The Farmer's Daughter

Just picked up the book from the library today and started off with GAMES OF THE NIGHT. Whew! What a story...if only the filmmakers and screenwriters of the recent abysmal depictions of werewolves...NEW MOON and WEREWOLF...had opted to portray lycanthropy (sp?) in this way. Much more realistic and believable to try and understand the terror and horror of this affliction if you know it stems from a blood disorder. That man does NOT change into a wolf, per se. Much more believable that one would become overwhelmed with lust, appetite for huge amounts of meat and unboundable strength at "the time of the moon." I'd like to see this story brought to the screen.

Few authors master the art of the Novella with the innate skill and ingenuity of Jim Harrison! Yes... he is macho!...testosterone driven, dark and lusty...but writes with such clarity...it is shiveringly stunning! He at once repels and then lures the reader back with jolting language and lucid descriptions. Reading Harrison is like a jeopardous journey...he takes the reader to places unknown, but that feel uncomfortably and vaguely familiar. The 'animal within' human nature is prodded out and laid bare with no apology for social conventions. Hate him or love him...this man is truly a master story-teller! THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER (3 very different novellas) is well worth the journey!

One senses that even the Coyotes crowd around the bookstores waiting to get a taste of his salty greatness. Fawning no doubt will be heavy on the sauce, it's nothing personal, just good writing is awl. How can such fun in reading be possible? One asks the stars as they lean in to watch the scene unfold. There is a feeling that Brown Dog Redux should have come before The Farmer's Daughter, if only for the fact that B.D. made his entrance in The Summer He Didn't Die (one of the best short stories ever written btw), and I suppose I had high hopes for B.D.'s grand beginning, the other thing is that while B.D. is loved, that is the weaker story (if only for the fact that The Summer He Didn't Die is so strong and impecable) and The Farmer's Daughter is the Grandstand while the later The Games of Night rounds out a stunning winning finish. Note: The Games of Night does contain some squeamish animal scenes, I chose to look away. And there are some other scenes that turned me pink and I felt as if I wanted to slap Mr. Harrison lightly on the hand and say, "Why you old cur!" - - Just an old dog feeling his oats in writing and more than getting away with it. One gets a fluid sense of always being on the go with this collection. No character stops anywhere for long, almost like a wandering travelogue. There is something about Mr. Harrison's quick pace, that the reader can happily jog along through tumbleweeds in Texas, then all the way up the map to Montana in just the blink of a day; then suddenly over to Spain and back to Texas; I personally love this narrative style, it transports me to places I cannot go. Also, one will not go hungry for lack of culture; famous artists such as Modigliani and Fernando Pessoa quotes jump right into the party; rounding the corner one can feel the hot breath of Salvador Dali as he takes in these wild scenes. All three stories are like a special jolt of habanero sauce to the senses; each one is unique. B.D. who is perpetually on the wrong side of everything, and Gretchen with her big heart to come and help him along. He isn't a bad spirit, rather the opposite, just not too bright in matters of making money, and his favorite pasttime is fishing and spending time in the woods; at times his obsession with the female anatomy gets a bit trying, but this is his character and one can almost laugh at his lightheartedness; this is a certain mask over the great despair of his life and I would rather laugh than grow despondant. He weathers the storm of leaving Berry better than I thought he would. I am hoping for a Berry story somewhere down the road, with her gull cries and Indian Dancing. The Farmer's Daughter begins parries and ends with the panache of a rodeo queen besting the toughest cowboys. It just simply is good writing. There is a feeling that when Mr. Harrison casts his net, even the fog lifts; that the heavy sleepers rise from their depths to taste the line; crows gather round asking whether to pray for the body, bury

Superior writing and dramatic narrative with strains of empathy and subtle humor rarely seen in modern fiction. This author writes with confidence and gravitas. A real contribution that should please a wide range of readers--from the mainstream to those looking for something a bit different. Highly recommended. I was so impressed that I plan to look into some of Harrison's earlier work.

This is one of Jim Harrison's most satisfying books in many years. If you intend to read it, you might want to avoid all reviews and comments and simply read it fresh. If you need more incentive to read it, then read on. The title, THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER, resonating with the many cliched variations of the joke, is a fine choice for the interplay of masculine/feminine in these three novellas, entirely different, yet linked by more than Patsy Cline's rendition of the Roger Miller song of alienation, "The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me." The opening sentence of the first novella nails down the sense of alienation: "She was born peculiar, or so she thought." Her favorite idol is Montgomery Clift in "The Misfits." The first variation on the-farmer's-daughter is a coming of age story. In the second novella, Harrison's everyman/Native American Brown Dog is the middle man, existentially and humorously muddling his way across, playing his part in creation but agnostic to the meaning of it all. When he hears "Who are we that God is mindful of us?" he turns the question around and says, "Who is God that we are mindful of Him?" Harrison's symbols resonate on theme. Gretchen tells Brown Dog that they should go for three times at creation, "three, not two." She finds the creation act "bearable" but wants to stop at three. Brown Dog has "the absurd feeling of a reverse Christmas in May" and recalls the holiday line, "The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow." He flops down on a trash bag "to make a snow angel." The third roughly 100-page-novella in here is the more spiritual, a vampire story of altered consciousness, alienated but advancing toward love, at last remarking how wonderful it is to finally make love with someone you actually love. The first novella opens with a line of alienation. The closing of the third novella ends with the protagonist recognizing the interconnectedness of living things, the ME of LonesoME diminishing in the evolution of the self toward empathy, a recurring point in Jim Harrison's Buddhism/naturalism worldview. There is an epilogue to the third novella in which the protagonist encounters a dead bear and says "at least for a moment I felt as if we were cousins." Jim Harrison's humor in here is a hoot. Somehow, I have to fit this onto my list of the top five best books of the year.