Sometimes a book comes along that garners a great deal of public attention, even getting noticed by pop culture.
Buckeye by Patrick Ryan is such a book, chosen for one of the celebrity book clubs (Jenna Bush Hager) and ending up on best of the year lists.
It is an undemanding family saga in which two households become intertwined over the years. It begins when a beautiful young woman goes into a small-town hardware store on VE Day, wanting to hear the news on the radio. She and the young man behind the counter share a kiss. She leaves. Their lives will never be the same. Everyone in their families will be affected.
The novel is not melodramatic, although big things happen that cause upheaval. After the upheavals come long periods of quiet time that repair rifts. It's not a story of long conversations in which souls and emotions are laid bare. Characters eventually realize, mostly, that going back is what fits best.
I almost quit reading after the first quarter of the novel. The pacing was usually all right. But it was like watching a quiet movie of the week or a long-running TV series with a very special episode during ratings week. I wondered why Buckeye was such a bestseller. So I kept going. I enjoyed meeting most of the characters and seeing how their individual stories unfolded. But I was never wrapped up in their stories.
There is a very good section in the middle when one of the main characters serves on a cargo transport ship during WWII. It's the heart of the novel and could have, maybe should have, been a novel in its own right. The character that the novel is named after is not the central character of the entire story, which adds to my not fully embracing the book.
I complained to my mom that reading Buckeye was like watching a movie of the week. I just didn't get why it was so popular. It was so calm.
"Maybe that's why," Mom said. People are tired, she noted, and might be looking for a quiet read.
I think she's right.
And you know what? That's all right. It's something to be grateful for. May all of us have at least one thing to be grateful for this week. I have many things, not the least of which is being able to gather together with you.
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No new books list this holiday week, but NPR did release the names of some marvelous ones that have come out in the past year or so. There is a lot to explore and enjoy and live in. There are books that will stay in my heart forever. And even a few that were "meh" but I would never tell anyone not to read. They just didn't work for me. They didn’t have to, as long as they do work for someone else.
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