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The River Swimmer: Novellas (2013)

by Jim Harrison(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0802120733 (ISBN13: 9780802120731)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Grove Press

review 1: Strange... very strange... I've read some works by Jim Harrison before, so I know he is capable of writing rather well. However, you really would never know it by this book. I only read The River Swimmer, and now have no intention of reading the other novella. The River Swimmer was... too strange. I love fantastical realism, or whatever you want to call it, but this story went nowhere. That, in itself, could've been tolerated; I could've sat and wondered whether there was a deeper meaning to the story that I was missing. Unfortunately, the writing itself was so bad that I have come to the conclusion that Harrison wrote this story as a writing exercise, not bothering to edit it, and that no deeper meaning exists.
review 2: A good book is always hard to put down ... morebut Jim Harrison books seen particularly so. These two long short stories (novellas) work well together in that the latter looks at life from the beginning of adulthood in the person of the 17 year old title character while the former is a 60 year old painter & art expert not so much looking back as deciding to live in the now. I found the first story much more compelling & readable and not just because I'm closer to 60 than 17. Its prose was simpler, the vividness of memory and the everyday not as strained as the magic realism & timid conjecture of the younger man. In either case, sex seems easy to come by whether one is 17 or sixty with willing partners down the road or across the beach. And the author writes about fish & fowl with equal passion, with the older character's mother an avid birder even post sight and the younger enthralled by magical water babies in the river depths. Food fares well in both stories with a cherished pickled bologna conjuring the same sense in the first story that a liver sausage & onion sandwich does in the second. Simple pleasures for the men of the upper Great Lakes. What's fun in both stories is also the fish out of water journeys of rural Michiganders to the bright lights of Chicago & Paris. If you've made that journey, much of the detail rings true. If you only read one story, make it the first. But if you can't put the book down after that, there's enjoyment to be had in continuing on. less

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