Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Downtown Owl, by Chuck Klosterman

The Story: Owl is a small town in North Dakota.  It is pretty cut off from the world and they like it that way.  It is, in a lot of ways, this very typical American small town.  The football legends from 10 years ago are still the town heros, people have major fault that everyone in town has learned to overlook, people try to leave but can never quite manage it, and newcomers are treated with distance and a kind of awe.

The story itself is told from the perspective of an older man, a teacher that just moved from a more urban setting (for the life of me I can’t remember where), a high schooler, and a high school teacher.  From these points of view, it is possible to experience almost every little part of this town.

There are kind of these plot lines that seems to be happening in the background about a huge kid and the town rebel getting into a fight, a high school teacher sleeping with students, the bar scene and finding love there…. but all of these stories truly are just background.  The heart of the book is just this town and these characters and how they are existing in a certain time and place.

What I Thought: I’ve read a couple of Chuck Kosterman’s non-fiction books.  To be honest, I always think that he comes off pretty pretentious and preachy.  I like the idea of most of his books, but always walk away kind of annoyed.  I was excited when I saw this at a library sale because I wanted to see him out of his element a little, writing fiction.

I think that he should make this a habit.  He’s still the same old guy, tons of pop culture references and shout-outs but done in a less in-your-face way, which I appreciated.

I know I’ve talked about this in reviews before, but I love when the setting kind of becomes a character.  This town, for me, had a real personality and I found myself nodding my head over and over.  Being from a small town, although not near as small as Owl, I just kept recognizing parts that were just so true and right about what he was writing.

The characters were well developed and I thought that the changing points of view was done well.  Julie (or was it Julia?) is the newcomer to town who gets involved in the bar scene.  Hers were the sections that I least looked forward to and I thought maybe she could have been fleshed out a little bit more.  The other ones were great, especially the high school kid.

My real complaint is that the story itself was pretty weak.  I’m all for a character driven novel.  In fact, it is probably my favorite, but at some point there has to be a compelling plot to move things along.  There wasn’t really anything here that was great or different.  The plot was pretty so-s0 and any bit of surprise or suspense was taken away when the end was revealed on page one.

It’s not the greatest thing I’ve ever read, but I do think that Chuck Klosterman is good at this writing-a-novel thing.  I’d love to see his second try.

For me, there was an added bonus of an almost creepy connection to another book I read recently.  Life tie-ins like this make me squeal.

Conclusion: If you are trying to get over some Chuck Klosterman hate or if you just want to see him *gasp* do something new, check this out.  It is a quick, compelling read especially if you are a lover of small towns or the 80’s.