Customer Reviews

Orchard: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Larry Watson takes the less-traveled roads, through landscapes and heartscapes vaguely familiar, intensely poetic, always jangling.

From his breakout novel, "Montana 1948" -- which explores a family's disintegration when an uncle is accused of sexual abuse in a small town -- to his sixth and newest novel "Orchard," he has established himself as one of the leading poetic realists, painting his stories across the canvas of interiors: small-town America and the human heart.

Weaver and Sonja's erotic, artistic relationship clearly harks back to the real-life coupling of American master Andrew Wyeth and his most famous model, Helga. But the reader is well-advised to acknowledge the similarities between art and life -- then forget it. "Orchard" is more. It is filled with characters who are as flawed as their surroundings and circumstances, and a landscape that is achingly painted.

Watson's earlier works -- most notably "Montana 1948" and "White Crosses" -- have won the Milkweed Fiction Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association Regional Award, and many other literary prizes. Publishers Weekly even predicted that if booksellers talk up "Orchard" it might match the commercial success of "Montana 1948," the book that put Watson on the literary map.

But it's too bad that books as lyrical as "Orchard" and writers as starkly poetic as Watson must depend on the kindness of strangers to get the exposure they deserve in today's speed-obsessed marketplace, where character development and thoughtful prose are too-often considered poisonous.

In American letters, the good old days of strong characters in dire human straits have dwindled to a handful of writers and books. Even so-called reality TV isn't real. Watson's real-life themes -- lust, self-absorption, jealousy, grief and loss -- will grab the reader's gut and twist it better than any cat detective, cynical ex-CIA operative or vampire terrorist.

One must simply venture down a road less traveled.

The apple orchards of 1950's Door County, Wisconsin are the setting for this mellifluous story of artistic endeavor and sexual politics. Watson has a nice, easy, relaxed style that lends itself very well to this type of small town story. His style is at times poetic, and at times stark, as he paints a picture, and sets the story against the backdrop of the changing seasons.

Watson presents us with two couples whose betrayals will forever haunt them. Henry House, earthy, sexy and the owner of the apple orchard is newly married to Sonja, a Swedish immigrant. After losing their son in a terrible accident they suddenly drift apart sexually and emotionally. Ned Weaver is the controlling selfish artist who treats his wife Harriet, without respect and combs the town looking for muses for his art. When Sonja decides to model for Ned to earn some extra money, the sparks really fly when Henry finds out that other men in the town have been furtively watching the "artistic" exchange between artist and model. From the opening, Watson engages us in sexual politics, nasty game playing, petty betrayals, and family tensions and we get a feeling of inevitability as the story reaches its shattering climax. It is the men in the novel who come out looking bad - selfish, uncommunicative, nasty and controlling.

Orchard addresses the sexual hypocrisy and dysfunctional marriages of the time, while also addressing the wider themes of sexuality and art. To Ned Weaver a beautiful nude model is not necessarily a sexual being, unless he wants her to be a sexual being! And it's all on his terms. For Ned unclothing beautiful women and painting them is all about his art and work, and his work is the most important thing in his life; more important than his marriage, children or friends. Henry's challenge is to try and understand that "nakedness is craft and art"; and to transcend the idea that his wife is merely being labeled as a "sexual object" by Ned.

There is good character development in this novel, along with a wonderfully adept use of metaphor. Watson really makes us appreciate the tension and sensuality of a single action - the peeling of sunburn, the eating of an apple, the removal of slinky negligee - and he does this so economically. Deftly weaving together imagery of four very different lives, Orchard could almost be called a literary painting. This is an interesting and quite moving work.

Michael

As connected to the earth as the orchardist who is one of the main characters, this powerful novel weaves the intimate details of everyday lives in rural Door County, Wisconsin, into a riveting domestic tragedy. In simple, spare language author Larry Watson depicts the lives of two couples, very different from each other, each trying to fulfill dreams and cope with the silences and miscommunications which arise in their marriages, then brings the two couples together to make connections with each other.

Henry House is the orchardist, laboriously tending his apple trees and harvesting his crop, a hard-working man living close to the earth. He and his wife Sonja have been devastated by the death of their four-year-old son from a blow to the head. Consumed by grief, they are unable to reach out to each other in their need, each reliving the trauma separately. Ned Weaver, their neighbor, is a talented and respected artist who is willing to subordinate all other aspects of his life to his art. Despite his reputation for womanizing and his many betrayals, especially with his models, his wife Harriet loves him and has found some satisfaction in the role of caretaker of his creative flame.

Watson tells his story of these four people and their interactions obliquely, moving back and forth in time, building the drama and tension to a high pitch as the reader is presented with vivid scenes of danger and violence which sometimes have no context. We do not know, at first, who the characters are, how they may be connected, why they are behaving as they do, or in what order these scenes take place, and it is not until late in the novel that some of these mysterious events are explained. Contemplating how the scenes are connected, the reader becomes intimately involved in the narrative, an involvement which never lets up as the story becomes more complex.

Watson is an exceptionally "clean," no-frills writer, creating many layers of meaning in homely details and images which advance the themes and intensify the emotion. In one of the most unusual scenes in modern fiction, for example, Ned, sun-burned and peeling from an afternoon of painting along the lake, asks his wife to peel his back, a scene laden with far more significance than the simple need to scratch an itch. Themes of love and betrayal, freedom and control, suffering and redemption, innocence and guilt-all universal themes from the beginning of human history-are seen through the prism of an artist's life and his desire to leave a lasting legacy. In all its simplicity, Watson's novel carries the power and resonance of the very best of dramatic fiction. Mary Whipple

Orchard owner Henry House marries the Norwegian immigrant Sonja. They settle down to family life in 1950s Wisconsin and suffer the tragic loss of their son. When the famous resident artist and womanizer Ned Weaver sees Sonja, he insists she model for him. She decides to accept his offer but doesn't tell Henry she is doing so. Ned becomes fascinated with Sonja, and he is driven to capture every facet of her body and moods on canvas. Henry eventually learns from his neighbors about her posing in the nude, and he becomes angry. Sonja is soon caught between the obsessions and jealousy of both men. The situation seems destined to come to confrontation.

This novel is written in a lyrical style that drew me in and held me spellbound. Larry Watson is as artistic with his prose as Ned is with his paintbrush. The characters come alive: the down-to-earth Henry, the enigmatic Sonja, the eccentric Ned, and Ned's long-suffering wife Harriet, as well as the other family members and residents of Door County. The details of the town are described as though through an artist's eye, and readers cannot help but feel that they are there sitting in the Top Deck Tavern, or watching Ned working in his cluttered studio, or braving the wintry weather to gaze at the ice-crusted harbor. This is a book to savor. I recommend it highly.

Eileen Rieback

In his novel, "Orchard", Larry Watson's wonderfully descriptive writing pulls you into the physical surroundings of the story and through the character's minds. He led me to feel, but never quite understand, Sonja and Henry House's loss of, not only their young son when he died, but the soul of their relationship. They then struggled individually to replace the emptiness that could have been healed if they'd only allowed themselves to come together.

Then, there is Ned Weaver, the indulgent and self-absorbed artist whom has convinced himself that nothing is too great a sacrifice for his art. His wife, Harriet, has resigned herself to this dogma as well, plodding on through her seemingly joyless life since the realization of her husband's ongoing faithlessness.

The lives of these four inevitably intertwine, with surprising, but not too unpredictable results.

It was a few chapters (maybe more) before I was actually able to sort out the individual stories within the story. This was during the scene setting, the history behind the characters that later deepened your understanding of their choices and behaviors. It may just be me as I read this over the course of a couple of weeks rather than days, but when it finally came together for me, I found it difficult to put down.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and will probably reread it, if only for the sheer pleasure of being transported to this other time and place by Watson's eloquent writing. I recommend Orchard, and would definitely consider Watson's other books.

If I believed _Orchard_ was meant to be a tragedy, I would have to call it a failure. Proper tragedy, in my mind, requires a loss of joy or at least the potential for joy. The closest any character in this book comes to joy is when Henry and Sonja walk through the apple orchard, biting fruit, discarding them because each one is sour. There's not a sweet apple to be found. There's not a sweet moment. There is no happiness.

But I don't think _Orchard_ was intended to be anything other than exactly what it is (except perhaps in one small regard, and I'll get to that in a minute); it is a beautifully-written and graceful account of grey, bleak people in a joyless situation. Some passages are as earthy as the ground in which the trees are planted. Others are unexpectedly lovely--descriptions of setting or a moment of realization. I am constantly reminded of a grey sea under an overcast sky. The waters shift and whisper, but never become lively, never vibrant, and to watch them may be soothing if you're in the right mindset... but... for me it was hard to stay with the story. I had my fill of those seas after a few minutes, to tell the truth.

The characters are not sympathetic, though again I don't think they're meant to be--to like these people is probably not the point. I expected to care about Sonja from the summary, yet by the end I had no emotion but vague dislike left for her. This is that one regard I mentioned because I'm not sure she wasn't intended to be a sympathetic figure. There are possible hints of this. If so, it doesn't work. She is concerned foremost with attention and her own feelings to the exclusion of her family's; her griefs and hopes are strangely hollow, like gilding over something empty. Perhaps it's her emptiness that makes her Ned's greatest muse. I did feel sympathy towards Henry, whose behavior may not be ideal, but his struggle with grief and raw emotion is so much better characterized than anyone else's that he comes alive where his wife does not.

Unsympathetic characters, dreary story; is it a bad book? No. It's beautiful. I am absolutely certain there are readers who would love this dearly, at least if they approach it wanting the right things. I would have liked just *one moment* of light to tip it towards redemption or heartbreak, but it wouldn't be at all the same story, and like Ned with a painting I'm reluctant to take anything away from what art says it must be.

I've been a fan of Larry Watson's since Montana 1948 and have read everything he's written. I really love his early works best but have found all of his works to be well worth the investment of my time. He's got a unique style and is excellent at capturing the mood, geography and solitude of wherever location he chooses to place his story. He's absolutely my favorite North Dakota writer (with apologies to Norris, Erdrich and L'Amour). Orchard follows up on a theme of obsession Watson first explores in Laura. These most recent two are vastly different from his first three. Watson always leaving me waiting anxiously for the next.

I don't know much about Wyeth, his muse Helga, or even other novels with art as a main character (unless you count "The Da Vinci Code," which looks like a poorly crafted nursery rhyme compared to Watson's book), but I DO know Door County, Wisconsin, and I can attest that Watson has captured this dramatically picturesque region as it was in the 1950s with deft and a sad and lovely nostalgia. Sad because, like most once gorgeous North American seaside areas, Door County is now a crowded, over-developed, and cynical exploitation of itself. That Watson grieves the loss of northern Wisconsin as it used to be is evident in nearly every chapter of "Orchard," with his loving descriptions of rocky (and gloriously empty!) beaches, his acolades to the rough winters and the hardy "year-rounders" who could tolerate them, and his detailed, insider portraits of apple picking, ice fishing, and small-town Christmas pageantry.

The post-war Door County he captures is innocent and still dominated by nature's mood swings. In the decades since it has become over-run with condos, golf courses, tourist traps and, yes, superficial art gallaries for the rich and naive (a few of them may even have decent art). It may not yet be a Wisconsin Dells but, to hear natives tell it, it's clearly well on the way.

In this Watson compares favorably to Dennis Lahane's "Mystic River," which captured pre-yuppie Baltimore with a similarly nostalgic view. I do appreciate the respect and compassion with which he treats a now long-gone region. Door County is as much a main character here as the two couples.

But it was Sonja's perceptions and lonely grief that moved me the most, even to the point of weeping a few times while reading this. I'm a sucker for great character portraits, and here Watson excels. Maybe, as others here have mentioned, the men aren't as fully drawn and believable. His handling of Sonja's grief, yearnings, regrets, and growing self-awareness more than makes up for it. She'll stay with me a long time.

Thank you, Mr. Watson, for a great read!

I found this novel to be strong and well-written, a fantastic contemplation of the dualities that surround us and haunt us: Love/hate; possession/betrayl; life/death; starkness/sensuality.

Couched in the midst of a harsh, sad life in an isolated region a woman bares herself willingly. Beyond the money she earns, we understand that Sonja is content with posing, but we never learn exactly why. A Norwegian in Wisconsin, her comfort speaking English is limited; even though Sonja serves as the inspiration for Weaver's artistic expression she seldom reveals herself. Mute, she is a compelling muse. Submitting to the rigorous gaze of Ned Weaver means focusing on her muscles and her skin; perhaps Sonja's emotional grief is mercifully eclipsed by the focus on her physical self. Perhaps the chance to be frozen in place is the chance to stop feeling the pain of life or loss. Perhaps the best place to escape is under the most intense scrutiny.

Larry Watson explores the idea of duality with the other characters as well. Ned, the artist, is both charming and cruel; he is a mysogynistic lover of women. Harriet, Ned's wife, is a doormat who, on occasion, considers exacting revenge. Henry, Sonja's husband, is both domineering and helpless; I think he is the most achingly real and vulnerable of the four characters.

I enjoyed reading Montana 1948, and I enjoyed Orchard as well. The relationships between the characters, the details of their environment and the possibilities that are never realized all combine to create a novel that is bittersweet.

Just a guess here: Writer's block dealt with by taking Andrew Wyeth's story and changing the names and adding a few fictitious characters to pad things. I was not able to care for these characters in any way; I couldn't feel any sympathy for them or identify with them. This was for a book club, and I came away feeling like I'd wasted a couple of hours. You know how it is, you buy a book and you know it's not going to get any better, but you think you just have to finish what you've started. That's a bad habit, like not walking out on a bad movie. Why am I reviewing it after all this time? I cleaned out a closet, found the book and gave it to my auntie. She reads bodice rippers, and loved it! She didn't know who the heck Helga was, so not a problem.