at first this book really depressed me, but then i got back into the swing of what life is like when you are poor and trashy. then it just seemed like normal life.

I was thrilled when my book club announced they'd be doing this book, as Once Upon a River had been the first book in a long while that sucked me until two a.m. Bonnie Jo Campbell has a fantastic ability to use realistic dialogue, to capture the shameful impulses and thoughts people have, and of setting a grim scene. I guess I'm naive, but I thought meth was only really a problem in New Mexico or wherever Breaking Bad is set, maybe on the east and west coasts. Finding out it was a serious issue in Michigan was a shock.

I haven't read a collection of short stories in awhile, and this one was good. More than good. It was also somewhat depressing, but a reminder of how blessed I am in my own life.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is our state’s pre-eminent chronicler of working class lives in transition between the agrarian/industrial balance of Michigan’s past and the uncertainties of the new economies and lifestyles of 21st century. The short stories included here are rich in local color, particularly in their depictions of Michigan’s rural and semi-rural landscapes and populations. The collection is bookended by two particularly powerful stories of culture clash in "modern" Michigan: "The Trespassers," which concerns a middle class family's discovery that their lake house had been the site of a meth lab in their absence, and "Boar Taint," about the meshing and clashing of academic and agrarian perspectives. If you want to get to know Michigan from the ground up, here's a great place to start.

This was a heart-wrenching, powerfully beautiful, ugly, and sometimes painful work of stellar fiction. Bonnie Jo Campbell brings to life a cast of characters so real you may have met them at your town's local bait shop or in the diner at the end of your street. They are as real as your neighbor, as real as you. She will make you feels things with these stories that few others can. Bravo~

It is relevant to note, as I have before in GR, that I grew up in Michigan and my mother told me that after the first time she took me to NYC when I was three my only response to the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was "a New Yorker. I was a pretty self-actualized 3 year old. My parents refused to pay for an out of state college (which I totally understand, when I went to Michigan State tuition was $71.50 a credit hour) so I left MI after college graduation -- 3 days after to be precise. But still I feel an attachment to my home state for many reasons, despite never (ever!) again wanting to live there. MI has spectacular natural beauty (especially the west side of the state with Lake Michigan and Lake Superior showing off a whole lot of perfection) and also IMO a fascinating if brutal history, excellent spare ribs, Sander's hot fudge cream puffs, the stunning Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and a really good zoo. Also, Michigan has a surprising number of really great writers to its credit. Most of those writers are from Michigan but some remained and others left and returned. Bonnie Jo Campbell is one of that last group. For a long time she was a Chicago writer from rural southwestern MI, but for reasons that honestly baffle me she returned to Michigan where she lives rather close to another writer who will be on my best of the year list this year, Diane Seuss. My bafflement at Campbell's return does not stem entirely from me projecting my feelings about living there. Mostly it is baffling because Campbell writes about living in rural southwestern Michigan, and it sounds really truly awful.

The people we meet in this brilliant collection are uniformly unhappy. Most everyone is an alcoholic or addicted to meth and/or is the intimate partner or child of an addict or alcoholic, Many experience relentless suicidal ideation. Almost all are poor, some living in shocking want. Everyone here struggles to maintain any meaningful relationships, and even if those exist all appear to feel profoundly lonely much of the time (the exception is the last story, Boar Taint, in which the MC just seems like a searcher in a difficult but satisfying life passage.) The loneliness is what broke me. This book is filled with really bad people, Michigan Militia wannabes, and a few good people who cannot seem to win against the onslaught of bad. With every character though, even the murders and rapists it is impossible to hate them.

There are touches of humor to be found here, but they are rare and more rueful than rollicking. Mostly though this is humbling and sad and so true. These are not caricatures of want at all, every character is fully drawn. When I first started this several months ago I noticed one of the top GR tags that had been applied to it was "Southern" and I laughed. I know geography education in America is terrible, but the only way Michigan is southern is if you live in Canada -- in fact, there are parts of Canada that are south of parts of Michigan. But then I realized that this reads a lot like Southern literature focused on poor White rural communities. I can hear in these stories writers like Carson McCullers, Erskine Caldwell, and even a hint or two of Faulkner. That is not to say that this is derivative, it is not, but stylistically this feels more a part of Southern lit than of Midwestern lit.

I am on a roll lately with good books after a bit of a slump -- this is going to be my top short story collection for sure, and I expect it will make the top 10 fiction choices. Campbell is a writer I have been meaning to read for years, and I think it is likely I will be moving Mothers Tell Your Daughters and Heart Like a River way up in the batting order after reading this one.

Bonnie Jo has a fabulous way with words. I moved to southwest Michigan from the east coast fourteen years ago. She creates scenes in her writing that I can totally imagine and enter into the story. Now, I wouldn't read this if I was depressed. The stories are troubling. As a person of privilege, they are a great reminder that there is a whole group of people out there whose culture is far different than mine.

excellent.

Well written collection of short stories about life in rural Michigan. The stories are dark, the phrasing wonderful. Not something to read if you're feeling blue ...

This collection started out a little slow for me, but by the end I was really captivated by many of the stories. I especially liked "The Burn," "Family Reunion," "Winter Life," "King Cole's American Salvage," and "Storm Warning." I was also very capitvated by the setting, even during the stories I didn't like as much. I think the Midwest is an area often overlooking in writing, and Campbell's Michigan is so vivid.