A View from Vermont

I was born in Vermont, and I can appreciate Husher's admirable and admiring portrait of my birth state. She juxtaposes the profound and the silly but does it without making the profound things dull or the silly things frivolous. Unlike some treatments of Vermont that either make fun of or idealize the eccentric people of the state, Husher portrays them with passionate inerest and sincere respect. What I admire most about A View From Vermont is the way that the author shows the common themes running through the fascinating people, places, and events that she writes about. A given chapter might be on two apparently disparate topics, but Husher points out the thread that links them--and does so with such a clear style that one relishes the words as much as the thoughts that they convey. Unlike other contemporary authors who try to be clever, Helen Husher is clever. Very clever. Whether you care anything at all about Vermont, you will like this book if you enjoy good writing and if you like learning about real things that sound like fiction. I can almost guarantee that the average person who reads this book will learn things that could not have been imagined or guessed, and that he or she will be very glad to learn them.

As a flatlander who is about to move to Vermont, I found this book to make that prospect all the more inviting. Husher writes warmly and, best of all, wryly about the natives of her state. Yes, Vermont is a rural state and its citizens are small-town and farm folk, but that simply doesn't begin to describe how they differ from similar kinds of folks in other states. She tries to explain how Vermonters are different. And in the process she writes fourteen chapters about all manner of characteristics that set them apart. Her descriptions of the essential tolerance by Vermonters for odd behavior make for laugh-out-loud reading. I found myself reading passages to anyone who would stand still for it. And often got an amused response and a request to read them more. A writer for a small Vermont publication, the author obviously polishes her prose assiduously, packing all manner of detail into it, and this makes it a real pleasure to read, no matter the subject. In a chapter called 'How to Dress Like a Vermonter,' for instance, we get 'There's a general impression in the wider world that all Vermonters buy all their clothes from the fall-winter edition of the L.L. Bean catalog ... but people generally buy their clothes from each other, mostly at thrift shops and yard sales, and the overall look, if that's the right word, is one of rumpled interchangeability. This means that if you live in a small town, you can follow the progress of your child's snowsuit as it works its way through a family of five at the far end of the village, until the day it appears, as if by magic, on a different child in a different family that lives two towns away.' This book is one that a reader who has never been closer than two thousand miles to Vermont can read with pleasure and esthetic satisfaction. For those who know Vermont it is even more rewarding. Eagerly recommended. Scott Morrison