Title: Country People by Daniel Mason
Book Beginnings/First Line Friday quote:
Friday56 quote:
Summary: Kate has been offered a one year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, who has never quite finished his dissertation on Russian folktales in the twelve years since he started working on it, looks at the move as a chance to finally get going on it again. The kids, Wesley, age 12, and Olive, age nine, are along for the adventure.
But when they get to Vermont, Miles finds lots of things to distract him from his dissertation: helping a colleagues husband in his orchard, being a parent volunteer at Olive' school, figuring out how to fix everything that keeps breaking down in the rental house, ski lessons, and getting to know a cast of characters as colorful as folks in his fairytales. Then Miles runs into a local very bizarre legend which seems circumstances lead to a conclusion that it might not be a legend at all, possibly true.
Review: Kate and Miles are from California where they both worked at a large university in an urban setting. Moving to Vermont is almost like moving to another country for them and meeting the folks who live in Vermont (country people) is almost like learning about a new culture from them. Miles, as you have probably guessed, never does get to work on his dissertation, but he sure has a magical year with his new friends and his family.
My husband is from a rural town in Eastern Oregon. I, on the other hand, grew up in a city and have never lived in a rural setting. The drive to visit his parents involved driving through lots of little towns along the way. One time as we drove through one of those little towns from one end to the other, Don tuned in the radio to a local station. The news came on as the station and it was very local. There was an announcement who had anniversaries that week and then they named of folks who were galloneers -- had donated at least a gallon of blood (over time, of course) at the local blood bank. I was charmed. Don laughed and told me that was the same thing they did on the radio in his town. In case you are wondering the connection, part of Country People involves a weekly radio programs with a DJ who always has a topic but he has a hard time keeping the callers from going off topic.
When we go back to Don't hometown, he always sees people he knows everywhere he goes -- a friend of his brother's, a Sunday School teacher, a person he swam with, a gal who played bridge with his mother -- here in the "big" city we rarely bump into people we know. This dawned on Miles, too, and at some point he came expect and enjoy bumping into the same people over and over.
I was a huge fan of Mason's book North Woods, published in 2024. It wasn't a terribly serious book but it was certainly more serious than Country People so I wasn't expecting the silly situations and corny humor. At first I was put off by it but then I relaxed into the story and found myself laughing along with it. At one point there was a tiny bit of tension and I realized this was NOT the type of book where something awful would happen. I was right. It didn't. My rating: 4 stars.
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