Customer Reviews

Sister Coyote: Montana Stories

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These stories have a way of saying a lot with little nuances. The characters and the descriptions are so real. The title story is disturbing but in my opinion, if an author can get you to feel an emotion, even if it's sadness, that's an achievement.

Whle the crafting of this collection of short stories of life in Montana is skillfully done, the stories are very bleak. Mary Clearman Blew writes with an austerity that defies description. She is a skilled artist, painting a clear but bleak picture of life in the boondocks of Montana. The parallels of the lives of various women with the life of a female coyote was interesting, but the short story Sister Coyote was a depressing, hopeless tale that literally removes any breath of hope. While the stories were artfully rendered, this book was just to depressing for me.

I read this book after reading Mark Spragg's "Where Rivers Change Directions" which was magnificent. Mary Clearman Blew can write well, but I found the story "Sister Coyote" to be one of the most depressing stories I've ever read. There was nothing redeeming about it. It will serve to keep people from moving west if they believe that life is that grim, dark and hopeless. It was a torment to read. It was the only book I had on a plane flight and so kept going, but it was so sad it was painful. The other stories were much more interesting and I did enjoy them. Perhaps she should have used one of the others for the name of the book.