not a talker. Smarter than a horse, not smarter than a tractor." The other is Lester, an old man with a heavy limp. "Was he seventy?" Lillian wonders. "Was he eighty?" These three started out to find Blackway and to do what, exactly?

A small suspenseful novel, filled with humor, a smile on almost every page, but yet, a novel that has grace and charm and so well written. A profound novel filled with the wit of the Vermont old timer. No flatlanders allowed here.

Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 07-06-08

Go With Me: A Novel

Judgment Hill: A Novel (Hardscrabble Books)

Go With Me is a little like a modern western, lean and angular. This slight novel features great characters and a fast-moving plot intertwined with wandering musings of the local townsfolk, through which you learn the history of the town and the characters. I won't repeat the story line here, just advise you to get this book and lose yourself for a few hours. P.S. Robert Duvall, who played Gus McCrae in "Lonesome Dove" would make a great Lester in this movie version of this story.

I don't think I've ever marked down a book purely for production reasons, but the typography in the paperback edition is terrible.

E.g.,
"'Coop went to the cof feepot. "Mo uth on her too,' he said."

There's no excuse for this given the sophistication of digital type now. The book is beautifully written, but don't waste your money on this paperback edition. It's too distracting to slog through the bad typography.

GO WITH ME is a novel written very much in the spirit of Cormac McCarthy. Freeman is frugal with the details, and relies on sparse realism to guide his very simple tale to its very simple conclusion.

Novels this short and this quiet can be quite deceptive. It's called hiding in plain sight. Just as a glance across a crowded courtroom can be both straightforward and frought with complexities, so can the right kind of unadorned writing bristle with the sort of import and passion and depth that most English Lit professors never dare dream of.

Freeman's story is about a woman named Lillian who has caught the attention of a local disease, a dangerous villain named Blackway (let's not analyze the name). Seeking a cure against his destructive attentions, Lillian finds aid in an elderly fellow named Lester and a beefy young lad named Nate.

Saying any more would give away what little punch this novella has to offer (c'mon, folks; this is NOT a novel). I'm not saying it's not entertaining. A fellow named Whizzer and his round-table of good-old-boys spend the entire novel drinking beers and chewing the fat, and their authentic back-and-forth is what really gives the book the intrigue and humor and pathos that it wants so much to have elsewhere.

However, the core of the plot (ESPECIALLY Nate and Lester's motivations) is not only as fine and as delicate as a spider web, it holds about as much weight, too. I've heard words like "suspenseful" and "thrilling" and "shocking" and "stunning" used to describe the climax and some of the moments that preceded it, but I found the entire novel -- climax, conflict, resolution and all -- to be as whisper-thin as the minimalist writing used to depict it. There are small, delightful moments where the story finds something to really be about, but beyond those brief passages, this is really just a milquetoast snack trying to pass itself off as a hero sandwich.

This hillbilly fable, set in the backwoods of Vermont, draws you in with a classic woman-in-distress opener. The lovely Lillian is being stalked by Blackway, a local criminal who drove Lillian's boyfriend out of town, supposedly killed her cat, and has a legendary reputation for badness in these parts. Sheriff Wingate, recognizing that Blackway has broken no laws he can cite to arrest him, refers Lillian to a local sawmill owner named Whizzer for help. Whizzer puts his best men on the job, an over-the-hill guy named Wes, who's respected for his mastery of dirty tricks, and a young simpleton named Nate, who can curl more pounds than his IQ.

Suspense builds as the trio hunt down Blackway in a desolate swath of woods that makes the setting for the Blair Witch Project seem like a boyscout campsite. As they close in on Blackway, the reader is entertained by scenes featuring the banter of Whizzer and his loyal posse, who pass the days draining cases of beer, recalling poker games card-by-card from years ago, and opining on whether Wes and Nate have a shot at taking Blackway down.

This is minimalist writing at its finest, with a spare style that relies on realistic and slyly-humorous dialogue rather than heavy-handed narrative. My only regret is that the ending wasn't better developed, as the climax and resolution couldn't quite live up to this tall tale's setup.

This book is my first exposure to this writer. Despite its brevity, the story, although dark, is delightful with wonderful, totally believable characters and priceless dialogue. There is a sort of Greek chorus of elderly men, sitting around a stove, who continue to comment on the heroine's efforts with her two volunteers to get rid of the villain. They are wonderful. Both my wife and I laughed out loud as we each read the novel. It would give heart to any geezer who picked it up. The plot is believable, most of the characters are charming and every community has in its bosom at least one villain with his followers similar to the one in this volume. I recommend it. It also makes a great gift to anyone who enjoys top level writing.

I understand what Freeman was going for here: quirky characters, rustic dialect, setting-as-formative to plot, etc. Kind of a literary compatriot to cinema's Fargo, if you will. From reading some of the other reviews, I also see the parallel between Whizzer's band of yokels and a Camelot-like gathering of "noblemen" who do their leader's bidding out of a backwoods sense of chivalry. Yet, this is where the novel fails. There is nothing to indicate that the two bumpkins sent to accompany Lillian have ANY reason to confront the menacing Blackway. If they are a couple of hillbilly "knights" who are setting out under some sort of creed or code, or sense of moral obligation, it is never stated, or even implied. They simply go because Whizzer asks them to. If Blackway were some villainous scourge that needed to be removed from the community, would they not have done so long beforehand? Given his history of terrorizing the locals, there seems to have been plenty of motivation to do so before Lillian appears.
And extending the Camelot parallel, Lillian is certainly no Lady Guenivere. She is snotty, condescending, and absurdly presumptuous. Based on the sheriff's advice, she approaches a complete stranger (Whizzer) with the full, demanding expectation that someone assist her in making a stand against a person who, by all indications, is a sociopath. She is not even a local resident-- she's a transplant from another town who was only known as "Kevin's girl" (until Kevin was chased away by Blackway). She is not related to any of the locals, nor is she a friend, or even acquantance of anyone noted. She offers no money for their services, nothing by way of trade or compensation-- she doesn't even give an indication that she'll be particularly thankful. After telling Whizzer and his crew that Blackway killed her cat and has been stalking her, one of Whizzer's crew, DB, responds in a simplistic, off-handed manner, and Lillian sharply replies, "F*%# you"-- repeatedly. This wins her some favor as a little "pistol," and apparently that's all that's required to convince Lester and Nate to risk their lives against Blackway and his network of lowlife friends. To say the least, there is nothing believably appealing about Lillian--as a damsel in distress, she is hardly inspiring.
Some might say that I'm being too heavy-handed with the characters' motivations, and perhaps I am. However, it seems to me that it's a pretty significant factor in pulling this story off. When you portray a shadowy character such as Blackway, the supposed embodiment of all that is dark and twisted, then those who oppose him should have some sort of discernible stake in defeating him. Up until Lillian arrives, it seems the boys were perfectly content to live with the specter of Blackway in their midst. This, even though one member of their group (Scotty Cavanaugh) was brutally assaulted by Blackway once before. Castle Freeman offers up these characters as quaint, cute little charicatures and expects us to buy into their little backwater quest just because they're so goshdarn neat and likeable. The necessity of suspending the expectations we impose within "reality" while reading fiction is only proportionate to the function / perameters of the story. For example, in science fiction / fantasy, we often give more latitude to characters and their agendas because we may or may not be dealing with a necessarily "human" figure. However, in a book that is supposedly about fundamental human motivators (chivalry, moral codes), there should be something we can latch onto as the catalyst that pulls us through the journey, no matter how incredible the trials may be. If no attention is given to such matters, then the characters come off as flat, and the story, wafer thin.

I avidly follow book news, and I couldn't help but notice that there's been an avalanche of stellar reviews for "Go With Me" by Castle Freeman, Jr. I just had to see what all the fuss was about, so I bought the book and soon found myself lost inside a classic tale about a damsel in distress, the villain that threatens her, and the men who rescue her.

I don't think I can add much to the ongoing praise, other than to say that I wholeheartedly agree. This is one exceptionally fine backwoods thriller--a work with an abundance of humor and a lyrical sense of place that takes your breath away! If you want to examine a novel in which there appears to be absolutely no extraneous words, action, or character, this is the one. The pacing and dialogue are near-perfect, and the characters are so real they easily make your own world seem artificial by comparison. To open this book is to fall right in and become part of another world.

Possibly the only unique comment I can add is to help explain the purpose of one of the minor characters, a man named Conrad. He appears as just one of a handful of men who form the "Greek chorus" out at Wizzer's place. But at the end, Conrad jumps out at you inexplicably when he gets his own unique chapter--a chapter that is quiet unlike much that has come before. At first this seemed odd, especially in a novel where there are no unnecessary words. The careful reader has to ask himself: Why give Conrad his own chapter? What's the author trying to say with this short diversion?

All it took to find the answer was to go back and reread all of Conrad's dialogue. In a book that is only 160 pages long, that's actually easy. So, if you want to do that yourself, be my guest. If you don't, read on. Nothing I say gives away the plot; it only sheds light on one of the underlying thematic messages.

Conrad plays the role of the outsider. He plays our part, for we are outsiders, too. Whenever the guys at Wizzer's get to talking, Conrad is always the one who's a little bit confused. He's the one asking the questions. If the book didn't have Conrad, there wouldn't be so much explaining going on and we, the reader, wouldn't know essential back-story.

Conrad is not a native Vermont backwoodsman. He didn't spend his life living around the other men in the story. Conrad is married to Betsy, Wizzer's younger sister by more than half a generation. His wife says that their house used to be the town's schoolhouse. Conrad's amazed to learn how everything around the town used to be something else. Everything's seemed to have changed but Wizzer's--his place is almost exactly as it's been for generations.

The men get to talking about what might someday become of Wizzer's place--the one place that hasn't changed. They wisecrack that they could turn it into a museum, pick it up and drop it down in the middle of Sturbridge Village, along with the whole lot of them. They could charge admission and "let the tourists look at us." It is Conrad who breaks their humor with a comment that only an outsider could make: "This is not Disneyland business, you know. This is no stage set. This is the real thing."

And, yes, by now we know: it is the real thing.

In Conrad's chapter, "The Ground," we find Betsy, his wife, watching television news. She's watching what's supposed to be the real thing--the news--but by comparison to all that's come before, the reader finds it surrealistic, distorted, otherworldly.

The chapter closes with Conrad explaining to his wife a strange feeling he's having: "that Wizzer and the rest of them are all sitting inside a spaceship. A rocket ship. They're in there, and the ship is traveling. It's moving. It's going so fast. It's going at light speed, you know? And so, the men who are on it don't get old, do they? That's what Einstein said. Isn't it? They don't change. Time doesn't pass for them. Time stretches. It stretches, or it shrinks. Or something. They're out of time. You know?"

It is through Conrad that Freeman shares with us his loving lament for a culture and people on the brink of extinction. Even if Conrad doesn't, we know that the world is changing. The culture of the Vermont backwoodsman--like all other cultures worldwide that are rooted tenaciously in endangered ecosystems or outmoded economic systems--are doomed. And the questions left unasked: Are we better off? Are we leaving the better, more real world behind?

This is a great novella. I had heard the review on NPR. It's very short, and with a lot of dialogue, it reads even shorter than the 170 or so pages. It's a two- or three-night bedtime read. It reminds me of "No Country for Old Men" but, this book has a satisfying, completed ending. The best part, to me, was the dialogue between the characters...really witty, even though the characters seem to be quite sincere. Well done, Castle Freeman...I was completely engaged in the conversations. I'd only like to have known more about the antagonist, Blackway, as his background seemed a little sketchy and incomplete.

I think this would make a great Tarantino movie, too. I've already done the work and picked his cast...Billy Bob Thornton as Whizzer, Tommy Lee Jones as Lester, Juliette Lewis as Lillian, Woody Harrelson as Blackway. Haven't figured out who could be "Nate the Great" yet, though. Shaquille O'Neal...his size and personality would fit, but can he act and be taken seriously??? Tarantino, you owe me one...I've done all the work.

Also, as noted by others, the typography can be annoying with improper text kerning and page justification, leaving one to sometimes having to "re-read" a passage and put the words back together.