Customer Reviews

Postcards

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I do admire Annie Proulx's writing, it is the sort that transports you to the setting. If the setting is the amazing Blood farm and the consequent flight therefrom then that's where you go, like it or not. Judging from these reviews, the less articulate amongst us did not like it.... I can't say I enjoyed the book in a lighthearted sense , but I certainly did enjoy it the literary appreciation sense. I found it both difficult to read and difficult to stop. Difficult because of the thread of violence , blood and death that runs through it,particularly as relates to animals. I was brought up in rural setting, but the cruelty and carnage that is farming in bygone Vermont is something else. I was almost reading with a hand partly in front of my eyes, as in a horror movie. (Perhaps Jane Smiley could do an American version of Cold Comfort Farm based on the Blood saga ) An interesting thing I note , also from the other reviews is the different ways in which people interpret the first page killing. I saw it an indubitably a murder,even if the intent was not originally there , others saw it as an accident of some sort. Whatever, the lonely saga of the guilty Loyal Blood is the backbone of the book, and his retribution is slow and complete and even if like me you though him initially guilty and his occupations cruel and unusual, your heart still goes out to him. His parents, the luxuriantly-named, and anything but luxuriantly endowed Jewell and Mink Blood are likewise important characters - at 60-odd Loyal is still loyally writng his postcards to his dead father and absent mother,sister and brother . Do they escape - well you read and find out. I promise you a seriously good read

Introduced to Annie Proulx from her book _Shipping News_, I eagerly snatched this book up with the same expectations and I was delivered of that and more. An outstanding story of family, blood lines, history and human strength and frailty, Annie once again strikes gold. Teased, the reader gets little glimpses of mementos, mail, postcards throughout the novel that relate in intriguing ways to the story content. Probably the biggest teaser would be the first few pages. I challenge any lover of literature to read those pages and put the novel back on the shelf. There is simply no way to resist this book when you have read this entry. My analysis of a great work of literature is my intention to reread the novel again. There are a handfull of books I know I will, as the temptation to read something fresh is always greater. This novel will never be lent out, for I will wait until it dims just the slightest in my memory, and then I will seek it out and read it again with as much anticipation as when I read it the first time. I can't wait!!

Annie Proulx's first novel uses the vehicle of postcards, often from the main character Loyal Blood, to introduce most chapters. What is striking about the cards is there is never a return address, with Loyal cutting himself off from contact from his family, but still wanting to let them know his whereabouts (with a rack of stolen bear postcards). I was hoping for some return, or public discovery of the event that precipitated Loyals exodus. The descriptions of mining and archeology in the west were perhaps the best, but the writing of the farm in Vermont did not reveal as strong feeling of place. The writing in sometimes very lyrical for example ".. her own house showed up as a slatternly lean of paintless clapboards, the porch slipping away like melting butterscotch". The vignettes almost read more like loosely connected short stories, than a novel. The male characters seem most developed, with the women offering less. Readers of this may enjoy Robert Olen Butler's upcoming book " Had a Good Time : Stories from American Postcards " which has fictional short stories focused around an actual postcard

What a phenomenal novel by E. Annie Proulx. I thumbed through the pages at the bookstore, saw postcards prefacing almost every chapter, and was immediately attracted to the novel. I had no idea, though, that it was going to be this good. I have been hooked up on this book to the very end, yet this is not a happy, pretty novel. This was hard reality, ugliness and bad luck in every other page, strangely compelling chapter after chapter. I would say there was very little fiction in this book, and that's what made it so good for me.

As an aside: just a few days ago, i reviewed Beach Music, by Pat Conroy, and my main criticism is that it dealt with many, many story lines that did not connect well. The end result was an 800-page mishmash of tales and situations that left me with a sense of annoyance. Postcards is a perfect example of how in barely 300 pages you can have dozens of lives and places and situations in harmony. It just takes some skill on the part of the author (one of the tricky parts of writing).

These are some of the things that make this novel so excellent, in my opinion:

1: Her character development is fabulous. If Loyal is not a walking example of karma, i don't know what is. How could one feel sorry for a criminal? Yet i could. And Dub, proof of how ironic life can be. Mink, born miserable. Jewell and her renaissance. Witkin and his sense of emptiness. These characters were flesh and blood, not paper.

2: Her descriptions of place are brilliant. I have never been in a dairy farm, but i feel like i have. The smells, the grime, the bitter cold, the absence of electric light. The insides of the caved mine. The desert and the heat. It was not difficult to visualize any of these places, because her detailed portrayal was so vivid and complete.

3: Her situations are remarkable. Loyal's journey throughout the country is an excellent account of life from post-war years till the late 80's. The very colorful characters and situations he encounters. The many lives he lives.

If i could give more stars to this book, i would. This is a magnificent first novel by an author i will keep in mind forever.

About three years ago, I stumbled across Postcards in an airport bookstore, and I couldn't put it down for the 3 days that I was away from home. It is the only book I have ever read by Proulx, but the images from Postcards seem to be etched in my mind. Think of a favorite movie- and the scene or image that will never go away. That's what this book offers: vivid, emotional images. It's a book that I have always wanted to recommend to someone, the kind of book that makes me wish I was reading it for a literature class so that I could talk about it with others, analyze it, and truly appreciate it. It is a beautifully written, heart-wrenching story. As I recall, an observation I had while reading Postcards was that Proulx was noticably sympathetic to her female characters - they seemed to be victims of circumstance - while her male characters were often the cause of their own undoing. This realization actually enhanced my enjoyment of the book, by making me conscious of the author and allowing a certain amount of disconnect from the characters- necessary to keep from getting too emotionally connected to these tragic characters.

After reading this novel, I still have no idea how I feel about it. I know that I wanted to like it, having adored "The Shipping News" and liking "That Old Ace in the Hole" rather well. But the only thing I feel about this book is ambivalence. Not good, not bad...just nothing.

The plot itself is anything but riveting. It follows random characters through their different American journeys, all ending in tragedy, death, debt, or just plain boredom. I see what Proulx is trying to say here about the American experience, but it seems to me it's been done better by others, Richard Russo being the first to come to mind.

One annoying habit (actually two annoying habits) Proulx has is one: not identifying the speaker. After two pages of "he" and "she" the reader may finally realize who the story is about. Other times, the chapter may end without any name, and utter confusion. Two: Every ten chapters or thereabouts Proulx has a "What I See" chapter, which is exactly what it sounds like. Things the characters see. This is a chance for Proulx to show off her marvelous description skills, but it can also be tedious. Especially when most of the rest of the book is description.

If you are looking to get to know Annie Proulx, this is not the book to start off on. Read "The Shipping News" or "That Old Ace in the Hole" first; both leave definite impressions and have better developed stories and characters. This book is...well, it's just THERE.

This extraordinary author can create gritty realism like no other,you can smell the band aid in the mash potato.Although a first novel and no match for the classic The shipping news (which is my all time favourite book) one can glimpse the genius of the Pulitzer Price winner shining through these pages.I dont understand people who find her book a tough read.The stories are as plain as day and the language is completely down to earth. The story is a tale of tragic proportion,life holds no redemption for the Blood family,the anti hero Loyal Blood (the name alone is worth a prize) goes from the favourite son and hope of the family to a bum scavenging gabage for meals. But before he gets there we get to meet some of the quirkiest odd ball in American history.Although a very clever and honest book,the ending is a little bit unsatisfying but that is life,after a lifetime of bad luck due to his unforgivable crime Loyal is left to face a fate worse than death : living.

E.Annie Proulx, the first female winner of PEN/Faulkner Award, wrote a wonderful story with Faulknerian plot and Steinbeckian characters but in such original manner and with such creative power that it takes your breath away from the first page till the last one.

The Fall of the House of Blood recalls Faulkner's 'Absalom, Absalom!' where an unrepentant sin of a person triggers the inexorable course of moral and physical decay of the whole family. Loyal Blood, a protagonist of the novel, whom his masculine ancestors bequeath with a hot temperament, killed his beloved girlfriend Billy and had to run away to evade just punishment. Travelling across the American West for forty years, changing different jobs, he sends postcards to his family without revealing his address. One can see an obvious parallel with the fate of Cain. Loyal is an innate talanted farmer, 'a tiller of the ground'. But after the horrible sexual crime his life is really under the Lord's verdict: 'When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth... And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him' (KJV:Genesis, 4;12,15). As a kind of such mark Loyal receives a strange lung allergy that prevents all his contacts with women. He runs hard but doesn't get anywhere except to a different place. Without personal remorse but with intention to forget, he becomes a new Wandering Jew; it seems that he lives several lives without the hope of merciful death. Sometimes he, being virtually a good man, resembles the Death himself: people die around him but he stays alive. As a personafication of the Death he kills trapped animals without any sense or compassion, - except one red-haired female coyote whose desperate eyes and realization of its doomed fate remind him Billy's last look. The final of the Blood's family outwardly is not so tragical as in the Faulkner's novel but its essence is just the same - no children, no purport, no hope. In the last chapter we see a half-mad offspring of a man who had bought Blood's farm - compare with the end of 'Absalom, Absalom!'

Description of ordinary people's endurance of pain, hardship and adversity is excellent, the author's attention to their agonies and ecstasies recalls famous Steinbeck's books. The life of farmers was hard but it was real; modern life is a rat race, an unquenchable thirst of money, an insatiable desire for success and fame, it becomes a genuine nightmare.

The structure of the novel, its form is exquisite. The author uses texts of postcards as an explanation of events and elucidation of characters and even as a short description of following episodes. The latter proves the author's literary courage: she sometimes eschews the depiction of garish incidents (such as the arson and search of culprits, pecuniary swindles in Maiami, etc.), the only vocation of run-of-the-mill writers, but she always focuses on the crucial psychological junctures in the lives of her heroes.

High estimation of E.Annie Proulx's novel is absolutely deserved. Furthermore, the existence of such a novel is the best confirmation of the fact that the great literature is still alive. Closing this book I have a sole wish - to open the other one written by the same author.

While "Postcards" is as beautifully written and original as "The Shipping News," it's a depressing read. Instead of the passionate, moving sadness of tragedy, the story is a slow, steady grinding of one catastrophe after another.

"Postcards" presents the reader with an endless string of murder, sickness, injury, theft, suicide...By the end of the book I was hardly moved by any of it. A few moments of hope and human kindness would have made the losses seem more profound. Without it, the violence and pain ended up seeming merely pointless.

The book has its redeeming qualities from a technical standpoint. Proulx manages to carry off the postcards concept (each chapter starts with a reproduction of a postcard message that adds some information to the story) without it becoming gimmicky. The story is interesting in the way that watching a car crash might be interesting - you wonder what else could possibly happen to these people. And her writing style and subjects are as quirky and finely drawn as ever.

But ultimately I found I couldn't care about the characters' lows when there were no highs to measure them against, and instead of a plot the book was simply a litany of sorrows.

Once you read the opening sentence of 'Postcards,' you've made a blood pact to ride it through to the very end. It is a tough journey - tribulations, tragedy, loss and disillusionment. Interestingly enough, all these unfold as America progresses from the 1940s through as close to present day as the novel dares to go.

Proulx is an excellent writer -- there is just no other way to say it. Her imagery is accurate and striking, her penmanship sincere and beautiful, her motivation convincing and firm. I am reminded of a modern day Thomas Hardy; indeed, she explores similar themes: man's futile struggle with nature and the land, man's painful grapple with modernization, and the inability to escape fate -- which is often the path Proulx's characters set for themselves through their actions.

Proulx takes her time to develop her story, and while this may seem slow at times, she has the luxury of lushly and unabashedly unfolding her story. The attention to detail is impeccable and immaculate -- a story about loss and trudging on needs that, as if searching for an answer in every possible way.

This book not only urges its readers to think the author's philosophy -- it's constantly thinking of ways to reveal itself without losing its classy and necessary subtlety. It's enigmatic at times, but take it as an invitation to explore, rather than be put off by it. It's to Proulx's credit that she's taken the exhaustingly explored nostalgic Forrest Gump-esque backdrop of a changing and progressing America to set her story against, and infused it with the possibility of disdaining the fact that our history may be the bane of our existence.