I
didn’t know much about Jesse James. When I heard his name, I would
think of the wild west and bank robberies and Billy the Kid. That was
the extent of my knowledge before reading this book. I am not a
historical reader. Don’t get me wrong,
I love history. But I think history is more interesting for me when it
is visual. I realize this trait is feeble. I went into this book hoping
for the best but expecting something that would bore me to death.
Essentially my expectations were correct…and at
the same time, I came to realize that this book is not getting the
credit it deserves.
What
do I mean by that? To put it simply, this novel in its brilliance was
boring. When I first began reading I found the characters and situations
to be fascinating. Ron Hansen is a brilliant writer. His
characterizations and descriptions
resemble that of classic novelists such as John Steinbeck. In fact I
was reminded of Steinbeck while reading and upon looking over the rave
reviews for this book in the inside cover I saw that someone else made
the same connection. Because of this comparison
and Hansen’s brilliant writing, I find it odd that this book isn’t
required reading in classrooms. I think that if I had to read this book
again then I would only do it if I was taking a class on it. Taking a
class would help me understand the story more.
I think this was one of the issues with the text while I was reading. I
don’t want to say issue holds the book back but it will hold back
certain readers, me being one of them. At its heart, this book is about
Jesse James and his gang and gang stories are
always formatted a certain way that confuses the heck out of me. For
example, I recently watched a movie called American Hustle and I could
not grasp the plot for the life of me. Yeah, I’m that bad. It was about a
con-man and also mixed the mafia into the
picture with confusing deals which kept me from enjoying the film and
therefore understanding the film. Obviously this is a fault of my own
intellect but I have a hard time enjoying a story when I can’t
comprehend half of it. This was a major downfall for
me as a reader.
The
writing, as I said, was incredible. Hansen is slowly but surely
becoming one of my favorite writers as I really enjoyed his other novel,
Mariette in Ecstasy. While the story went over my head, the
writing did not. If my rating was based on the writing alone, this would
be a five star review. The psychological study on the relationship
between Jesse James and Bob Ford is also enough to
give this book five stars. The book’s title is really not the focus of
the novel but the climax. A big theme the book tackles is fame in
America and the obsessive nature in which people treat the rich and
famous. This theme came across the most in the final
part of the novel after Jesse’s death.
Overall,
this book clashed for me between the excellent themes and writing style
versus my lack of understanding con-men stories. I still feel really
silly saying that. Toward the end of the novel I was so ready to be done
and move on and
I just felt bitter about the experience. So I will give this book 3 out
of 5 stars.
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