Sunday, April 26, 2009

Go With Me by Castle Freeman

This slim volume is a timeless classic. It is almost entirely conversation, though occasionally the author slips in a descriptive phrase to focus our eye. We listen while several old men pass an afternoon with a case of beer in a ruined chair factory in rural Vermont. A couple of other people search for, and find, the town's local bad boy, providing the novel's only action scenes. There is nothing quite like this around, and if there were, this would still be one of the very best. Good any time of the year, this one bears rereading. While the setting is Vermont, it could just as easily have been Arkansas. The sentiments and the characters are as universal as the day is long.

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