Customer Reviews

The School on Heart's Content Road

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

 

 

"The School on Heart's Content Road," Carolyn Chute's fifth novel, is set, like her first novel ("The Beans of Egypt, Maine") in the kind of small, rural inland community that can be found just about anywhere in Maine. It is a Maine mostly unknown to the summer tourists who populate the coast. Chute's Egypt, modeled loosely on a small western Maine town like Parsonsfield or Porter (the area where she lives with her husband), has an IGA supermarket, not a giant Hannaford's or Shaw's, and its back roads contain an assortment of decaying farmsteads, tidy ranch houses, and mobile homes.

In this setting Chute places a utopian community, the Settlement, headed by the charismatic Gordon St. Onge, a man whose frailties and relationships bring to mind other American experiments in communal living: Brook Farm, Oneida, New Harmony. The Settlement is home to a range of vividly drawn characters, including "Secret Agent Jane," a child who has lost her mother to prison, and Mickey Gammon, a 15 year old homeless boy who lives in a tree and is drawn to two competing militias, the Border Mountain Militia and the True Maine militia, the first run by angry men, the second by a group of idealistic Settlement teenagers. Chute's narrative voice in "The School on Heart's Content Road" is an omniscient one, with little symbols (a crow, a cloud, a TV set and so on) marking each voice, a device that seems at first like an affectation but grows on you. Through these voices, with affection, anger, and despair, she depicts the face of rural Maine poverty and the grinding forces ("corporatism" is a word she uses a lot) that make it impossible for ordinary people to live decent lives.

This novel is more furious and more polemical than "The Beans of Egypt, Maine," but it is also more lyrical in its evocation of the weedy green summer lushness of the western Maine hills and of the people who live there. Chute has the author's equivalent of perfect pitch for the way her Maine characters look and sound, including the French-accented speech one still encounters just about anywhere. I know that Chute is sometimes compared to Faulkner, but there is no landed gentry in her part of the world, no Sartoris looking backward, no Snopes on the make. Instead, there is just Egypt, a little community that has always been a bit of a backwater, and its utopian, rather 19th century reinvention in the form of the self-sufficient Settlement on Heart's Content Road, where the inhabitants experiment with solar and wind energy, tap the maple trees, take in every lost soul, and fend off reporters looking for a sensational story to lead the evening news. Chute's voice is deeply, truly a Maine one, but the residents of Egypt, mostly overlooked except when when it is useful to exploit them, could be living just about anywhere in America.

This was my first Carolyn Chute novel. The characters were wonderfully drawn. I appreciated how Ms. Chute was able to work with the unusual structure of giving multiple characters (even a crow) the opportunity to assume various parts of the narrative. I loved the idiosyncrasies of the people. They were totally believeable and often intriguing. The writing was dazzling at times. Ms. Chute knows how to deliver convincing dialogue and how to describe people, objects and places in a fresh way. So what's not to like and why did I give this only two stars? The storyline (what there was) just did not engage me. I couldn't feel any tension building; it was all of one texture. Once I got half way through the book, I couldn't wait to be done with it. The author mentions in the postscript that she has four more novels written about the same setting (a rural citizens' militia and a cult-like rural commune). I would have been happy with a tighter plot or shorter book.

Mrs. Chute is one of the best writers that ever walked the face of Earth. This is a great book in "The Great Books" sense of the word. It's rich and full and, amazing things seem to happen on every page. Take Rembrandt and Velasquez and Dickens and Tolstoy and have them create a portrait of Western Maine. That will give some idea of what this book like.

Mrs. Chute, however, is very upset that people cannot be farmers the way they were in the Nineteenth Century. Mrs. Chute is a brilliant writer but she is angry. I don't agree with her politics and she doesn't agree with mine. I hope she doesn't mind if I think she has written one of the greatest series of books ever.

Whether or not you agree with Mrs. Chute's politics everyone needs to read all of her books.

I lack the time to seriously review this work. This story is the first of five parts of a much larger work Carolyn has been developing over the course of several years, and it is one of the best tales i've read in a long time. The School on Heart's Content Road will appeal to anyone who's the slightest bit suspicious of programming, indoctrination, mainstream media, law, or the false dichotomies of left vs. right. The story is told through the eyes of many familiar characters (birds, television, and other people) as well as those with moral positions not generally considered socially acceptable. As such, the story is not some sort of preachy politicized treatise as a dignified celebration of love and the rebellious tendencies of those who don't feel right about the way our culture experiences life, and does so in a gentle, entertaining way. When you read, dig out the journal where you log memorable expressions and quotes-- you'll need some free pages. If you don't have one, start today.

This series is unlike anything Carolyn has ever written, and should be read by young and old alike, regardless of political/ religious inclination. At least, every teenager should be given a copy of this book, because no matter how significant, the public school system or NYT bestseller list will never put it on their reading lists, because it could be considered (gasp) substantive and meaningful.

Grinding poverty, the heart of Maine, a settlement masquerading as a cooperative deeply suspicious of US foreign policy and public schools, the Border Mountain Militia, and a 6 year old narrator with pink heart-shaped glasses -- make for a paranoid, visionary tale of monsters, outcasts, and just plain folks. Told as only Carolyn Chute can as one who actually lives in this gun-tottin' outpost of civilization.

i loved the Beans of Maine so i was thrilled to hear of another novel by the same author.
the book was longgg, too many characters but the ones i loved were wonderful. maybe i'm getting old but it's hard to keep everyone in line during the telling.
i wish the author would write an autobiography. i'm interested in her life too.perhaps more than her writing of others. it was the review of this book that described Ms Chute's lifestyle and family that got me to order it.
i would recommend this book.

Carolyn Chute's book, The School on Heart's Content Road is a wonderful book that's a slice of life that leaves the reader wondering what will happen next for the hero and heroine. I am hoping the author will write the sequel soon and tell us more about all the characters she has created for us. I highly recommend this novel and others she has written.

I loved the School on Heart's Content Road. It had been a long time since I had read her earlier books (the Egypt series) and I think Carolyn Chute has begun a great series with this latest title. It's been said that it started out as a too-long 2000 page story, and she was able to publish it only because she figured out a way to break it down into 5 books, and for me, the next one cannot come out soon enough. As a reader familiar with the poor and rural Maine landscape, I can appreciate the simple life she recreates at the Settlement and with the extended St. Onge family. Though I disagree with Chute's politics, it's hard not to appreciate the hopelessness that comes out of poverty, especially when presented through the main character Mickey in this book. Touching and heartbreaking.

Carolyn Chute has the amazing ability to turn the world on its head; she can turn losers into winners, poverty into riches, heroes into villains. She can take you into meanness, misery and squalor, and you walk away feeling cleansed. This is a great novel.

I have read all of Ms. Chute's wonderful books written prior to this one and enjoyed them all. I had to slug my way through this one, all the while hoping that it was going to finally take off. It never did. Maybe she needed the money.