|
||
|
|
|
|
 List Price: $24.00 Amazon.com's Price: $5.99 You Save: $18.01 (75%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: HardcoverFormat: Bargain Price Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 280 Publication Date: September 17, 2002 Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Welcome to Q Road, in Greenland Township, where the old way of life is colliding with the new. On the same acres where farmers once displaced Potawatomi Indians, suburban developers now supplant farmers and Q road (or "Queer Road," as the locals call it) has become home to an unlikely mix of people. The neighbors include a sixth-generation farmer and his rifle-toting child bride, and evangelical bartender, a tabloid-reading agoraphobe, a philandering window salesman, and an asthmatic boy who longs for the love of a good father.These folks all smell the pig manure from the Whitby farm and share the same grand views of the Kalamazoo River and the oldest barn in the township -- until one disastrous October afternoon. Bonnie Jo Campbell's first novel combines offbeat humor, eccentric characters, and unique insights into modern rural America, where family traditions have flown the coop and only the cycle of the seasons remains. At the heart of this tale are three characters so integrally connected and devoted to the Harland farm that they might not survive anywhere else; their lives, their livelihoods, and their sometimes violent love for one another are all rooted in the soil of this square mile. As The Village Voice said of Campbell's story collection, she "crystallizes those moments when benumbed everyday routine is briefly jolted by dizzy instants of lucidity." It may take a spring tornado or a lightning bolt in the garden to get the folks of Q Road to pause in their work, but when they lift their gaze collectively, it can be life-altering. Brilliant atumn foliage creates the backdrop for the rich and ragged human landscape of rural southwestern Michigan, a place Campbell has explored in her award-winning short stories. In this passionate and funny novel she digs even deeper, to reveal the beauty and strangeness of her ferocious women, confused men, and hungry children. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Land and LoveThe pleasurable "Q Road" provides the reader with a genuine experience of rural Michigan coupled with characters who have grown from this place, whose lives are a reflection of their landscape. The story, centered on an irascible, oft-cussing brute of a girl (Rachel) and her relationship with an ageing farmer (George), allows the reader to become engrossed in a landscape rife with contrast. The primary arc of the novel encompasses a few years from the late 1990's. Aside from the quirky ... Read More Rating: - Master of a Difficult EnvironmentThis first novel begins with the image of wooly-bear caterpillars crossing a rural road. If this doesn't seem auspicious, read on. I found Q Road to be a generous surprise and I don't say this easily. The depiction of the extinquishing of a goldfinch's life is beautiful and perfect and right,though I fought it all the way. The depictions of the people and their sudden realizations are equally stunning. What it is to believe in God, what it is to love another person, to gasp even for air: all these are ... Read More Rating: - The strange faces of love...As carefully stitched together as a patchwork quilt, with colorful squares made of quirky characters, the inhabitants of Greenland Township, Michigan, are bound by the commonality of their daily labor and innate love of their farmland. This is the heartland of America, land that has sustained generation after generation. But as much as a failing farm economy, suburbia encroaches upon this pastoral existence, and city people are willing to tolerate only so much discomfort in their newly constructed rural ... Read More Rating: - Quirky, quaint and quite wonderfulCampbell's book revolves around a quirky cast of characters in rural Michigan: foul-mouthed, child-bride Rachel, her husband George, and her best friend, asthmatic, 12-year-old David, to name a few. The story itself is not particularly remarkable, but Campbell's writing makes you want to not miss a moment. Rifle-toting Rachel, abandoned by her distant, fur-trapping mother, marries the much older George Harland, a down-on-his-luck farmer, because she wants his land. She grows to love him in her ... Read More Rating: - Not for the faint of heart.Q Road is not for the faint of heart. Author Bonnie Jo Campbell takes you down a Michigan side-road to a rough-hewn world of brutally flawed characters. No sparkling wits, no dreamy introverts here; rather these misshapen and misfortuned people struggle through each and every day. Cantankerous and eccentric, they are driven to alienate kin and neighbors alike. Victims of violent acts of their past, broken marriages, rural recession and self-abuse, they gain pleasure from the misery of others. Around ... Read More 
|
