Customer Reviews

A Sudden Country: A Novel

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For the most part, I really enjoyed this book--once I got into it. Israel and Lucy Mitchell and children are headed from Iowa to Oregon. Lucy does not want to go, but she gives in to her husband, who is a descendent of Daniel Boone and has the spirit of adventure in his blood. Along the way they meet James McLaren, a man grieving the abandonment of his wife and the loss by death of his 3 children. He consents to drive one of the Mitchell's wagons. A predictable romance springs up between Lucy and James. The bulk of the story covers the daily grind of the trip in an extremely interesting way. The author's style of writing was a little hard to get used to, however. At times I found myself rereading several passages to try to get the meaning that was not readily evident. All is all, it was a great story.

This is a novel of the American West in the mid-1800s, but we're not talking cowboys. We're talking about Lucy Mitchell, a woman, a mother, uprooted from her civilized Iowa home by her second husband, Israel, to go west to the Oregon Territory. Along the way, they are met by James MacLaren, a man for whom learning to live again is nearly impossible, after the deaths of his children from disease during a harsh winter, and the desertion of him by his Indian wife with another man.

I don't want to spoil the storyline for you, but suffice to say, this is an incredible read. Lean. Gorgeous. Prose near poetry. Fisher's evocation of the landscape and brutal beauty here in the Pacific North West is spot on. There isn't an ounce of fat in this book; Fisher has carved the beauty from the stone and shows it to us, unadorned and unapologetically. Don't expect to be spoonfed, either; this is a book where the author expects you to be able to draw conclusions from facts left like coins in a fountain. It is literary fiction at its finest. Please enjoy, and support a new woman author whose rich voice needs to be heard and shared.

I was very impressed by this woman's first novel. The lyricism of the language was striking, and best of all, her writing style brought a quality of fierce beauty to the characters and the landscape that I found uplifting and powerful.

Also, the sex scenes are gorgeous and erotic. I am a big fan of Cormac McCarthy as well, but this woman's prose leaves you with a strong sense of possibility and hope; McCarthy's prose is darker and more angst-ridden.

I recommend this book heartily. Its originality is remarkable.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I loved the author's writing style.I found myself seeing everything as she described it..no fluff..which I loved for a change. Her raw, lean descriptions of the way things were for this group of characters was so real and accurate that it made for a great read. I found myself having such empathy for Lucy and McLaren and even for Lucy's husband...but understanding why it ended the way it did. I just loved every bit of this book..would recomend it to anyone who loves true history, and the outdoors and dosn't mind getting dirty.

If you're looking for a bodice-ripper, go in another direction. This is a serious, heavy, story with, at times, prose for narrative. Not all books are "easy reads" either in wording or subject matter. This novel is well worth the effort the reader must invest to understand each character.

Karen Fisher has captured, in my mind, the struggles and stark reality of life on the Oregon Trail. Her descriptions of even the mundane were tangible. Like other reviewers, I found myself re-reading passages not only for deeper understanding, but in sheer amazement of Fisher's way with words.

This novel is for those with an interest in history and in understanding what remains when all is stripped away in life. You might be surprised at the end.

A close friend recommended "A Sudden Country" to me. Otherwise, I doubt that I'd have stuck to it, with its frustrating plot lines and irritating written style. I get tired of authors using sentence fragments as a way of creating immediacy or flow. At times it seemed that half of the sentences began with "Then," followed by no subject: "Then searched her mind for him," or something similar. It makes for choppy reading.
Most interesting were the passages describing the immigrants' travails and travels. Less so were the romantic passages. The conclusion jumps back and forth from Lucy Mitchell to James McLaren even more than the rest of the novel does and forced me, a very experienced reader, to reread passages to understand the events being described. At that point, though, what I wanted was to find out what was going to happen, not spend time excavating my way through fragmented prose and a convoluted story line.
I do, however, have to give credit to Fisher for not taking the easy way out with the conclusion. It's not easy to read so long, only to have an unhappy ending, but it is a satisfactory one.

Karen Fisher writes about the Frontier West with such vividness and authenticity one might believe she actually lived back then and has been reincarnated. Another rare skill the author possesses is the ability to depict male and female characters with equal force and finesse. Lucy Mitchell and James MacLaren are unforgettable protagonists. The journey they embark on is spellbinding. It is fraught with a tension so intense and exquisite one can only marvel at the storytelling skills of this great new writer. If you enjoyed 'Cold Mountain' then you'll love 'A Sudden Country'.

I just finished A Sudden Country and found it to be absolutely extraordinary. It was so richly detailed I swear the author must have been there herself, struggling westward along the Oregon Trail in 1847. How else could anyone know these things?

The writing is superb, though complex and impressionistic. To me, Fisher's book is like a Seurat painting; each sentence a brilliant dot of color and light, layered upon the pages by the thousands until a story takes shape that is at once dreamy and impressionistic yet viscerally authentic. I haven't savored a book this much since The English Patient.

A friend gave me a copy of A SUDDEN COUNTRY, thinking I'd like it because Karen Fisher and her characters are rough and tumble wilderness types, much like the modern women in my recent anthology, A MILE IN HER BOOTS. But as it turns out, I am writing my first ever book review because I found many more acres of common ground in this novel than I imagined. With brazen honesty, Fisher explores raw, gut-level intricacies of humanity--and of my own experience as mother, wife, wanderer--with such skillfully terse poetry that I was reminded why good fiction is worth reading. She takes hold of words and reins them in, wielding them with unsentimental precision, molding them with a sculptor's hand, so that you see, smell, and taste them, rubbing the grit of the story between your fingers as you read it.

The rangy, rugged backdrop of untamed America lured me from the cushions of my couch back to wilder times, when the savage beauty of mere survival was a person's daily toil. I suspect, on some level, many of us hunger for that kind of crude simplicity. I know I do. And, as I read, I got to thinking that although the landscapes on which our lives play out may differ, our condition is pretty much the same in any era. Fleeting moments of intense emotion roar, flicker, and inevitably wash cool in the current of time. Events so significant, so all-consuming, in the present moment are rendered memory across miles of unsympathetic terrain. Passions blur, tears run dry. And yet, throughout the journey, we find ourselves evolving the way Fisher's characters do, pushing onward, accumulating dark and delicate scars that remind us of who we have become.

History, wilderness, romance, drama, fiber - A SUDDEN COUNTRY has it all. I highly recommend it.

Karen Fisher's novel took me a bit to get into. But once I caught on to the stark poetic style inspired by frontier journal entries and Karen's imagination and finely honed writing skills, I was thoroughly hooked. I took the book outside at night, fastened a flashlight on my head and read for hours in my outdoor bed, living in that not-so-long-ago world of our western ancestors.
Unique, I think, is the way in which this author thoroughly explores the issues of desire, loss and sexuality in the "wild" but repressive West. She paints a stark, compelling, realistic picture of how it really might have been to find yourself ripped from a settled home life and set on the trail west, with few material comforts and months of slow travel before arriving at an unknown and dangerous destination with a group of fellow travellers of various and motley dispositions.
I was not ready for it to end, but when it did, I felt the satisfaction of having experienced an exceptional work of literary genius. I hope Ms. Fisher doesn't have to wait very long before it strikes again.