Northwest of Normal by John Larison

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read lots of stories where the characters lead lives far removed from my own experiences. They have problems I have never had and probably never will. Yet I empathized with them at some level. How does an author make me empathize with a character?

One way is by creating characters that have traits and behaviors that the reader admires or relates to. Even when a character has weaknesses or problems, if the reader admires some of their traits, they will cheer for them to succeed, forgive them when they make mistakes and cry for them when things turn sour.

Andy, the main character in the book Northwest of Normal, has few traits I found admirable. In fact, I can only think of one: he loves the place he lives, Ipsyniho, Oregon, a bohemian, backwoods town.

After a major setback with his girlfriend, who marries his best friend, Andy runs away from something he should have taken care of with these two, which sets the stage for his return after 14 months so that he can resolve this problem. But somehow the place and people he loves have dramatically changed. And more importantly, he doesn’t have the guts to face his problems in a reasonable manner.

The author makes the attempt to have Andy seem like he’s really struggling to do what’s right, but he just comes across to me as a whining, irresponsible juvenile (even though he’s in his 30’s, I think). I just never really got to the point that I cared much about Andy or whether he solved his problems or not.

By page 60 I’d come up with a list of potential themes I thought the book might explore over the remaining pages:

• relationships
• friendship
• betrayal
• family
• place
• growing up
• facing consequences

These are some pretty big themes, and for a book of only 234 pages, it would be hard to adequately cover all of them in sufficient depth to do each theme justice. More about that in a minute.

As Andy works through problems related to these themes, since he doesn’t really have any traits I found admirable, I just can’t “cheer,” “forgive” or “cry” over his choices. I just want to give him a dope slap and tell him to grow up. I understand that sometimes an author actually creates a character like this and that is an acceptable way to portray a character. But then there has to be something in the rest of the book where the character changes, or events are such that you understand why the author created such a character.

But the anticlimax just seemed too rushed to really resolve this problem with the main character. Sure he “changed,” but more in a manner that it seemed he changed because the author needed to wrap things up. I especially found the resolutions to the problems relating to the themes to be rushed. Once the climax was reached, the resolutions to Andy’s problems seemed to come in rapid succession based on a checklist the author had: “OK, Andy has this problem, let’s take care of it in these 6 pages. Done. Next problem in the following 8 pages. Check.” and so on until he covered them all. It was dissatisfying to me.

The best thing the book probably has going for it is its portrayal of the guide’s life, some aspects of steelheading and life in parts of Oregon. Since I have no experience with any of those three things, I can only assume that Larison does an adequate job of portraying these aspects since he has personal experience in all three areas. I especially thought he did a great job with the psyche and lingo of guides and their clients.

Another aspect of the writing that bothered me was that it seemed at times that the characters participated in events, as if this were an informational piece about what a place or people might be like. However, events alone don’t make a story. How those events affect the characters and how the characters react to them and how the reader reacts to the characters are all important considerations as well. And those connections just didn’t happen for me.

I also noticed in a few spots where it seemed the characters were a little unnatural, in fact a bit didactic, as if certain background information was needed by the reader so the author provided it in the form of one of the characters speaking about it.

Pot makes a frequent appearance in the book. By about page 100 I made this note: “I’m not sure of the purpose of all the pot. If it was left out of the story, would it change the story?” In other words, I was wondering what the point of all the pot smoking was for. Come to find out, it is an important part of the plot. As a side note, there is a group called NORML: The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. I’m wondering if there was a deliberate play on words with the title since Oregon does have rich history with marijuana.

I’m always a bit leery of writing negative reviews for fear of wondering if I know what the heck I’m talking about. And this book gave me extra pause for a couple of reasons. One is that Larison teaches writing at Oregon State University. One would certainly think that a university writing teacher would have the skills to pull off a novel. And another concern was that the back cover of the book contains praise from the following three people: David James Duncan (I’m a big fan), Tom Bie (editor of The Drake fly fishing mag) and Ted Leeson (I’m a huge fan of his writing) who says that this is a “…skillfully told story…” A bit of disclosure: Ted Leeson teaches English at Oregon State University.

Who in the world am I to disagree with these fly fishing and writing luminaries? That’s the thing about reviews, everybody’s experience is different. In the end, I can just give my impressions. Each person has to make their own choice as to whether they will read the book.

For those of you who are steelheaders, guides or anglers who frequent Oregon’s Willamette area, you will probably like this book more than those who don’t fit at least one of those categories. If your fiction tastes are simple—you like quick, easy reads with simple characters and plot—you might like this too.

A last note: Being Larison’s first novel, I’m hoping that he continues to write fly fishing fiction and continues to improve because I do think he has some potential to be a much better fiction author. I think removing some of the themes could have helped solve some of the main problems I had with the book (or making it longer to do each theme justice).

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In the interest of what’s best for the consumer, here is a positive review from Rob (over at The Caddis Fly blog) who really liked it.

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View all my reviews at Goodreads >>