Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The strange faces of love..., March 6, 2003
As carefully stitched together as a patchwork quilt, with colorful squares made of quirky characters, the inhabitants of Greenland Township, Michigan, are bound by the commonality of their daily labor and innate love of their farmland. This is the heartland of America, land that has sustained generation after generation. But as much as a failing farm economy, suburbia encroaches upon this pastoral existence, and city people are willing to tolerate only so much discomfort in their newly constructed rural environment. Once sprawled across the countryside, secure from city confines, the old families are slowly replaced by pre-fab housing developments. Q Road's three main protagonists are strikingly different people, each with particular idiosyncrasies, forming their own core family: father, child-bride, and son, love filling the solitary loneliness so long entrenched in their hearts. The spirited 17-year-old Rachel, a new bride who has married for the security of owning land, smashes through life with no guidance or socialization, save that of her own invention. George Harland, her middle-age-plus husband, is a sixth-generation farmer who knows only that his days are suddenly more bearable with Rachel sharing their backbreaking work and love-drenched nights. George cannot imagine life without Rachel. When twelve-year-old David is drawn to the Harlands, it is for George's fatherly protection and Rachel's pure female strength, his own mother ever more distant and self-involved. On a clear day when trouble hovers in the air, David is the catalyst for catastrophe, his one breach of judgment forever changing the landscape of their future. For the three of them, life will never be the same again. The Darwinian inevitability of nature vs. progress lurks around the perimeter of Greenland Township and Campbell skillfully portrays the hardships and realities of farming, as even the vigorous landscape becomes a vital player in the drama. Campbell's reality is hard-edged and she never shies away from its blunt and often brutal surfaces. Yet the eccentric characters of Q Road fit snugly into the environment, their own edges sharpened early by experience. Q Road is like an Alice Hoffman novel with sharp teeth and a rapacious appetite. At the same time, the peculiar township inhabitants have many of the intransigent qualities of Carolyn Chute's Beans of Egypt, Maine. Sprinkled with quirky individuals, neighborhood malcontents and busybodies, Q Road is overflowing with the many faces of humanity, as they reach bravely toward their better selves. Luan Gaines/2003.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A world of memorable characters, October 21, 2002
While I picked up this book because of the story's location, (outside Kalamazoo, Michigan where my daughter lives,) I was immediately drawn into this rural world peopled by an array of eclectic and sympathetic characters struggling with the onslaught of family farms being devoured by development. The plot revolves around one man's attempt to continue farming against the odds (and fate itself.) While the theme is both grand and timely, it is the people who live on Q Road that make this book one of the most absorbing books I have read in some time. Bonnie Jo Campbell has a gift for bringing a range of characters to life, and every one is both unique and believable and unlike any characters that have gone before. Parts are so beautifully written I had to read them several times, just to feel the goosebumps raise up on my skin from the sheer beauty and power of her words. When I finished, I wanted to begin again, for I was reluctant to leave these people and this world behind. I came away feeling that I had lived this story and cared deeply about the characters and most importantly about the land itself.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not for the faint of heart., January 13, 2003
Q Road is not for the faint of heart. Author Bonnie Jo Campbell takes you down a Michigan side-road to a rough-hewn world of brutally flawed characters. No sparkling wits, no dreamy introverts here; rather these misshapen and misfortuned people struggle through each and every day. Cantankerous and eccentric, they are driven to alienate kin and neighbors alike. Victims of violent acts of their past, broken marriages, rural recession and self-abuse, they gain pleasure from the misery of others. Around them caterpillars are splattered under the wheels of cars, crows munch the remains of road-kill squirrels and cats devour birds, all in a landscape haunted by the death-march of the indigenous Potawatomi Indians. Out of this harsh reality, Campbell builds a story of grittiness, purpose and great humor that is suddenly jarred by a tragedy. An act of carelessness not malice, it threatens to overwhelm the community and break their spirit. In Campbell's competent hands, there is no hysterical reaction and no desperation, just people digging deeper and accepting less. Q Road becomes a road to recovery. No giant steps, no minor miracles, just a poignant reminder that the human spirit needs just small kindnesses to prevail. Bonnie Jo Campbell has, rightly, been described as a fresh new voice in American literature. This, her first novel, should be the launching point for a distinguished career.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
