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Love & Terror On The Howling Plains Of Nowhere (2014)

by Poe Ballantine(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1921924527 (ISBN13: 9781921924521)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Hawthorne Books

review 1: I'm a huge fan of 501 Minutes to Christ and Things I Like About America. And while I liked this memoir quite a bit, it didn't measure up for me in the same way. Ballantine spent a lot of time explaining why he was writing it, as if he didn't think it was a worthy topic, or he needed a vehicle to tell the story he really wanted to tell, which was about his family and how he'd 'turned his life around.' I appreciate his honesty, always, and his beautiful writing, but I didn't want him to keep telling me why I was reading about the deceased math professor in his town of Chadron, a person that he clearly didn't know very well. I wanted to be reading it because he had something to say, not because he needed a reason to publish another book. That being said, Ballantine's writing ... moreshines and I am interested in his life even when it doesn't involved a murder.
review 2: This book is laugh-out-loud funny, and it's likely to make you feel better about your lot in life. Ballantine is an odd dude who has deliberately chosen to live in a blighted, frigid little city most of us would run screaming from, and to work a completely shitty job in spite of his considerable literary talent. Love and Terror--part memoir about his rambling ways, challenging love life (and beautifully tender relationship with his young son) and fascinating perspective on life; part amateur detective story concerning a local professor whose body was found bound and burned--is the perfect balance of the personal inner story and how it intersects with the outside world. I'd previously read one of his novels and found it interesting but not particularly inspiring; his nonfiction has made me a believer. I finished Love and Terror and immediately bought a collection of his essays. This is some of the most exciting work I've read in years. less

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