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The Great Leader (2011)

by Jim Harrison(Favorite Author)

3.47 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0802119700 (ISBN13: 9780802119704)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Grove Press

review 1: I feel that most times in Mystery novels that writers(Male) tend to make the lead character a washed up cynical man in his early to mid fifties who has been divorced atleast once, his children don't have the best relationship with him but he's oddly okay with it, he drinks a ton of scotch, is some sort of stud that doesn't really give a shit about the myriads of beautiful women he is able to plow through, that spends alot of time is his beautiful yet horribly messy office drinking on that scotch again, and is a patriotic gosh darn hero.
review 2: Negative: the obsession with sex in a 65 year old man. Peeping at the 16 year old next door. It is a projection..sex is all he thinks about so he's out stalking the cult leader who is abusing 12 year olds because he... more thinks his sperm is so sacred. The woodpile sex and the dryer sex...offensive to me and it colored how I approached the book.The projection is interesting as he is chasing down the "perp" who is a sex addict, but really chasing down that part of himself. Another spiritual link is how he put down his x-wife, Diane, love of nature, yet that is really what he rediscovered for himself...in his retirement quest of Dwight-Daryl/King David he started walking in the woods and camping out again and began to heal his spirit through nature. It brought him back to the awe and wonder he knew as a kid. All the major traumas of his life were worked out by a stream...the death of his brother, divorce. His sacred space.Sunderson talked a lot about he inter-weavings of sex, money and religion. Basically this was a spirituality book not that unlike the quest found in The Alchemist. They were both looking for the true self and found it back home in themselves...where they started from. He has an addictive personality which is also a clue to his spiritual searchings for something higher than himself.Sunderson is a back woods alcoholic intellectual who really wasn't cut out to be a cop,...he's mostly a history buff, but couldn't liked the adrenaline rush of detective work. He's let his life fall apart and is in crisis after his divorce...it feels like the author wants us to know how much he knows about history and nature and the UP that he is almost name calling througout.Positive: This is a coming of age story for an old geezer who never did any inner work and is finally at retirement starting to look at himself. He's a slob and close to a pervert but is starting to connect with a spirituality of the wilderness and get back to his core. He is thinking about his alcoholism so that is a step. He draws the line on sex with Mona the 16 year old and has an inkling of fatherliness with her.I wouldn't read another of Harrison's book. I started this one once before but set it aside. It was nice having it set in the UP and having all kinds of UP town names dropped around but I can see that on a map too. I only read this because it was a book group choice.This is Hatchet for old men. A coming of age book. I thought the story line of catching The Leader was pretty weak and uninteresting. Good that he alerted Adam who had no qualms about shaking the leader when he went after his daughter, Petunia. The writing jumps all over the place like a stream of consciousness. Sometimes I had to go back and reread just to figure out who was talking.Shaking up is a good metaphor for the book because The Leader was shaken by Adam and ended up not prosecuted because he was quadriplegic and Sunderson's life was shaken up by divorce and retirement.I really didn't like the book but gave it 2 stars as it got me thinking about it as a spirituality book. less

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