|
TRUE NORTH, Jim Harrison's new coming-of-age novel, is set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a place where Harrison has lived for many years. Looking at his photograph on the book's back cover --- the contours in his cheeks, the grooves around the eyes, the weathered chin --- one sees a living testament to the Upper Peninsula's punishing winters and windswept climate. Daily life can be a struggle in the wooded pockets of the Upper Peninsula, but for a family ripped apart by shame and scandal, the harsh climate isn't the half of it.
Harrison's naïve, idealistic hero, David Burkett, is determined to make right his ancestors' tradition of abusing for profit the Upper Peninsula's glorious forests and the hardscrabble locals working in the timber trade. David makes it his life's work to research and write a family history documenting the evils of his grandfather and much-loathed father. The problem is that this good vs. evil setup is too convenient. David's father is an alcoholic. He's a vile man who ignores his children and heaps mental abuse on his fragile wife. He is also a pedophile, a fact that the reader is reminded of on too many occasions --- with at least one in nauseating detail. Given this set of facts, where else can the reader go? But siding with David has its own set of problems.
David does many of the soap opera-y things you'd expect of a young "scion" on a warpath. He rejects Yale (his father's alma mater) for Michigan State. He's desperate to comfort those his father has mistreated. David takes drugs, and he's terminally focused on sex. Harrison dwells too much on this latter point. As an adolescent maturing into adulthood in the 1960s, David's preoccupation with sex makes sense. But as he grows and takes on the larger struggle of redeeming his family's name, the sexual angles don't recede into the background where they belong. The story loses focus as David goes from one sexual conquest to the next. Harrison treats David's women with great care --- none are cardboard cutouts. However, they are all --- to varying degrees --- distractions along the way to David's goal of understanding his family's role in the destruction of his beloved Upper Peninsula.
Harrison's plain, stripped down prose evokes an authentic local flavor. And he captures a mood and atmosphere that takes the reader right into the action. In addition, Harrison portrays a winning ensemble cast, chief among them are David's sister, Cynthia, and his uncle Fred. These characters are typical of the many feisty, no-nonsense Midwesterners who populate TRUE NORTH. But the novel wobbles along because, despite Harrison's loftier ambitions, the book is, in essence, a character study of how a young man pursues and reconciles generational demons. The book is too thin on plot and story to justify its 385 pages, and readers will tire as Harrison plods along without really going anywhere.
--- Reviewed by Andrew Musicus
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
