It was difficult to follow and boring. It got a bit better at the end.

This is beautiful, haunting work. If My Antonia and The Sisters Brothers had a baby, this would be it. Highly recommended and thoroughly arresting.

I can't write a good review because I liked too much about it. Read Jessica Woodbury's review here on Goodreads. She summarized beautifully what I loved about this book.

Set in the boundless West, Inland follows two seemingly unrelated characters. Lurie, an outlaw who has traveled far and seen as many wondrous as there are cruel things in the world. And Nora, a mother of four living on a sunbaked land waiting for her husband's return with some much needed water for the household. Haunted by ghosts and fueled by their wants, Lurie embarks on an unusual journey where he makes a most extraordinary friend. After a heated argument, Nora's eldest sons have disappeared, leaving her to tend to the homestead with her youngest son, Toby, who is hellbent on discovering the mysterious beast that has been roaming on their property and Josie, a young woman who can commune with the "other living." Lurie and Nora endure many obstacles thrown their way. Frontier living is not for the faint of heart. Inland will transport you to the scenic Old West and how these two steadfast people connect is both thoughtful and poignant. Tea Obreht gives us a modern western that is a must read!

DNF - I haven't abandoned a book in years, but I just can't with this one. Made it about halfway and I'm not invested in any of the characters or what happens to them. Generously added a star because the writing is better than many books, and I don't mind jumping from character to character, there are some beautifully written scenes, it just didn't all come together for me.

I frankly almost abandoned this one before I reached halfway. What seemed purposefully obtuse and needlessly disjointed suddenly came in to stunning focus and perspective during the back half. There’s a ridiculous amount of thematic symbology to unravel, but half the joy of these sparse, lonely, urgent westerns is unpacking it all after the journey ends. Excellent prose and wonderfully tragic finale.

I finished this book because I heard it had a “perfect” ending and while the end was good, it did not justify having to read the book. The narrative reminded me a lot of Lincoln in the Bardo, which I also did not enjoy.

This one took me a hot minute. I normally find my reading groove in the summer pretty quickly, but the dense language in this one forced me to take my time.

That being said, I’m so glad I finished it. It’s a western with sprawling landscapes and an overall wildness that I deeply enjoyed. The story rotates between two characters: Lurie is a Muslim immigrant from the Turkish Empire who feels a deep connection to the “ghosts” of his ill-fainted companions. He joins the United States Camel Corps and rides with them west from Texas. Nora is a hard, stalwart Arizona woman fighting to keep her family alive in the dust of summer. In her loneliness, she speaks with the “ghost” of her late daughter. The novel explores the heartache, resilience, and brutality of life in the American West for those on the outside.

This book is like a reading a Southern Gothic but set in a 1970’s Western. It explores a wholly new kind of American myth, and I loved getting to see inside Lurie and Nora’s minds.

Best Words:

“But we remembered, you and I. It saddened me. Who would speak of these things when we were gone? So, too, must the makers of those distant fires have asked themselves as they fought the fading of their world. I began to wish that I could pour our memories into the water we carried, so that anyone drinking might see how it had been.”

This novel is about life on the Western frontier in the second half of the nineteenth century. We follow two narratives: one narrated by Lurie Mattie, aka Misafir, a boy-outlaw-turned-cameleer, and the other following Nora, a frontier woman in Arizona.

For me, this novel was a slough to get through. I came close to giving up on it so many times, but in all honesty the gorgeous cover art pushed me to pick it back up and keep reading. I can understand why others would love this book, but I had a personal aversion to the writing style.

In Lurie Mattie's narration, the writing twists and weaves through scenery of what would become the West and Southwest United States. There is an element of magical realism in Lurie's ability to talk to the dead, and of the dead latching on to him with "their want". Each dead person who ties himself to Lurie comes with a "want", something from their time alive that becomes an obsession once they are dead. For one it's stealing, another it's drinking water. These otherworldly appetites take hold of Lurie until he gives in to them himself.

In the chapters following Nora, we follow third-person narration of her family's woes in the Arizona territory. Haunted by her dead infant daughter and a life-threatening thirst caused by drought and the theft of their water, Nora spends the day wrestling with the absence of her missing husband, her newly-disappeared sons, and the foolishness of their séance-holding servant-girl Josie, who believes there are ghosts and beasts causing problems for the family.

I suggest reading the first chapter and deciding whether you enjoy it or not - if you enjoy Tea Obreht's writing, you'll enjoy the novel. If you have trouble connecting with her style, like I did, skip this novel. It was too disjointed and focused on lyrical scenery for me, especially the parts narrated by Lurie. There is an element of suspense hanging over the entire story, but I found even that element of mystery to be boring.

Needs more camel