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Once Upon a River
Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2011)Bonnie Jo Campbell has created an unforgettable heroine in sixteen-year-old Margo Crane, a beauty whose unflinching gaze and uncanny ability with a rifle have not made her life any easier.
After the violent death of her father, in which she is complicit, Margo takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother. But the river, Margo's childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a young woman traveling alone, and she must be strong to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to the decision of what price she is willing to pay for her choices.
After the violent death of her father, in which she is complicit, Margo takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother. But the river, Margo's childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a young woman traveling alone, and she must be strong to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to the decision of what price she is willing to pay for her choices.
348 pages, Hardcover
First published July 5, 2011
357 people are currently reading
12.9k people want to read
About the author
Bonnie Jo Campbell
23Ìýbooks640ÌýfollowersBonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the National Book Award finalist American Salvage, Women & Other Animals, and the novels Q Road and Once Upon a River. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and Southern Review’s 2008 Eudora Welty Prize for “The Inventor, 1972,â€� which is included in American Salvage. Her work has appeared in Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Ontario Review. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she studies kobudo, the art of Okinawan weapons, and hangs out with her two donkeys, Jack and Don Quixote.
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September 19, 2011
I really wanted to like this book. It's getting good buzz and the buzz is the type I like: fearless female ead character, written by a modern day Mark Twain. And the truth is I breezed through it in a few days, but at the end of the day I had to consider how much I truly enjoyed this book and in order to write a review I had to consider the reasons why I didn't like this book.
Campbell's prose is elegant and sparse and she creates a clear vision of the landscape and the inhabitants. These are all elements that will get you reading quickly. Yet, I was more frustrated with this book than any other in a long time, and if I'm to distill my criticism down to one issue it's this: Margo spends nearly the entire book moving from bed to bed and spends much less time traveling on a river than the book jacket makes out. This is not, as some of the advance praise claims, a woman setting out on a river adventure, it's a the story of a young woman entangled in the sexually fraught world of men maturing into a woman of some degree of independence.
This is admittedly somewhat a criticism of the expectation built around the book--however, even as I put that aside to consider the story, I still find it valid. So, Margo can shoot well, she shoots a man, and she kills a man. For a large part of the book Margo displays a high degree of passivity, victimized by one man, falling into domestic partnership with one man, victimized by a second man, then in with the domestic life with next man, only to find a short temporary third before she settles on a fourth man. Every single aspect of Margo's orbits a man's. I found myself rooting for her to launch free of the banks of the river and truly free of this emotional dependency--because in so many ways she's proven herself perfectly capable of the logistics of living independently. So why didn't she? She is like Woodrell's Ree Dolly () only superficially in that she knows how to skin animals and hunt.
Why is it when we finally get a female Huckleberry Finn she's still somehow so tangled in a man's world that she takes the whole book to find her freedom at all?
Campbell's prose is elegant and sparse and she creates a clear vision of the landscape and the inhabitants. These are all elements that will get you reading quickly. Yet, I was more frustrated with this book than any other in a long time, and if I'm to distill my criticism down to one issue it's this: Margo spends nearly the entire book moving from bed to bed and spends much less time traveling on a river than the book jacket makes out. This is not, as some of the advance praise claims, a woman setting out on a river adventure, it's a the story of a young woman entangled in the sexually fraught world of men maturing into a woman of some degree of independence.
This is admittedly somewhat a criticism of the expectation built around the book--however, even as I put that aside to consider the story, I still find it valid. So, Margo can shoot well, she shoots a man, and she kills a man. For a large part of the book Margo displays a high degree of passivity, victimized by one man, falling into domestic partnership with one man, victimized by a second man, then in with the domestic life with next man, only to find a short temporary third before she settles on a fourth man. Every single aspect of Margo's orbits a man's. I found myself rooting for her to launch free of the banks of the river and truly free of this emotional dependency--because in so many ways she's proven herself perfectly capable of the logistics of living independently. So why didn't she? She is like Woodrell's Ree Dolly () only superficially in that she knows how to skin animals and hunt.
Why is it when we finally get a female Huckleberry Finn she's still somehow so tangled in a man's world that she takes the whole book to find her freedom at all?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 18, 2011
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
(Originally written for Daniel Casey's .)
The more critical examinations of novels I do, the more I'm starting to realize that our enjoyment of them -- and I mean in this case a deep, lasting enjoyment that stays with you even years later -- relies not just on the typical issues of plot, character, style, etc, but also such subtle topics as that author's ability to make that situation come alive in this magical, hard-to-define way, the ability to confound our expectations, the ability to take characters that we may despise at first and literally force us to develop a deep empathy for them, through sheer will and storytelling skills alone. Because when you really think about it, it's not the projects that exactly meet our expectations that ever stay with us for long -- that's merely entertainment, a way for us to pleasantly wile away the time when we're bored -- but instead the ones that surprise us, that maybe even anger us at first, the ones that force us to look at a situation in a new light whether we want to or not. And when these projects are at their best, they have the ability to literally transform us, to make us understand the world in a better, more complex way than we did before; and this is really the goal of the arts when all is said and done, not just to entertain but to explain the world to us, to examine difficult situations in intelligent ways so that we might become slightly better human beings by the end of it all.
That's certainly the case, for example, with Bonnie Jo Campbell's phenomenal new novel Once Upon a River, which almost since the first day of its existence has been touted as the frontrunner for the 2012 Pulitzer, a prediction looking more prophetic with each passing month; because not only is it exquisite in all its technical details, almost a given when you consider Campbell's past (she's a well-loved Michigan-based professor who has already either won or been nominated in the past for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Eudora Welty Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship), but it also possesses in spades this exact elusive quality I was talking about before, all the more astonishing for being set among uneducated hillbilly trash in the rural outskirts of Kalamazoo in the 1970s. Because let me make my biases clear right away -- I actually grew up in such an environment myself, only in Missouri instead of Michigan, maybe not so blatantly white-trash in my case but certainly surrounded by white trash at all times, and in many ways my move to Chicago in the '90s was in an attempt to get as far away from those kinds of people as possible without actually leaving the country; and so when I first picked this up and it looked like it was going to be yet another misguided academic ode to the "savage nobility" of racist, ignorant, backwoods monsters, needless to say that I was disappointed, given how much fawning praise it's already received in just the few months it's now been out. And indeed, if I hadn't been reading this on specific assignment for another literary journal besides my own, the chances are likely that I would've never made it past the excruciating first fifty pages, in which we watch our beautiful yet semi-feral sixteen-year-old sharpshooting heroine Margo Crane first get raped by her leering, drunken uncle, then get blamed for it by the rest of her family, then witnesses her dad get murdered from a shotgun blast right in front of her, and then takes off in a rowboat up the Kalamazoo River in search of her slutty, borderline-retarded mother, who immediately abandoned Margo at the exact moment she stopped growing taller at fourteen, under the justification that she "was a woman now" and no longer needed parental guidance. No matter what your opinion on the subject, all will agree that that's a lot of hillbilly trash to deal with in the first fifty pages of a novel, and those with even the slightest negative opinions of hillbilly trash can't really be blamed for giving up on this book in angry disgust before even reaching chapter five.
But then a remarkable thing happened, which is that Campbell started pulling me into the story more and more, not so much expanding the plot itself but rather its underlying message and even general milieu. And indeed, I take it as a lucky coincidence that I just happen to be reading George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels right now as well, because both projects surprisingly deal with the same topic at their deepest, most bottom levels -- namely that, far from the chaotic, dark, backwards, black-and-white world that Enlightenment scholars painted the Medieval Period of Western civilization (i.e. 500 to 1400 AD), an attitude that historians in the 1700s almost had to adopt for political purposes, life under a form of violent quasi-anarchy is actually a lot more complex and sophisticated than many give it credit for, with an ever-shifting series of rules and alliances among all the people in that community, a realpolitik give-and-take that can many times produce its own strange form of peace and stability, apart from the usual structure of government, judges and police that we in the West now take so much for granted, precisely because of these old Enlightenment scholars painting such a doomsday picture of what the alternative is.
Because the more you read of Once Upon a River (set almost entirely within nearly lawless rural locations, I should make clear), the more you realize that Campbell means for this hillbilly trash and their "shotgun justice" to be a grand metaphor instead of a literal portrait, a stand-in for any number of situations from real life where the concept of "law and order" is shaky at best, from Medieval Europe to modern Middle East failed states to even post-apocalyptic science-fiction (ask me how much this book reminded me at times of Cormac McCarthy's The Road); and that what Campbell is mostly interested in exploring are the complicated and highly politicized ways that the people in such an environment create a form of law and order for themselves anyway, the exact organic process that brought us our modern governments and judges and police in the first place, instead of these institutions springing forth from the ground fully formed in the 1700s like Enlightenment historians would have us believe. And that's a much more interesting thing than listening to some Starbucks-sipping professor drone on about the "savage nobility" of Jerry Springer guests, and especially with Campbell examining it within such a unique and unexpected setting; and in fact that's the main reason to even read this book, is to watch our street-smart (river-smart?) protagonist negotiate these choppy political waters for herself, learning step by step and with plenty of mistakes how to survive and even thrive within this dangerous lawless world of constant sexual and physical assault, or at least with the threat of random assault hanging over everything like a giant dark cloud.
Of course, this being a smart academic novel, Once Upon a River abounds with literary allusions as well, and in fact I suspect that Campbell meant for this to be at least partly an homage to the various classics of rural-US literature that I assume informed her in her own youth; for example, both Annie Oakley's biography and the Foxfire books come immediately to mind, mostly because of Campbell specifically referencing them by name several times, and it's easy to detect strains of both Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau in there as well. (And this is to say nothing of the recent Hollywood hits True Grit and Winter's Bone, which also feature tough, close-lipped teenage girls as their main heroines, negotiating dangerous and lawless rural environments on their own.) But perhaps the most direct nod to another literary work here is one that Campbell never explicitly mentions, but that hugely informs this manuscript if you're familiar with it already, which is William Least Heat-Moon's criminally underrated Blue Highways; a Native American who had lost touch with his ancestral roots, Moon set out in the '70s on a real-life cross-country trip, driving only on forgotten back lanes (the literal "blue highways" on an old 1930s map of the US he used to navigate his trip), with the resulting nonfiction book partly a loving ode to American regionalist authenticity and partly a sad elegy to its rapid disappearance, being choked to death in those years by the first big migration of malls and fast-food chains to the rural countryside. And indeed, I think it no coincidence at all that one of the most important side characters in Campbell's book almost exactly matches the description of the real Moon when he was actually making his trip back in the '70s, and I give a lot of kudos to her for creating such a sly ode without ever coming out and just saying, "And did I mention that I adore Blue Highways?"
Ultimately it's hard to imagine how this novel could be any better than it currently is; it's as thrilling and bloody as a beach read, as astute and beautifully written as you would expect from someone with Campbell's credentials, chock-full of horrible men and subtle references to feminist theory but without letting any of the equally horrible women off the hook either, the entire plot propelled by one of the most fascinating literary characters I've come across in a long time. And like I said, more important than any of this, Campbell achieved the truly remarkable feat of changing my mind while I was reading it, making me understand both my own rural background and my various ex-girlfriends in a profound new way, a way that lets me come to more of a resolution about both subjects than I had possessed before picking up this book. And that's why I'm happy to announce that today Once Upon a River becomes the third book of 2011 to receive a perfect score from me (after Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and Jonathan Evison's West of Here, a truly unforgettable experience that deserves every accolade it's received. I urge all lovers of great literature to pick up a copy as soon as possible, and I eagerly look forward to seeing how it will fare come next year's awards season.
Out of 10: 10
(Originally written for Daniel Casey's .)
The more critical examinations of novels I do, the more I'm starting to realize that our enjoyment of them -- and I mean in this case a deep, lasting enjoyment that stays with you even years later -- relies not just on the typical issues of plot, character, style, etc, but also such subtle topics as that author's ability to make that situation come alive in this magical, hard-to-define way, the ability to confound our expectations, the ability to take characters that we may despise at first and literally force us to develop a deep empathy for them, through sheer will and storytelling skills alone. Because when you really think about it, it's not the projects that exactly meet our expectations that ever stay with us for long -- that's merely entertainment, a way for us to pleasantly wile away the time when we're bored -- but instead the ones that surprise us, that maybe even anger us at first, the ones that force us to look at a situation in a new light whether we want to or not. And when these projects are at their best, they have the ability to literally transform us, to make us understand the world in a better, more complex way than we did before; and this is really the goal of the arts when all is said and done, not just to entertain but to explain the world to us, to examine difficult situations in intelligent ways so that we might become slightly better human beings by the end of it all.
That's certainly the case, for example, with Bonnie Jo Campbell's phenomenal new novel Once Upon a River, which almost since the first day of its existence has been touted as the frontrunner for the 2012 Pulitzer, a prediction looking more prophetic with each passing month; because not only is it exquisite in all its technical details, almost a given when you consider Campbell's past (she's a well-loved Michigan-based professor who has already either won or been nominated in the past for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Eudora Welty Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship), but it also possesses in spades this exact elusive quality I was talking about before, all the more astonishing for being set among uneducated hillbilly trash in the rural outskirts of Kalamazoo in the 1970s. Because let me make my biases clear right away -- I actually grew up in such an environment myself, only in Missouri instead of Michigan, maybe not so blatantly white-trash in my case but certainly surrounded by white trash at all times, and in many ways my move to Chicago in the '90s was in an attempt to get as far away from those kinds of people as possible without actually leaving the country; and so when I first picked this up and it looked like it was going to be yet another misguided academic ode to the "savage nobility" of racist, ignorant, backwoods monsters, needless to say that I was disappointed, given how much fawning praise it's already received in just the few months it's now been out. And indeed, if I hadn't been reading this on specific assignment for another literary journal besides my own, the chances are likely that I would've never made it past the excruciating first fifty pages, in which we watch our beautiful yet semi-feral sixteen-year-old sharpshooting heroine Margo Crane first get raped by her leering, drunken uncle, then get blamed for it by the rest of her family, then witnesses her dad get murdered from a shotgun blast right in front of her, and then takes off in a rowboat up the Kalamazoo River in search of her slutty, borderline-retarded mother, who immediately abandoned Margo at the exact moment she stopped growing taller at fourteen, under the justification that she "was a woman now" and no longer needed parental guidance. No matter what your opinion on the subject, all will agree that that's a lot of hillbilly trash to deal with in the first fifty pages of a novel, and those with even the slightest negative opinions of hillbilly trash can't really be blamed for giving up on this book in angry disgust before even reaching chapter five.
But then a remarkable thing happened, which is that Campbell started pulling me into the story more and more, not so much expanding the plot itself but rather its underlying message and even general milieu. And indeed, I take it as a lucky coincidence that I just happen to be reading George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels right now as well, because both projects surprisingly deal with the same topic at their deepest, most bottom levels -- namely that, far from the chaotic, dark, backwards, black-and-white world that Enlightenment scholars painted the Medieval Period of Western civilization (i.e. 500 to 1400 AD), an attitude that historians in the 1700s almost had to adopt for political purposes, life under a form of violent quasi-anarchy is actually a lot more complex and sophisticated than many give it credit for, with an ever-shifting series of rules and alliances among all the people in that community, a realpolitik give-and-take that can many times produce its own strange form of peace and stability, apart from the usual structure of government, judges and police that we in the West now take so much for granted, precisely because of these old Enlightenment scholars painting such a doomsday picture of what the alternative is.
Because the more you read of Once Upon a River (set almost entirely within nearly lawless rural locations, I should make clear), the more you realize that Campbell means for this hillbilly trash and their "shotgun justice" to be a grand metaphor instead of a literal portrait, a stand-in for any number of situations from real life where the concept of "law and order" is shaky at best, from Medieval Europe to modern Middle East failed states to even post-apocalyptic science-fiction (ask me how much this book reminded me at times of Cormac McCarthy's The Road); and that what Campbell is mostly interested in exploring are the complicated and highly politicized ways that the people in such an environment create a form of law and order for themselves anyway, the exact organic process that brought us our modern governments and judges and police in the first place, instead of these institutions springing forth from the ground fully formed in the 1700s like Enlightenment historians would have us believe. And that's a much more interesting thing than listening to some Starbucks-sipping professor drone on about the "savage nobility" of Jerry Springer guests, and especially with Campbell examining it within such a unique and unexpected setting; and in fact that's the main reason to even read this book, is to watch our street-smart (river-smart?) protagonist negotiate these choppy political waters for herself, learning step by step and with plenty of mistakes how to survive and even thrive within this dangerous lawless world of constant sexual and physical assault, or at least with the threat of random assault hanging over everything like a giant dark cloud.
Of course, this being a smart academic novel, Once Upon a River abounds with literary allusions as well, and in fact I suspect that Campbell meant for this to be at least partly an homage to the various classics of rural-US literature that I assume informed her in her own youth; for example, both Annie Oakley's biography and the Foxfire books come immediately to mind, mostly because of Campbell specifically referencing them by name several times, and it's easy to detect strains of both Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau in there as well. (And this is to say nothing of the recent Hollywood hits True Grit and Winter's Bone, which also feature tough, close-lipped teenage girls as their main heroines, negotiating dangerous and lawless rural environments on their own.) But perhaps the most direct nod to another literary work here is one that Campbell never explicitly mentions, but that hugely informs this manuscript if you're familiar with it already, which is William Least Heat-Moon's criminally underrated Blue Highways; a Native American who had lost touch with his ancestral roots, Moon set out in the '70s on a real-life cross-country trip, driving only on forgotten back lanes (the literal "blue highways" on an old 1930s map of the US he used to navigate his trip), with the resulting nonfiction book partly a loving ode to American regionalist authenticity and partly a sad elegy to its rapid disappearance, being choked to death in those years by the first big migration of malls and fast-food chains to the rural countryside. And indeed, I think it no coincidence at all that one of the most important side characters in Campbell's book almost exactly matches the description of the real Moon when he was actually making his trip back in the '70s, and I give a lot of kudos to her for creating such a sly ode without ever coming out and just saying, "And did I mention that I adore Blue Highways?"
Ultimately it's hard to imagine how this novel could be any better than it currently is; it's as thrilling and bloody as a beach read, as astute and beautifully written as you would expect from someone with Campbell's credentials, chock-full of horrible men and subtle references to feminist theory but without letting any of the equally horrible women off the hook either, the entire plot propelled by one of the most fascinating literary characters I've come across in a long time. And like I said, more important than any of this, Campbell achieved the truly remarkable feat of changing my mind while I was reading it, making me understand both my own rural background and my various ex-girlfriends in a profound new way, a way that lets me come to more of a resolution about both subjects than I had possessed before picking up this book. And that's why I'm happy to announce that today Once Upon a River becomes the third book of 2011 to receive a perfect score from me (after Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and Jonathan Evison's West of Here, a truly unforgettable experience that deserves every accolade it's received. I urge all lovers of great literature to pick up a copy as soon as possible, and I eagerly look forward to seeing how it will fare come next year's awards season.
Out of 10: 10
September 17, 2011
Michigan rivers, a girl who shows as much emotion as a river does, and a teak boat with splintery oars. As odd as it is to have a teenaged girl protagonist who doesn't trip or blubber all over herself, it's downright awesome to read a book that portrays the girl all of us Michigan river rats were, or wanted to be. The characters that swirl around Margo are as rich as good river bottom, coppery, flinty and moving along their course without much fuss or interest in what other people are up to. It was strange at the beginning - either the book is very like something else I've read (does another book launch with somebody sighting up the best place to do shooting harm to a man?) - or the storyline carried me along familiarly all by itself. The river is a primary character - the other creatures either living on it, around it or in it. Spook and Fishbone are deeply enjoyable. The dogs are great characters in this book, the only critters without flaws or cussedness. When I tried to get twitchy about the lack of emotion, it was easy to slip into knowing that the river has no emotion, it can take your life and never pause. It isn't necessary to forgive or explain the bad guys. The sex scenes are brilliant: Campbell nixed my prudishness with great writing of marvelous metaphors. Like sun glistening on water, this novel is mesmerizing.
June 27, 2021
"Érase un rÃo" ha sido una novela revelación y su autora, Bonnie Jo Campbell todo un descubrimiento desde el momento en que me sumergà en el primer párrafo, a partir de aquÃ, toda una declaración de intenciones, ya supe que el resto de la novela vendrÃa rodada.
â€�El rÃo Stark fluÃa por el meandro de Murrayville como la sangre por el corazón de Margo Crane. Le gustaba remar contra la corriente para ver patos joyuyos, patos de lomo blanco y águilas pescadoras, para buscar salamandras tigre entre los helechos. Otras veces dejaba la barca a la deriva para concentrarse en la búsqueda de tortugas pintadas que se calentaban al sol sobre los árboles caÃdos y contar garzas en la colonia que habÃa junto al cementerio de Murrayville. O amarraba la barca y subÃa por pequeños arroyos para recoger cangrejos, berros y minúsculas fresas silvestres. TenÃa los pies insensibles contra las piedras afiladas y los cristales rotos. Al nadar, Margo tragaba a veces pececillos vivos y sentÃa que el rÃo Stark se movÃa en su interiorâ€�.
La protagonista de esta novela es Margo Crane, una quinceañera que ha crecido junto al rÃo Stark. Bajo la guÃa de su abuelo, el patriarca de los Murray, lo ha aprendido todo de la naturaleza que la rodea, como empuñar un rifle, como cazar, pescar y evitar las aguas contaminadas por las fábricas de los Murray, su familia más cercana, aunque en eterno conflicto con su padre. El rÃo y Margo están Ãntimamente ligados, asi que cuando a raiz de un incidente violento con una enorme carga de rencor y venganza familiar, se queda sola, Margo se ve obligada a huir del peligro y con la única compañÃa de una biografÃa de Anne Oakley, su heroÃna, convierte el rÃo Stark en su hogar. Margo, cuya sintonÃa con la naturaleza la han convertido en una persona callada, observadora y profundamente curiosa, se convierte en una especie de exiliada cuyo único objetivo es buscar a su madre que los habÃa abadonado precisamente porque no podÃa soportar esa vida junto al rÃo.
Este recorrido por el rÃo, no sé hasta que punto se puede considerar iniciático pero sà que es un viaje decisivo en un momento de su vida de confusión y de no pertenecer a ninguna parte. Margo solo sabe que le resulta imposible alejarse demasiado del rió Stark que la surte de todo lo que quiere en el mundo, porque lo único que desea es recorrerlo llevando la vida que quiere llevar. Sin embargo, esta vida en plena libertad, le pasa factura una y otra vez y llegado un punto, se convierte en un viaje de autoconservación. Bonnie Jo Campbell nos pone sobre el tapete lo dificil que es para una mujer sola llevar una cierta vida, que normalmente está reservada para las hombres.
"-Eres demasiado guapa para andar por aquà sola- dijo-. Eres demasiado vulnerable. Pero no te preocupes, al final la belleza desaparece."
La mayor parte de las personas que Margo se encuentra a lo largo de su recorrido, son hombres, algunos que le dan refugio, otros que le sirven de apoyo y otros que usan la violencia para acercarse a ella, y a medida que la historia avanza y ella se va conociendo más a si misma, su relación con los hombres va cambiando, la dependencia inicial se va convirtiendo en una independencia elegida por ella. Llegado un punto sabe que cuánto más segura de si misma se encuentra, cuanto más se conoce a si misma, menos se dejará influir por ellos Margo que confundÃa el sexo, con seguridad y protección emocional, pronto descubrirá que no es asÃ. Realmente Margo no tiene referentes femeninos en su vida asà que es como una barca a la deriva en el sentido emocional; los hombres que va conociendo la quieren cambiar, quieren moldearla y a medida que la historia avanza, va comprendiendo que para llevar la vida que quiere llevar en total libertad, no puede depender de nadie. Quizás esta relación con los hombres que se encuentra a su paso, es lo que mejor define el cambio que se va produciendo en este personaje femenino devastadoramente fascinante, fuerte y totalmente libre.
"Cada persona es una nuez insondable, imposible de abrir-dijo Smoke-. Eso es lo que he aprendido, chiquilla. Hasta para nosotros mismos somos insondables".
Aunque Murrayville y el rÃo Stark son ficticios, deben representar perfectamente la tierra de dónde procede la misma Bonnie Jo Campbell, la zona rural de Michigan. El rÃo es el verdadero hogar y el refugio de Margo en todos los sentidos, y en este aspecto, podrÃamos decir que funciona como figura materna para Margo, el pilar de su vida. Otro aspecto que me ha fascinado, es la forma en que la autora nos acerca a la violencia, que funciona como parte de la vida, de la supervivencia, incluso cuando relata lo que podrÃa ser un hecho tan devastador como una violación, lo enmarca dentro de un contexto que no resulta el centro de gravedad ni presenta a Margo como una vÃctima. Es muy interesante como esta autora explora ciertos comportamientos en torno a la violencia desde una distancia sin abusar de dramatismos ni melodramas gratuÃtos.
La novela me ha parecido una maravilla, porque el estilo de Bonnie Jo Campbell se camufla con la naturaleza y consigue que nos imaginemos perfectamente ese rÃo y todo lo que le rodea. Una prosa que convierte en poesÃa muchos momentos en los que Margo completamente sola recorre, y vive a lo largo del rÃo Stark. No tengo duda de que es otra mis novelas del año.
Tengo entendido que esta novela es una especie de precuela de la primera novela de Bonnie Jo Campbell, Q Road, asà que no solo darle las gracias a Dirty Works por traernos y descubrirnos a Bonnie Jo Campbell, sino suplicar que nos descubran esta primera obra suya. La Traducción es de Tomás Cobos.
"En lugar de sentirse atrapada en el rÃo, que podÃa congelarla o ahogarla, experimentó una intensa y dolorosa sensación de libertad. Sin su padre, ya no estaba atada a nadie, y con el flujo del agua a su alrededor, se sentÃa absolutamente viva".
â€�El rÃo Stark fluÃa por el meandro de Murrayville como la sangre por el corazón de Margo Crane. Le gustaba remar contra la corriente para ver patos joyuyos, patos de lomo blanco y águilas pescadoras, para buscar salamandras tigre entre los helechos. Otras veces dejaba la barca a la deriva para concentrarse en la búsqueda de tortugas pintadas que se calentaban al sol sobre los árboles caÃdos y contar garzas en la colonia que habÃa junto al cementerio de Murrayville. O amarraba la barca y subÃa por pequeños arroyos para recoger cangrejos, berros y minúsculas fresas silvestres. TenÃa los pies insensibles contra las piedras afiladas y los cristales rotos. Al nadar, Margo tragaba a veces pececillos vivos y sentÃa que el rÃo Stark se movÃa en su interiorâ€�.
La protagonista de esta novela es Margo Crane, una quinceañera que ha crecido junto al rÃo Stark. Bajo la guÃa de su abuelo, el patriarca de los Murray, lo ha aprendido todo de la naturaleza que la rodea, como empuñar un rifle, como cazar, pescar y evitar las aguas contaminadas por las fábricas de los Murray, su familia más cercana, aunque en eterno conflicto con su padre. El rÃo y Margo están Ãntimamente ligados, asi que cuando a raiz de un incidente violento con una enorme carga de rencor y venganza familiar, se queda sola, Margo se ve obligada a huir del peligro y con la única compañÃa de una biografÃa de Anne Oakley, su heroÃna, convierte el rÃo Stark en su hogar. Margo, cuya sintonÃa con la naturaleza la han convertido en una persona callada, observadora y profundamente curiosa, se convierte en una especie de exiliada cuyo único objetivo es buscar a su madre que los habÃa abadonado precisamente porque no podÃa soportar esa vida junto al rÃo.
Este recorrido por el rÃo, no sé hasta que punto se puede considerar iniciático pero sà que es un viaje decisivo en un momento de su vida de confusión y de no pertenecer a ninguna parte. Margo solo sabe que le resulta imposible alejarse demasiado del rió Stark que la surte de todo lo que quiere en el mundo, porque lo único que desea es recorrerlo llevando la vida que quiere llevar. Sin embargo, esta vida en plena libertad, le pasa factura una y otra vez y llegado un punto, se convierte en un viaje de autoconservación. Bonnie Jo Campbell nos pone sobre el tapete lo dificil que es para una mujer sola llevar una cierta vida, que normalmente está reservada para las hombres.
"-Eres demasiado guapa para andar por aquà sola- dijo-. Eres demasiado vulnerable. Pero no te preocupes, al final la belleza desaparece."
La mayor parte de las personas que Margo se encuentra a lo largo de su recorrido, son hombres, algunos que le dan refugio, otros que le sirven de apoyo y otros que usan la violencia para acercarse a ella, y a medida que la historia avanza y ella se va conociendo más a si misma, su relación con los hombres va cambiando, la dependencia inicial se va convirtiendo en una independencia elegida por ella. Llegado un punto sabe que cuánto más segura de si misma se encuentra, cuanto más se conoce a si misma, menos se dejará influir por ellos Margo que confundÃa el sexo, con seguridad y protección emocional, pronto descubrirá que no es asÃ. Realmente Margo no tiene referentes femeninos en su vida asà que es como una barca a la deriva en el sentido emocional; los hombres que va conociendo la quieren cambiar, quieren moldearla y a medida que la historia avanza, va comprendiendo que para llevar la vida que quiere llevar en total libertad, no puede depender de nadie. Quizás esta relación con los hombres que se encuentra a su paso, es lo que mejor define el cambio que se va produciendo en este personaje femenino devastadoramente fascinante, fuerte y totalmente libre.
"Cada persona es una nuez insondable, imposible de abrir-dijo Smoke-. Eso es lo que he aprendido, chiquilla. Hasta para nosotros mismos somos insondables".
Aunque Murrayville y el rÃo Stark son ficticios, deben representar perfectamente la tierra de dónde procede la misma Bonnie Jo Campbell, la zona rural de Michigan. El rÃo es el verdadero hogar y el refugio de Margo en todos los sentidos, y en este aspecto, podrÃamos decir que funciona como figura materna para Margo, el pilar de su vida. Otro aspecto que me ha fascinado, es la forma en que la autora nos acerca a la violencia, que funciona como parte de la vida, de la supervivencia, incluso cuando relata lo que podrÃa ser un hecho tan devastador como una violación, lo enmarca dentro de un contexto que no resulta el centro de gravedad ni presenta a Margo como una vÃctima. Es muy interesante como esta autora explora ciertos comportamientos en torno a la violencia desde una distancia sin abusar de dramatismos ni melodramas gratuÃtos.
La novela me ha parecido una maravilla, porque el estilo de Bonnie Jo Campbell se camufla con la naturaleza y consigue que nos imaginemos perfectamente ese rÃo y todo lo que le rodea. Una prosa que convierte en poesÃa muchos momentos en los que Margo completamente sola recorre, y vive a lo largo del rÃo Stark. No tengo duda de que es otra mis novelas del año.
Tengo entendido que esta novela es una especie de precuela de la primera novela de Bonnie Jo Campbell, Q Road, asà que no solo darle las gracias a Dirty Works por traernos y descubrirnos a Bonnie Jo Campbell, sino suplicar que nos descubran esta primera obra suya. La Traducción es de Tomás Cobos.
"En lugar de sentirse atrapada en el rÃo, que podÃa congelarla o ahogarla, experimentó una intensa y dolorosa sensación de libertad. Sin su padre, ya no estaba atada a nadie, y con el flujo del agua a su alrededor, se sentÃa absolutamente viva".
January 18, 2013
I found this book a difficult read. The author is a good writer, but the content is excruciating...a free-fall of misery trotting out social conventions around beauty, motherhood, and male-female relationships. I was really expecting this to be different, the protagonist, Margo Crane to be more emotionally self-sufficient and self-aware. The pervasive graphic accounts of killing animals really turned my stomach. From a survivalist perspective, everything that happened made sense, but it was very depressing. I was troubled by the ambiguity of Margo's emotions around her first rape, and the ensuing repulsiveness of the men she became dependent on. Also troubling is the author's constantly referring to her as beautiful, which seems to reinforce the trope that men were constantly exploiting her for her so-called beauty rather than more realistically abusing power as older men over a much younger woman. And how is she beautiful when she barely bathes or is able to eat? When she's living outside in the swamp half of the time? I'm not sure why I kept reading (while skipping the gruesome accounts of skinning fish alive, etc), perhaps to see if there would be an upward arc, which there is, sort of, but it all collapses in on itself when she becomes "redeemed" by becoming a mother, because that is the ultimate biological function of a woman, of course. And she will *obviously* be a better, bolder mother than her own mother, who simply abandoned her. There were moments of obvious independence, self-reliance, and bravery, but also an externally opaque quality to Margo's thought processes that made it difficult to identify with her.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 8, 2011
Reading a Bonnie Jo Campbell book is like sitting down for a cuppa, or a cold one, with your very best gal pal. You can let loose and relax, kick your shoes off, loosen your girdle, because she does, her story does, the way it weaves in and around you and floats you along, easy, easy. Just like a river. No pretenses. Nearly effortless. No masks required, because Campbell will see through them, or, more accurately, doesn’t seem to have a clue that masks exist. She is what she is, and her books reflect that authenticity. Maybe no one has convinced Campbell that some in the harried human race believe masks are required gear for survival.
Not in Campbell’s world. She is the rare blend of a literary talent with a knack for telling a good tale. While there are plenty of one, and quite a few of the other, a solid blend of the two is a rarity. We begin to float down her Once Upon a River, rocked by waves without ever being jerked around, not even at the sound of a gunshot.
Campbell’s novel tells the story of Margo Crane, a sixteen-year-old girl, beautiful without knowing it, or caring one way or another. Margo has grown up in Michigan country, not far from the Kalamazoo River on a smaller river called the Stark. “The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart.�
This is a girl who handles a gun like an extension of her own body. She idolizes Annie Oakley. She lives with her father in the back country, her mother abandoned her years ago, and she is nowhere more at peace than when she is drifting on the river, watching painted turtles or catching fish or counting herons. She knows how to skin a rabbit and she shoots to kill when she sees game.
A reoccurring theme in Campbell’s books is the woman wounded by life and by men, as a result tough and wise and independent—a survivor. Margo Crane joins that line-up. She isn’t educated in academics, but she knows how to maneuver through life like a river, and little scares her. Like many young girls, she almost doesn’t get it when she is raped by an uncle—was it her fault somehow? It is unclear to her when to defend herself, but when defending someone she loves, the line of fire is very clear. More than once, more than twice, she must shoot with that uncanny ability she has to hit an acorn across a field to save the innocent from the brutality of a man gone wild.
“She studied the railroad-tie fence post from its base to its top, as it rose to about her own height. She studied the green fruit with the burr acorn on top. Beyond it was the smooth expanse of river. She wrapped the sling around her left hand and elbow and pushed against it. When she nestled the stock in her shoulder and pressed her cheek against it, her stance and grip were solid. The Indian disappeared, and she was alone with her gun and her target. She looked through her sights � for Margo there usually came an instant like now when she felt solidly rooted to the planet. Without a conscious decision to do so, she smoothly pressed the trigger straight back and held it there as the rifle sent the bullet down the barrel on its way to the acorn.� (Page 213)
Margo’s journey floats her down that river by ripple effect from her actions, a stream carrying her along, but it is the stops she makes along the way that bring in the conflicts of the story. Tossed out of life as she knows it when her father dies, in part due to her sharp shot, she searches for the mother who abandoned her. She finds her, if not quite what she is looking for, but finds also mutations of love, mutations of hatred, and sometimes the two intertwined.
An inescapable lesson for a pretty woman is to always watch for the man who will hurt her, as nearly all of them do—even the ones who seem to care about her. Rape is always a threat, and sometimes more than just a threat. She is conflicted in how to handle an unwanted pregnancy, thinking she wants one kind of resolution while moving almost unwillingly toward another.
The real love of Margo’s life, alongside the river, turns out to be Smoke—a man too old to be a threat or even a caretaker, but someone who allows her to become one. With his crass manner, not unlike her own, he teaches her to allow for gentler moments. Each of them have a battle to wage in their lives, although each to a different end. Yet that is how a river moves between its banks: living and dying intertwining, youth and old age, the gentle moment leaning against the instant of brutality, moving along the way life pushes you, but occasionally managing to paddle to shore, until you are pushed into the rapids again.
Campbell understands that the world is generally made to fit one kind of person—the kind that does not exist anywhere but in the hopeful mind. All the rest of us just have to make do. Her characters are those who do not fit but eventually surprise with how exceptionally well they make do.
Once Upon a River continues Campbell’s literary journey, easing along like an irresistible river. We can’t help but be carried along. Emerging from these waters, we feel refreshed, if a little wiser, if a little more sure about fitting in with a world of misfits. We all are one. Campbell makes that feel like the best way to be, if not the only way to survive.
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of two short story collections, Women & Other Animals (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999; Simon & Schuster, 2003) and American Salvage (Wayne State University Press, 2009; W.W. Norton, 2009) and the novel Q Road (Scribner, 2003). American Salvage was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has won a Pushcart Prize and the Eudora Welty Prize. Her stories, essays and poetry have appeared in many publications, including The Smoking Poet (). She was born and lives now in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Not in Campbell’s world. She is the rare blend of a literary talent with a knack for telling a good tale. While there are plenty of one, and quite a few of the other, a solid blend of the two is a rarity. We begin to float down her Once Upon a River, rocked by waves without ever being jerked around, not even at the sound of a gunshot.
Campbell’s novel tells the story of Margo Crane, a sixteen-year-old girl, beautiful without knowing it, or caring one way or another. Margo has grown up in Michigan country, not far from the Kalamazoo River on a smaller river called the Stark. “The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart.�
This is a girl who handles a gun like an extension of her own body. She idolizes Annie Oakley. She lives with her father in the back country, her mother abandoned her years ago, and she is nowhere more at peace than when she is drifting on the river, watching painted turtles or catching fish or counting herons. She knows how to skin a rabbit and she shoots to kill when she sees game.
A reoccurring theme in Campbell’s books is the woman wounded by life and by men, as a result tough and wise and independent—a survivor. Margo Crane joins that line-up. She isn’t educated in academics, but she knows how to maneuver through life like a river, and little scares her. Like many young girls, she almost doesn’t get it when she is raped by an uncle—was it her fault somehow? It is unclear to her when to defend herself, but when defending someone she loves, the line of fire is very clear. More than once, more than twice, she must shoot with that uncanny ability she has to hit an acorn across a field to save the innocent from the brutality of a man gone wild.
“She studied the railroad-tie fence post from its base to its top, as it rose to about her own height. She studied the green fruit with the burr acorn on top. Beyond it was the smooth expanse of river. She wrapped the sling around her left hand and elbow and pushed against it. When she nestled the stock in her shoulder and pressed her cheek against it, her stance and grip were solid. The Indian disappeared, and she was alone with her gun and her target. She looked through her sights � for Margo there usually came an instant like now when she felt solidly rooted to the planet. Without a conscious decision to do so, she smoothly pressed the trigger straight back and held it there as the rifle sent the bullet down the barrel on its way to the acorn.� (Page 213)
Margo’s journey floats her down that river by ripple effect from her actions, a stream carrying her along, but it is the stops she makes along the way that bring in the conflicts of the story. Tossed out of life as she knows it when her father dies, in part due to her sharp shot, she searches for the mother who abandoned her. She finds her, if not quite what she is looking for, but finds also mutations of love, mutations of hatred, and sometimes the two intertwined.
An inescapable lesson for a pretty woman is to always watch for the man who will hurt her, as nearly all of them do—even the ones who seem to care about her. Rape is always a threat, and sometimes more than just a threat. She is conflicted in how to handle an unwanted pregnancy, thinking she wants one kind of resolution while moving almost unwillingly toward another.
The real love of Margo’s life, alongside the river, turns out to be Smoke—a man too old to be a threat or even a caretaker, but someone who allows her to become one. With his crass manner, not unlike her own, he teaches her to allow for gentler moments. Each of them have a battle to wage in their lives, although each to a different end. Yet that is how a river moves between its banks: living and dying intertwining, youth and old age, the gentle moment leaning against the instant of brutality, moving along the way life pushes you, but occasionally managing to paddle to shore, until you are pushed into the rapids again.
Campbell understands that the world is generally made to fit one kind of person—the kind that does not exist anywhere but in the hopeful mind. All the rest of us just have to make do. Her characters are those who do not fit but eventually surprise with how exceptionally well they make do.
Once Upon a River continues Campbell’s literary journey, easing along like an irresistible river. We can’t help but be carried along. Emerging from these waters, we feel refreshed, if a little wiser, if a little more sure about fitting in with a world of misfits. We all are one. Campbell makes that feel like the best way to be, if not the only way to survive.
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of two short story collections, Women & Other Animals (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999; Simon & Schuster, 2003) and American Salvage (Wayne State University Press, 2009; W.W. Norton, 2009) and the novel Q Road (Scribner, 2003). American Salvage was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has won a Pushcart Prize and the Eudora Welty Prize. Her stories, essays and poetry have appeared in many publications, including The Smoking Poet (). She was born and lives now in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
July 14, 2011
I had previously read Campbell's short story collection, and very much liked it, so I was curious how she'd handle a full length work. The answer is, I like how she writes, but I just couldn't connect to her characters. I remember I called her short stories "likable stories about unlikeable people" and that definitely holds true here. There is something just...likeable about her fiction, even when I pretty much dislike every person in them. In Once Upon a River (spoilers ahead) the main character floats through life as she floats upon the river, with no aims or motivation. She feels like a dull space, a total void of life and thought. She willingly sleeps with a man, only to decide later that she was forced, and then stalks him with her rifle and shoots off the end of his penis. In a totally believable manner, like every man would (*eye roll of sarcasm*) this man just calmly zips up, bleeding like a stuck pig, and acts as if nothing has happened. She flees after her father is blamed and killed for the crime, and proceeds to float down the river sleeping with every man she meets along the way. Ending verdict: Dandelion fluff. It's pretty as it's floating past, but you really don't want it landing in your yard.
June 3, 2012
This review has been revised and can be found at .
October 4, 2018
Seven years I lived in a small town in a Michigan county described as being a downstate 'Up North,' an area of wide open spaces and farmland punctuated by woods and wild. We knew a self-sufficient family who supplied all their food by hunting, fishing, and gardening. I heard stories about family feuds and wild lives.
The local library book club was led by a retired professor from Kalamazoo. The group wanted to read Bonnie Jo Campbell's book Once Upon a River because of the setting--the rural area around the Stark and Kalamazoo Rivers just a half hour away. The book was so popular that the library couldn't get enough copies of the book for the group and we read another book.
As I finally read Once Upon a River, sexual assault and abuse have been in the national conversation. Women everywhere are sharing their stories.
Meanwhile, reports warn against eating fish from Michigan's rivers tainted with PFAS, including the Kalamazoo River. The rivers in the book, which is set around 1980, are polluted by factories.
I had picked up another timely book. Or perhaps a timeless book.
Once Upon a River is about Margo whose hero is Annie Oakley. She is a deadly shot, can prepare game, fish and travel the river, avoiding the water contaminated by factories. Margo is a beautiful young girl who does not understand life or herself, and who is preyed upon by men. She confuses sex with safety and protection.
At fifteen Margo does not yet understand that she has been raped. The rape is witnessed, leading to a series of catastrophic events. With no mother or father, and unable to trust her remaining family, Margo takes her grandfather's boat to live alone on the river. She finds temporary shelter with a series of men. With each relationship, she grows in her understanding of what is right and wrong, who she is, and what she wants for herself.
Campbell's writing is exquisite, vividly descriptive. Margo is an unforgettable character, strong yet vulnerable, negligent of her outer beauty that lures men, capable of skinning a muskrat or shooting a man. With its beautiful writing, unique character and setting, and timeless themes, I would heartily recommend it for book clubs.
The local library book club was led by a retired professor from Kalamazoo. The group wanted to read Bonnie Jo Campbell's book Once Upon a River because of the setting--the rural area around the Stark and Kalamazoo Rivers just a half hour away. The book was so popular that the library couldn't get enough copies of the book for the group and we read another book.
As I finally read Once Upon a River, sexual assault and abuse have been in the national conversation. Women everywhere are sharing their stories.
Meanwhile, reports warn against eating fish from Michigan's rivers tainted with PFAS, including the Kalamazoo River. The rivers in the book, which is set around 1980, are polluted by factories.
I had picked up another timely book. Or perhaps a timeless book.
Once Upon a River is about Margo whose hero is Annie Oakley. She is a deadly shot, can prepare game, fish and travel the river, avoiding the water contaminated by factories. Margo is a beautiful young girl who does not understand life or herself, and who is preyed upon by men. She confuses sex with safety and protection.
At fifteen Margo does not yet understand that she has been raped. The rape is witnessed, leading to a series of catastrophic events. With no mother or father, and unable to trust her remaining family, Margo takes her grandfather's boat to live alone on the river. She finds temporary shelter with a series of men. With each relationship, she grows in her understanding of what is right and wrong, who she is, and what she wants for herself.
Campbell's writing is exquisite, vividly descriptive. Margo is an unforgettable character, strong yet vulnerable, negligent of her outer beauty that lures men, capable of skinning a muskrat or shooting a man. With its beautiful writing, unique character and setting, and timeless themes, I would heartily recommend it for book clubs.
September 9, 2011
For no particular reason, I've read several novels lately about young women fending for themselves in rural and remote landscapes � Terese Svoboda's Bohemian Girl, Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone, and Bonnie Jo Campbell's Once Upon A River. I don't know if it's coincidence or shifting cultural interests, but I'm glad these books are coming in a genre that's so typically masculine.
Rather than summarize a story that's already been summarized in so many reviews, I'll just say that as with those novels mentioned above what makes this Once Upon A River compelling is its protagonist. Margo Crane is a great character, steadfast and stubborn and lost all at once, so even as she makes some unfortunate, often dangerous choices she's believable and sympathetic. Once Upon A River makes a really compelling, understated critique of its genre, of wilderness fiction and the adventure story, by allowing Margo to do things often taken for granted for male characters (eg, rugged self-sufficiency, promiscuity, violence, etc.) yet unlikely for women in fiction. Margo's idolization and emulation of Annie Oakley gave this a provocative complexity, as did the way her quiet presence allowed every man she met to project their own desires onto her even as we readers know she's a more multi-faceted person than they allow for.
There's also a nostalgic vein that runs through the novel, though not a rose-tinted one. More than once characters refer to Margo and her desire to be left alone living a riverside life of hunting as a "throwback," and I couldn't help thinking the novel's near-past setting (1980-ish, I think?) made some of this more easily explained. Economic problems and cultural changes are creeping in at the edges of the story, through closing factories and other things, but it's still very much a pre-internet, pre-cellphone story that might not have been as believable with a more recent setting. There's a grungy wistfulness to that, looking back on a time that had it's problems but they aren't, quite our problems. That's not a critique, just a curiosity, because I wonder to what extent it was a deliberate authorial choice in order to make Margo's story believable, and also wonder what kind of story could be told about a character like Margo thirty years later. Would the landscape allow it? Or the law? Would it be possible for a young woman to "vanish" quite so successfully? Again, none of those are problems with the novel, just questions I was left with after reading it. And to my mind the better a book, the better the questions it leaves behind.
Rather than summarize a story that's already been summarized in so many reviews, I'll just say that as with those novels mentioned above what makes this Once Upon A River compelling is its protagonist. Margo Crane is a great character, steadfast and stubborn and lost all at once, so even as she makes some unfortunate, often dangerous choices she's believable and sympathetic. Once Upon A River makes a really compelling, understated critique of its genre, of wilderness fiction and the adventure story, by allowing Margo to do things often taken for granted for male characters (eg, rugged self-sufficiency, promiscuity, violence, etc.) yet unlikely for women in fiction. Margo's idolization and emulation of Annie Oakley gave this a provocative complexity, as did the way her quiet presence allowed every man she met to project their own desires onto her even as we readers know she's a more multi-faceted person than they allow for.
There's also a nostalgic vein that runs through the novel, though not a rose-tinted one. More than once characters refer to Margo and her desire to be left alone living a riverside life of hunting as a "throwback," and I couldn't help thinking the novel's near-past setting (1980-ish, I think?) made some of this more easily explained. Economic problems and cultural changes are creeping in at the edges of the story, through closing factories and other things, but it's still very much a pre-internet, pre-cellphone story that might not have been as believable with a more recent setting. There's a grungy wistfulness to that, looking back on a time that had it's problems but they aren't, quite our problems. That's not a critique, just a curiosity, because I wonder to what extent it was a deliberate authorial choice in order to make Margo's story believable, and also wonder what kind of story could be told about a character like Margo thirty years later. Would the landscape allow it? Or the law? Would it be possible for a young woman to "vanish" quite so successfully? Again, none of those are problems with the novel, just questions I was left with after reading it. And to my mind the better a book, the better the questions it leaves behind.
January 20, 2021
La reseña de hoy está dedicada a una de las novelas que más me gustaron en 2020: «Érase un rÃo» (2011), de Bonnie Jo Campbell. Se trata de una novela de aventuras del S.XX en la que su protagonista, la jovencÃsima Margo Crane, trata de sobrevivir y conocerse en el entorno rural del Medio Oeste de los Estados Unidos. RÃo arriba, rÃo abajo, con la compañÃa de un fusil, el pulso firme y la madÃbula prieta, irá tirando palante entre disparos, pieles, sangre y silencio.
Érase un rÃo es Érase Margo, porque el rÃo es Margo: Margo NO es un espÃritu del rÃo ni cualquier otra criatura. Nuestra protagonista es una esponja que absorbe información y perfecciona aquello que aprende. Su Ãdolo desde niña es Annie Oakland (no ficción) y aspira a ser capaz de disparar como ella.
Para ti, como lector sentado en el metro o -en el mejor de los casos- repanchingado en el sofá, todo esto supondrá una auténtica aventura. Te lo garantizo. Jalearás a Margo en alto. Aplaudirás. Si eres un urbanita cuyo contacto con el campo se limita al que te ofrecen los parques de tu barrio, te sentirás (ridÃculamente vestido) como un pato-explorador espiando desde unos matorrales cercanos.
Otro bombazo de Dirtyworks que me siento en la obligación de recomendar a todo el mundo, nadie deberÃa dejar pasar la oportunidad de conocer a Margo, la puta jefa. No me cabe duda de que en cuanto pueda me haré con «Desguace americano».
«-Creo que eres un espÃritu del rÃo.
–No soy un espÃritu del rÃo. ¿Por qué los hombres queréis que una chica sea otra cosa que lo que es? -preguntó Margo. No era una niña lobo, como la llamó Michael. También su abuelo le habÃa puesto los apodos de Duende y Ninfa del RÃo, que ahora parecÃan extraños, como si el anciano hubiera querido que no fuera una persona exactamente.
-Para que la historia sea más bonita -dijo-».
Reseña completa y más info en
Érase un rÃo es Érase Margo, porque el rÃo es Margo: Margo NO es un espÃritu del rÃo ni cualquier otra criatura. Nuestra protagonista es una esponja que absorbe información y perfecciona aquello que aprende. Su Ãdolo desde niña es Annie Oakland (no ficción) y aspira a ser capaz de disparar como ella.
Para ti, como lector sentado en el metro o -en el mejor de los casos- repanchingado en el sofá, todo esto supondrá una auténtica aventura. Te lo garantizo. Jalearás a Margo en alto. Aplaudirás. Si eres un urbanita cuyo contacto con el campo se limita al que te ofrecen los parques de tu barrio, te sentirás (ridÃculamente vestido) como un pato-explorador espiando desde unos matorrales cercanos.
Otro bombazo de Dirtyworks que me siento en la obligación de recomendar a todo el mundo, nadie deberÃa dejar pasar la oportunidad de conocer a Margo, la puta jefa. No me cabe duda de que en cuanto pueda me haré con «Desguace americano».
«-Creo que eres un espÃritu del rÃo.
–No soy un espÃritu del rÃo. ¿Por qué los hombres queréis que una chica sea otra cosa que lo que es? -preguntó Margo. No era una niña lobo, como la llamó Michael. También su abuelo le habÃa puesto los apodos de Duende y Ninfa del RÃo, que ahora parecÃan extraños, como si el anciano hubiera querido que no fuera una persona exactamente.
-Para que la historia sea más bonita -dijo-».
Reseña completa y más info en
March 3, 2022
A medida que iba leyendo iba pensando "esta chica es tonta". Pero luego te das cuenta de que no, que es una adolescente sola que se enfrenta como puede a lo que va encontrando y lo hace lo mejor que puede. Y lo que encuentra no es lo mejor ni lo más agradable. Sin padre, Margo espera encontrar a su madre y que la acoja en su seno, pero mientras ha de seguir viviendo y lo hace como sabe: cazando, pescando y malviviendo hasta encontrar su sitio en el mundo. Cada una encuentra el camino hacia su independencia de una manera. No solo independencia económica sino afectiva. Otras lo encuentran tras un divorcio. Margo la encuentra en el rÃo, rodeada de gente que llega a ser su familia.
August 30, 2016
Audiobook narrated by Susan Bennett
From the book jacket - After the violent death of her father, sixteen-year-old Margo Crane takes to the Stark River in her grandfather’s rowboat, with only a few supplies and a biography of her hero Annie Oakley, in search of her mother. But the river, Margo’s childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a young woman traveling alone, and she must be strong to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her.
My reactions
I hardly know what to write about this novel. Very early on I was disturbed by Margo and the adults around her � or should I say the adult who was NOT around her, specifically her mother. I wanted to hug her and keep her safe and warm. And then I wanted to shake her till her teeth rattled. I was distressed by her circumstances, her poor choices, her acting out (specifically when it came to men), her apparent lack of any sort of moral compass. And yet � she is a compelling character and I couldn’t just turn away from her.
Still, this is no Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s central character had a certain innocence about him, and Margo seems to lack innocence. This is no mere adventure, her very survival depends on her ability to make a go of it. I had to keep reminding myself about how young she is; even Campbell keeps reminding the reader of Margo’s real age. The ending is both hopeful and heart-breaking.
Susan Bennett does a fine job narrating the audio version. She has a tendency to draw an audible breath just before each sentence, and that “breathy� delivery was a distraction until I got used to it. Her pacing was good, and she has enough skill as a voice artist to differentiate the characters.
From the book jacket - After the violent death of her father, sixteen-year-old Margo Crane takes to the Stark River in her grandfather’s rowboat, with only a few supplies and a biography of her hero Annie Oakley, in search of her mother. But the river, Margo’s childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a young woman traveling alone, and she must be strong to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her.
My reactions
I hardly know what to write about this novel. Very early on I was disturbed by Margo and the adults around her � or should I say the adult who was NOT around her, specifically her mother. I wanted to hug her and keep her safe and warm. And then I wanted to shake her till her teeth rattled. I was distressed by her circumstances, her poor choices, her acting out (specifically when it came to men), her apparent lack of any sort of moral compass. And yet � she is a compelling character and I couldn’t just turn away from her.
Still, this is no Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s central character had a certain innocence about him, and Margo seems to lack innocence. This is no mere adventure, her very survival depends on her ability to make a go of it. I had to keep reminding myself about how young she is; even Campbell keeps reminding the reader of Margo’s real age. The ending is both hopeful and heart-breaking.
Susan Bennett does a fine job narrating the audio version. She has a tendency to draw an audible breath just before each sentence, and that “breathy� delivery was a distraction until I got used to it. Her pacing was good, and she has enough skill as a voice artist to differentiate the characters.
October 9, 2014
Too much cussing for me and about 1/3 of the way through I realized it was one of those books where everything terrible that could happen to the main character would happen, and it would leave me depressed for days. I don't really care for those type of books. So I'm not going to finish it. Maybe there are people who like this sort of book, and like to walk around depressed, contemplating how everything terrible could happen to one person. I don't. I prefer to imagine that some good things can happen sometimes.
December 4, 2013
The wonder of “Once Upon a River� is how fresh and weathered it seems at the same time. Ardently turning these pages, I felt as though I’d been waiting for this book and yet somehow already knew it. After her critically acclaimed collection of short stories, “American Salvage,� Bonnie Jo Campbell has built her new novel like a modern-day craftsman from the old timbers of our national myths about loners living off the land, rugged tales as perilous as they are alluring. Without sacrificing any of its originality, this story comes bearing the saw marks of classic American literature, the rough-hewn sister of “The Leatherstocking Tales,� “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn� and “Walden.�
The scene opens in the early 1980s in a small town that’s slowly losing its biggest employer, a metal-fabricating plant yoked to the collapsing Michigan economy. Campbell, who lives near Kalamazoo and seems entirely capable of castrating a pig or changing the spark plugs on her truck, has been writing about tough people in rural communities for years. Though most of this novel stays out in the woods, she knows how to suggest the malaise and desperation in town � the abandoned homes, the minimum-wage jobs, the fertilizer diverted to meth. But the collapse of manufacturing also holds the promise of giving the natural world a reprieve: As the metal plant shuts down, the chemical discharge into the Stark River diminishes, too.
That river is the real home of Campbell’s unforgettable heroine, a quiet young woman named Margo Crane, who seems to have slipped back in time almost 200 years. She’s a poor, distant relative of the late founder of the town’s dying metal plant. She knows how to handle a boat, and she can skin a deer and cook up the squirrels she shoots with startling accuracy. Entirely uninterested in school or other teens� giddy pursuits, she owns only one book, a biography of Annie Oakley, and her only goal is to live by the water and take care of someone who loves her. But that simple plan is wrecked by her own untouched beauty, which catches the eyes of several malevolent, weak and cowardly men.
In the first chapter, when Margo has just turned 15, her uncle rapes her in a shed and, when caught in the act, claims his pretty niece seduced him. That assault, ignored by her embarrassed family, eventually leads to another violent confrontation that sends Margo up the Stark River on her grandfather’s boat. She has vague plans of finding her mother, but mostly she wants to live in peace, eating what she can catch and sleeping where she can, outside the range of the law, school or social workers.
In Campbell’s crisp, verdant prose, this errand in the wilderness is quiet but intense. Looking like an angel but smelling like a rutting buck, Margo is the cover girl Field & Stream can only dream of, a throwback to a frontier character civilized out of existence. When she takes down a deer too big for her to carry, for instance, “she got the idea finally to crawl headfirst beneath the creature’s torso. She wiggled beneath the body in the cold mud until she was squeezed on her belly all the way under the deer. She smelled its musk and urine, she smelled blood and earth and moss and sweat, felt its warm weight on her neck and back. When the deer was on her and the mud was in her nose, inside her jacket, down her pants, and in her socks, she thought she would smother.�.�.�. She gathered all her strength, lifted her head up under the deer’s chin, and slowly raised her body.�
Tough as this young woman is, her survival is never guaranteed as she falls in with men who love her and men who abuse her. (And yes, they’re sometimes the same men.) You can’t help but share Margo’s raw hope each time she moves on, a little more wary, trying to figure out how to live. “She would count on no one to help or protect her,� Margo thinks, but wise as that decision may be � and it’s confirmed by her horrible experiences � it’s ultimately too lonely. In one of her darkest moments, she realizes that she had “let herself become a person who was no longer connected to other people.� Back on the water after another betrayal, “she climbed onto the boat’s back seat beside her rifle and curled there and thought about how nice it was to float, to let the river guide her.�
Margo may be paddling in the wake of Natty Bumppo, Huck Finn and Henry David Thoreau, but unlike those asexual heroes of the American wilderness, she’s a sexually active woman, which complicates our myth of the rugged woodsman considerably. It’s not long on her journey before “Margo had the feeling that her newly shaped body had a power that she needed to keep secret.� This is, after all, a story predicated on sexual violence, and when she can, Margo strikes back at one of her assailants in a singularly appropriate way. But what place is there � even in the wilds of Michigan � for a young woman who dares to live on her own and enjoy her own body? “Was it her worn jeans that made the woman call her freak?� Margo wonders. “Her worn Carhartt jacket? Was it her dark, heavy rowboat with its splintery oars? Or her gun visible on the back seat? Or was she a freak, plain and simple, a wolf girl, an aberration?�
In a hundred different ways, Margo hears that she’s not right, that she’s not acceptable, that her experience on the river can’t last. A Native American man who sleeps with her tells her, “You can’t get ahead in this life if you don’t finish school,� but Margo cuts right to the problem: “I don’t want to get ahead. What’s so great about getting ahead?�
For many chapters this is a sad, harrowing story, but Campbell doesn’t leave us there. Margo’s hushed voice is so pure, her spirit so indomitable, that you’ll yearn for her to find the freedom she craves, along with a stretch of clean water. “Once Upon a River� makes you realize with a stab of regret just how cramped and homogeneous our lives and our expectations of others are. I hope Margo’s out there somewhere skinning a catfish and cooking it on a hickory stick. It’s a hard life, to be sure, but this novel is a celebration of that possibility and its brutal costs.
The scene opens in the early 1980s in a small town that’s slowly losing its biggest employer, a metal-fabricating plant yoked to the collapsing Michigan economy. Campbell, who lives near Kalamazoo and seems entirely capable of castrating a pig or changing the spark plugs on her truck, has been writing about tough people in rural communities for years. Though most of this novel stays out in the woods, she knows how to suggest the malaise and desperation in town � the abandoned homes, the minimum-wage jobs, the fertilizer diverted to meth. But the collapse of manufacturing also holds the promise of giving the natural world a reprieve: As the metal plant shuts down, the chemical discharge into the Stark River diminishes, too.
That river is the real home of Campbell’s unforgettable heroine, a quiet young woman named Margo Crane, who seems to have slipped back in time almost 200 years. She’s a poor, distant relative of the late founder of the town’s dying metal plant. She knows how to handle a boat, and she can skin a deer and cook up the squirrels she shoots with startling accuracy. Entirely uninterested in school or other teens� giddy pursuits, she owns only one book, a biography of Annie Oakley, and her only goal is to live by the water and take care of someone who loves her. But that simple plan is wrecked by her own untouched beauty, which catches the eyes of several malevolent, weak and cowardly men.
In the first chapter, when Margo has just turned 15, her uncle rapes her in a shed and, when caught in the act, claims his pretty niece seduced him. That assault, ignored by her embarrassed family, eventually leads to another violent confrontation that sends Margo up the Stark River on her grandfather’s boat. She has vague plans of finding her mother, but mostly she wants to live in peace, eating what she can catch and sleeping where she can, outside the range of the law, school or social workers.
In Campbell’s crisp, verdant prose, this errand in the wilderness is quiet but intense. Looking like an angel but smelling like a rutting buck, Margo is the cover girl Field & Stream can only dream of, a throwback to a frontier character civilized out of existence. When she takes down a deer too big for her to carry, for instance, “she got the idea finally to crawl headfirst beneath the creature’s torso. She wiggled beneath the body in the cold mud until she was squeezed on her belly all the way under the deer. She smelled its musk and urine, she smelled blood and earth and moss and sweat, felt its warm weight on her neck and back. When the deer was on her and the mud was in her nose, inside her jacket, down her pants, and in her socks, she thought she would smother.�.�.�. She gathered all her strength, lifted her head up under the deer’s chin, and slowly raised her body.�
Tough as this young woman is, her survival is never guaranteed as she falls in with men who love her and men who abuse her. (And yes, they’re sometimes the same men.) You can’t help but share Margo’s raw hope each time she moves on, a little more wary, trying to figure out how to live. “She would count on no one to help or protect her,� Margo thinks, but wise as that decision may be � and it’s confirmed by her horrible experiences � it’s ultimately too lonely. In one of her darkest moments, she realizes that she had “let herself become a person who was no longer connected to other people.� Back on the water after another betrayal, “she climbed onto the boat’s back seat beside her rifle and curled there and thought about how nice it was to float, to let the river guide her.�
Margo may be paddling in the wake of Natty Bumppo, Huck Finn and Henry David Thoreau, but unlike those asexual heroes of the American wilderness, she’s a sexually active woman, which complicates our myth of the rugged woodsman considerably. It’s not long on her journey before “Margo had the feeling that her newly shaped body had a power that she needed to keep secret.� This is, after all, a story predicated on sexual violence, and when she can, Margo strikes back at one of her assailants in a singularly appropriate way. But what place is there � even in the wilds of Michigan � for a young woman who dares to live on her own and enjoy her own body? “Was it her worn jeans that made the woman call her freak?� Margo wonders. “Her worn Carhartt jacket? Was it her dark, heavy rowboat with its splintery oars? Or her gun visible on the back seat? Or was she a freak, plain and simple, a wolf girl, an aberration?�
In a hundred different ways, Margo hears that she’s not right, that she’s not acceptable, that her experience on the river can’t last. A Native American man who sleeps with her tells her, “You can’t get ahead in this life if you don’t finish school,� but Margo cuts right to the problem: “I don’t want to get ahead. What’s so great about getting ahead?�
For many chapters this is a sad, harrowing story, but Campbell doesn’t leave us there. Margo’s hushed voice is so pure, her spirit so indomitable, that you’ll yearn for her to find the freedom she craves, along with a stretch of clean water. “Once Upon a River� makes you realize with a stab of regret just how cramped and homogeneous our lives and our expectations of others are. I hope Margo’s out there somewhere skinning a catfish and cooking it on a hickory stick. It’s a hard life, to be sure, but this novel is a celebration of that possibility and its brutal costs.
August 10, 2011
Well, I marathon read this book--it's a quick read, full of interesting descriptions of river life, landscape, skinning critters, boating, and bad parents. Okay, mostly one bad parent and a lot of questionable men. This is, in many ways, a typical coming of age story, but is deepened by the way Campbell writes of Margo's connection to the river and the river life. Margo is a complex character--both silent and raging all at once. She is relatively self-sufficient when it comes to many areas of her daily life, but is constantly being taken in and used, abused, misunderstood by men. Most of these men want to change her--mold her--or they want to change themselves because of her. This is true with ever signle relationship she has in the book--including the one she has with her father, and the one with Smoke at the end (which may have been written to be the exception, but really wasn't).
I like Campbell's writing style and would read more by her; however, I think the story that this novel was based on ("Family Reunion" in American Salvage) was nearly perfect and some of that strength was lost in the change of structure--at least it was for me.
I like Campbell's writing style and would read more by her; however, I think the story that this novel was based on ("Family Reunion" in American Salvage) was nearly perfect and some of that strength was lost in the change of structure--at least it was for me.
May 1, 2012
Growing up on a river is a completely distinctive type of childhood that is difficult to describe to even the closest friends and lovers. I was personally lucky enough to have lived almost two decades alongside the "Mighty Niagara", and can still feel the water's force and movement rushing relentlessly past my body and legs, swimming at nearly full force just to stay in one place. I have rowboated, motorboated, kayaked, sailed, jetskied, waterskied, swam, ice-skated, fished, tubed, and ice berg hopped on that river. I fell through the ice during 3 separate winters. There were days when the factory dumped their chemical poisons and the dead fish bodies and smells demanded full attention and sympathy. I've lived through several floods on that river, even being rescue carried from my home to safety by stoic volunteers in chest waders. When those same flood waters froze several acres of my backyard, I happily strapped on my skates and glided over the tiny frozen fish bubbled in the ice. My brother pulled monster muskies out of that river and nailed their decapitated heads to a tree so the empty eyes and gaping mouths greeted everyone who drove the 1/4 mile or so of dirt road to the house. Sitting on a picnic bench by the water's edge, I silently watched coast guards dragging for bodies, and on one deceptively serene Sunday afternoon I watched a man drown while attempting to swim 50 yards from his boat to nearby Strawberry Island.
I certainly cannot write a river story with the elegance of Bonnie Jo Campbell. I wouldn't even dare to try.
I certainly cannot write a river story with the elegance of Bonnie Jo Campbell. I wouldn't even dare to try.
July 26, 2013
This story centers around Margo Crane, a teenage girl with a terribly dysfunctional family.
Margo spent her childhood learning how to hunt from her devoted father and grandfather and her gun becomes her most important possession. When her mother abandons her in the midst of her adolescence and her father is subsequently killed as a result of a family feud, Margo relies on her hunting skills and a host of men to survive on her own. Although the book takes place in the late twentieth century, it is a little hard to believe that a young teenage girl could survive as Margo does. The plot does make the story interesting and Margo's hunting and survival skills are impressive. I can't say that I like Margo though, and I certainly decided from the beginning of the book, that she would end up pregnant and on public assistance. You will have to read it for yourself to see if my supposition was correct!
Margo spent her childhood learning how to hunt from her devoted father and grandfather and her gun becomes her most important possession. When her mother abandons her in the midst of her adolescence and her father is subsequently killed as a result of a family feud, Margo relies on her hunting skills and a host of men to survive on her own. Although the book takes place in the late twentieth century, it is a little hard to believe that a young teenage girl could survive as Margo does. The plot does make the story interesting and Margo's hunting and survival skills are impressive. I can't say that I like Margo though, and I certainly decided from the beginning of the book, that she would end up pregnant and on public assistance. You will have to read it for yourself to see if my supposition was correct!
February 10, 2012
This book is the epitome of what I do not like about contemporary literature. Lots of dreadful people doing positively horrible things to each other. I guess it's supposed to be brilliant because the main character is a woman who behaves a particularly brutish, violent way regularly. (In fairness, she is usually acting in self defense, and she doesn't have a lot of other options.) No one in the this book ever aspires to be better or seek for more than the rotten, violent, disgusting world they inhabit. I read the first 50 pages and skimmed the rest because it was so depressing. The quality of the writing and the descriptions are good.
January 18, 2014
This was a book I enjoyed more the longer it went on. At first I found it difficult to warm to Margo, and some of the choices she makes. But towards the end I was rooting for a happy ending. This felt very much like a companion piece to Willy Vlautin's Lean On Pete, a similarly plaintive tale of a boys daily struggles for food, warmth, shelter and love, following the death of a less than perfect father, and absence of a self centered mother. This would make a great book club read, as there are many discussions to be had here regarding the need to feel loved, and the struggle to be true to your self, whilst not letting down others.
Well worth a read, but not as essential as I had hoped.
Well worth a read, but not as essential as I had hoped.
February 7, 2021
This book tells the story of a young teenage girl who through tragic events and misunderstandings finds herself on the run. She is an excellent shooter and knows how to survive in the wild. For a vegan reader like me and a deep respect for the damage guns can cause, this book was a challenge because of many hunting scenes, the detailed descriptions of preparations of meat ready to be cooked over a fire, the tense moments when Margo, the main character, has to use her rifle or knife to defend herself.
However, I found her story incredibly gripping, fascinating and written in an addictive flow that leads the reader from one action to another and carries the plot along like the winding river this story is also based on. Highly recommended!
However, I found her story incredibly gripping, fascinating and written in an addictive flow that leads the reader from one action to another and carries the plot along like the winding river this story is also based on. Highly recommended!
January 7, 2024
I loved this book, and not just because I got it from a precious friend! But I must admit, something she said ( that I'm similar to Margo) made me read the book very thoroughly!
Margo is a girl who is victimised by several men, raped, treated badly, exploited and for a long time she wanders from one bad relationship(if one wants to call it like that) to the next.
To cope with her experiences she shots - and she is a brilliant shooter! And she loves her rifle... and that was the first time where I could see the similarity.(The victimisation too,of course.)
Margo tries to figure out how she wants to live and she finds out in the end, she matures,she knows what she wants and she is able to defend herself and to reflect on her actions!
Margo can kill, not just animals, which she can also skin, gut and cut! I admire that, because I know what it means. She lives very simple, just needs the basic things to be happy and satisfied and I admire that too!
What makes Margo so lovable for me, is that she is not at all complicated and spoiled, her feelings are honest, her thoughts are very coherent and she concentrates on the important things.
I wish I could meet her and I wonder if we would like each other!
I can imagine a lot of critisizm on this book: that Margo just relies on men, that she "jumps" from bed to bed, that this is not an adventurous river journey of an strong and independant girl (as the cover suggests), but the journey of a young girl who tries to find herself.
This is right, but I believe that is how the world for many young girls still is, that it is reality, that girls are raped, exploited, live in a men's world and are brought up to concentrate on men,Margo is no exception! But she has an inner guide to lead her the right way and she is able to use her exceptional skills to survive in life!
Margo is a girl who is victimised by several men, raped, treated badly, exploited and for a long time she wanders from one bad relationship(if one wants to call it like that) to the next.
To cope with her experiences she shots - and she is a brilliant shooter! And she loves her rifle... and that was the first time where I could see the similarity.(The victimisation too,of course.)
Margo tries to figure out how she wants to live and she finds out in the end, she matures,she knows what she wants and she is able to defend herself and to reflect on her actions!
Margo can kill, not just animals, which she can also skin, gut and cut! I admire that, because I know what it means. She lives very simple, just needs the basic things to be happy and satisfied and I admire that too!
What makes Margo so lovable for me, is that she is not at all complicated and spoiled, her feelings are honest, her thoughts are very coherent and she concentrates on the important things.
I wish I could meet her and I wonder if we would like each other!
I can imagine a lot of critisizm on this book: that Margo just relies on men, that she "jumps" from bed to bed, that this is not an adventurous river journey of an strong and independant girl (as the cover suggests), but the journey of a young girl who tries to find herself.
This is right, but I believe that is how the world for many young girls still is, that it is reality, that girls are raped, exploited, live in a men's world and are brought up to concentrate on men,Margo is no exception! But she has an inner guide to lead her the right way and she is able to use her exceptional skills to survive in life!
May 25, 2012
This is a book about a teenage girl in 1980's rural Michigan who is raised alongside a river and doesn't really have much of a family. Unpleasant events occur, and she ends up a drifter, living on the river, shooting animals for food, and both being attracted to and repelled by other people.
I can't decide how I felt about this book. Some parts I found mesmerizing, some boring. In some ways I liked trying to get inside her head and could relate to her, and in others I really couldn't (even if I weren't a vegetarian, I just didn't get why she was obsessed with shooting deer. And her interest in guns and shooting in general was dull to me).
I did really enjoy the big questions about nature vs. nurture that this book spawned in my mind--was this truly a wild child at heart, or was she made that way? I truly couldn't answer that question for myself although it was fascinating to think about. There's a really interesting scene where she finally visits her long-lost mother, and the mother is in some ways a very "typical" type of housewife in the 1980's (wears a lot of makeup, starves herself thin, doesn't really relate to her husband, is clearly married for the financial benefits it brings her), but the daughter just cannot be swayed to be more like her mother at all, even though she idealizes her. Instead she, wild child that she is, has to go sleep outside by a fire because she just can't stand sleeping indoors. A far cry from makeup and materialism.
It was at least partially interesting, and I thought the writing was very good. It appealed to my sense of adventure and wanderlust.
I can't decide how I felt about this book. Some parts I found mesmerizing, some boring. In some ways I liked trying to get inside her head and could relate to her, and in others I really couldn't (even if I weren't a vegetarian, I just didn't get why she was obsessed with shooting deer. And her interest in guns and shooting in general was dull to me).
I did really enjoy the big questions about nature vs. nurture that this book spawned in my mind--was this truly a wild child at heart, or was she made that way? I truly couldn't answer that question for myself although it was fascinating to think about. There's a really interesting scene where she finally visits her long-lost mother, and the mother is in some ways a very "typical" type of housewife in the 1980's (wears a lot of makeup, starves herself thin, doesn't really relate to her husband, is clearly married for the financial benefits it brings her), but the daughter just cannot be swayed to be more like her mother at all, even though she idealizes her. Instead she, wild child that she is, has to go sleep outside by a fire because she just can't stand sleeping indoors. A far cry from makeup and materialism.
It was at least partially interesting, and I thought the writing was very good. It appealed to my sense of adventure and wanderlust.
July 25, 2011
3 1/2 There were many things I liked about this novel, her descriptions of all the animals and plants along the river were wonderful, the 16 yr. old character's love for the river and the many characters she meets living along the river. Yet I felt a disconnect from her, it was like she was watching herself experience things but not really taking part or something like that. I did, however, love the ending. It was very fitting and one of the best endings of the books I have read lately.
February 14, 2020
Que gran novela y que gran personaje nos ofrece Bonnie Jo Campbell con la indómita Margo Crane! Una historia fascinante, dura y bella. Una historia que fluye magistralmente y nos arrastra inevitablemente por una historia que mezcla de forma genial la aventura, el nature writing y el desarrollo emocional de Margo Crane. Una lectura inolvidable que, como broche de oro, ha coincido con la presencia de Bonnie Jo Campbell en la edición de este año de BCNegra y haber podido conocerla y charlar con ella.
September 21, 2013
"The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane's heart."
Odysseus was a legendary and cunning hero on a journey to find home, and lived by his guile. Annie Oakley was a sharpshooter with an epic aim, living by her wits. Siddhartha traveled on a spiritual quest to find himself, and defined the river by its timelessness--always changing, always the same. Now, in Bonnie Jo Campbell's adventure story, we are introduced to sixteen-year-old Margo Crane, a gutsy, feisty survivor who manifests a flawed blend of all three heroes, who lives once and inexorably upon a river.
Raised on the Stark River by throwback hicks (some who are rich) in rural Murrayville, Michigan, Margo can shoot and skin a buck, fish like Papa Hemingway, and fire a bullet clean through a rabbit's eye. She's a free spirit, a river sprite, a dog lover, an oarswoman and a woodcutter. Her heroine is Annie Oakley, a renowned figure that she hopes to embody.
A series of incidents in Margo's young life cause her to run away. Her beloved grandfather dies, and her mother--who never adapted to the river life--abandons the family. At fifteen, Margo is raped by her Uncle Cal, but is more perplexed than traumatized when it happens.
"Rape sounded like a quick and violent act, like making a person empty her wallet at the point of a knife, like shooting someone or stealing a TV. What Cal had done was gentler, more personal, like passing a virus."
It takes a year for Margo to comprehend that she was violated; circumstances eventually culminate in a baroque twist on a Mexican standoff--with one dead body, one tip-shot pecker, and one pissed off family. She quits school, grabs her Marlin .22, boards her rowboat, and heads up river with her mother's address found under her father's bed. She is determined to reunite with her mother and forge a new life.
Margo likes to hear the water rustle against the rocks; sleep under a canopy of stars; watch the pink dawn of the sky; listen to whip-poor-wills call from the trees; and count blue herons as they wade in the river. But her journey is tangled by an undertow of complications, a ripple effect of the sand and silt and muddiness she brought with her from Murrayville and continues to accumulate. Margo has a ripe sexuality, a flood of pheromones and hormones coursing through the channels of her body like a tidal wave. As she paddles upstream, she bounces from one man to the next, (lying about her age), leaving a wake of misadventures at each stop, with minimal contemplation between disasters. With each imbroglio, she unwittingly tugs at the past, pulling it into the present and future, like floating debris that follows along.
The reader is enticed to root for Margo, but I was turned off by her attraction to losers and drunks and skeptical of extremes in her nature. The commando girl power was redundant--she was a superwoman of courage and resolve, and when it was favorable, she would vulnerably depend on the kindness of strangers, who appeared at convenient times. She also inflicts some irreparable damage to a menacing one-eye-blind man from the recent past--his brute strength was reminiscent of the Cyclops in the Odyssey--and then wipes her hands of it with too much nonchalance.
The adventures lack variety or surprise--Margo's marvel trick shots often gild the lily, and whatever a grown man can do, she can do better. Her noble relationship with Smoke, an elderly, smelly, chain-smoking, wheelchair-bound hermit with emphysema, is supposed to be the pinnacle of the story, but it reeked of authorial manipulation. Margos' beneficence is obviously meant to offset her other transgressions, which only calls attention to the incredulity of this relationship. When she climbs in bed (platonically) and sleeps with Smoke as an act of virtuous love, it came off as orchestrated. Smoke ultimately became a plot/story device, rewarding Margo with the right things at the right time.
Despite the obvious flaws, Campbell's story is a page-turner. Her prose is warm, rollicking, and natural. She conveys a spiritual power to the river and surrounding environs, massaging the narrative with the raw power of nature. Margo is earthy, plucky, and engaging, a passionate heroine with a physical, sensual nature and double-barrel gaze. The loose ends in this story imply that a series is in the works, or a follow-up novel.
Odysseus was a legendary and cunning hero on a journey to find home, and lived by his guile. Annie Oakley was a sharpshooter with an epic aim, living by her wits. Siddhartha traveled on a spiritual quest to find himself, and defined the river by its timelessness--always changing, always the same. Now, in Bonnie Jo Campbell's adventure story, we are introduced to sixteen-year-old Margo Crane, a gutsy, feisty survivor who manifests a flawed blend of all three heroes, who lives once and inexorably upon a river.
Raised on the Stark River by throwback hicks (some who are rich) in rural Murrayville, Michigan, Margo can shoot and skin a buck, fish like Papa Hemingway, and fire a bullet clean through a rabbit's eye. She's a free spirit, a river sprite, a dog lover, an oarswoman and a woodcutter. Her heroine is Annie Oakley, a renowned figure that she hopes to embody.
A series of incidents in Margo's young life cause her to run away. Her beloved grandfather dies, and her mother--who never adapted to the river life--abandons the family. At fifteen, Margo is raped by her Uncle Cal, but is more perplexed than traumatized when it happens.
"Rape sounded like a quick and violent act, like making a person empty her wallet at the point of a knife, like shooting someone or stealing a TV. What Cal had done was gentler, more personal, like passing a virus."
It takes a year for Margo to comprehend that she was violated; circumstances eventually culminate in a baroque twist on a Mexican standoff--with one dead body, one tip-shot pecker, and one pissed off family. She quits school, grabs her Marlin .22, boards her rowboat, and heads up river with her mother's address found under her father's bed. She is determined to reunite with her mother and forge a new life.
Margo likes to hear the water rustle against the rocks; sleep under a canopy of stars; watch the pink dawn of the sky; listen to whip-poor-wills call from the trees; and count blue herons as they wade in the river. But her journey is tangled by an undertow of complications, a ripple effect of the sand and silt and muddiness she brought with her from Murrayville and continues to accumulate. Margo has a ripe sexuality, a flood of pheromones and hormones coursing through the channels of her body like a tidal wave. As she paddles upstream, she bounces from one man to the next, (lying about her age), leaving a wake of misadventures at each stop, with minimal contemplation between disasters. With each imbroglio, she unwittingly tugs at the past, pulling it into the present and future, like floating debris that follows along.
The reader is enticed to root for Margo, but I was turned off by her attraction to losers and drunks and skeptical of extremes in her nature. The commando girl power was redundant--she was a superwoman of courage and resolve, and when it was favorable, she would vulnerably depend on the kindness of strangers, who appeared at convenient times. She also inflicts some irreparable damage to a menacing one-eye-blind man from the recent past--his brute strength was reminiscent of the Cyclops in the Odyssey--and then wipes her hands of it with too much nonchalance.
The adventures lack variety or surprise--Margo's marvel trick shots often gild the lily, and whatever a grown man can do, she can do better. Her noble relationship with Smoke, an elderly, smelly, chain-smoking, wheelchair-bound hermit with emphysema, is supposed to be the pinnacle of the story, but it reeked of authorial manipulation. Margos' beneficence is obviously meant to offset her other transgressions, which only calls attention to the incredulity of this relationship. When she climbs in bed (platonically) and sleeps with Smoke as an act of virtuous love, it came off as orchestrated. Smoke ultimately became a plot/story device, rewarding Margo with the right things at the right time.
Despite the obvious flaws, Campbell's story is a page-turner. Her prose is warm, rollicking, and natural. She conveys a spiritual power to the river and surrounding environs, massaging the narrative with the raw power of nature. Margo is earthy, plucky, and engaging, a passionate heroine with a physical, sensual nature and double-barrel gaze. The loose ends in this story imply that a series is in the works, or a follow-up novel.
December 14, 2019
Margo Crane is a teenager living in a tight-knit community of rural folk clustered along the banks of the Stark River, a fictional tributary of the real Kalamazoo River that flows through southwest Michigan and empties into Lake Michigan on the west side of the state. Margo's stubborn behaviors, habitual silence, and her sharpshooting skills do not make her hard life any easier. The Murrays, Margo's extended family, live directly across the river. Although they don't officially claim her or her father (her father was the illegitimate son of Margo's grandfather and his mistress) Margo and her father are invited to family gatherings, and Margo spends a lot of time with her grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Margo's uncle is a sexual predator and events unfold in a way that leaves Margo fatherless and without any familial support. She decides that instead of waiting for child welfare authorities to come and take custody of her, she will strike out in her canoe and travel down the Stark River, in search of her mother. Margo's travel along the river becomes an odyssey of self-discovery. The reader follows her on the journey and learns whether Margo finds a place for herself in the world that is a place she wants to be.
Campbell may have invented the names of the some of the towns and rivers in her book, but a large portion of the story is accurately representative of real places, subcultures, and historical events in Michigan. For example, in the book, the toxic sludge from the fictional metal-fabricating plant that is emptied into the fictional Stark River is reminiscent of the actual toxins (PCBs) released into the Kalamazoo River during de-inking operations by southwest Michigan paper mills. (FYI and as an aside, the Kalamazoo River has been identified as a site of environmental contamination by a Michigan environmental protection act, and is currently part of a restoration program managed by the state and the U.S. EPA).
The majority of the river people in this story are hard and sometimes cruel. They are extremely knowledgeable in survival and homesteading skills, but ignorant and uneducated in the commonly accepted understanding of the words.
This book! I started out reading it with a bit of reluctant interest. The first third of the book was so full of awful things happening to Margo, and her questionable or unhealthy reactions, that I was mildly repulsed. As I kept reading I became more invested in the story and realized that part of my negative reaction was that I recognized some of those behaviors and didn't want to think about it!
Bonnie Jo Campbell is a talent and has captured a certain subculture of Michigan so well that it's almost painful for a fellow resident of Michigan (me) to read. It's a raw, brutally honest, beautiful book. I read an article describing Bonnie Jo Campbell as a writer of rural noir, and I think that fits.
Margo's uncle is a sexual predator and events unfold in a way that leaves Margo fatherless and without any familial support. She decides that instead of waiting for child welfare authorities to come and take custody of her, she will strike out in her canoe and travel down the Stark River, in search of her mother. Margo's travel along the river becomes an odyssey of self-discovery. The reader follows her on the journey and learns whether Margo finds a place for herself in the world that is a place she wants to be.
Campbell may have invented the names of the some of the towns and rivers in her book, but a large portion of the story is accurately representative of real places, subcultures, and historical events in Michigan. For example, in the book, the toxic sludge from the fictional metal-fabricating plant that is emptied into the fictional Stark River is reminiscent of the actual toxins (PCBs) released into the Kalamazoo River during de-inking operations by southwest Michigan paper mills. (FYI and as an aside, the Kalamazoo River has been identified as a site of environmental contamination by a Michigan environmental protection act, and is currently part of a restoration program managed by the state and the U.S. EPA).
The majority of the river people in this story are hard and sometimes cruel. They are extremely knowledgeable in survival and homesteading skills, but ignorant and uneducated in the commonly accepted understanding of the words.
This book! I started out reading it with a bit of reluctant interest. The first third of the book was so full of awful things happening to Margo, and her questionable or unhealthy reactions, that I was mildly repulsed. As I kept reading I became more invested in the story and realized that part of my negative reaction was that I recognized some of those behaviors and didn't want to think about it!
Bonnie Jo Campbell is a talent and has captured a certain subculture of Michigan so well that it's almost painful for a fellow resident of Michigan (me) to read. It's a raw, brutally honest, beautiful book. I read an article describing Bonnie Jo Campbell as a writer of rural noir, and I think that fits.
August 23, 2011
When I initially started with GR, I tended to primarily list the books I'd read and loved in 62 years, and, because I loved them, most of them got 5 stars. I've become much more discerning over the past couple of years, but believe me, this book deserves more than 5 stars. I hope this one gets the Booker-Mann, the Pulitzer, or some sort of astonishing award - it's that good.
This is a rare jewel. It's a story that American writers seem to be particularly good at: books that convey a strong sense of place. In a way, this could be seen as a modern "Huckleberry Finn" - except that the main character is a girl. Margo was born on the river, and has lived her life in a true throw-back type of community. Margo's hero of all times is Little Annie Oakley, Miss Sure-Shot. Because Margo is quite a sure-shot herself. She roams up and down the river in an old teak boat that she inherited from her grandfather, shooting "critters" either for food or fur. In one of the most memorable of all the scenes in the book, Margo meets an old man named Smoke, who is dying of lung cancer. He has a lovely little house boat that is anchored outside his little house. He hasn't used the boat for years, because he's in a wheelchair. Margo is at the end of her rope, having been raped, and recently discovered that she is pregnant. Her beautiful teak boat was stolen and destroyed by her cousin, so she's camping on the shores of her river. At any rate, when she offers to buy the old man's boat, he makes a bet with her. If she can shoot the ash off his cigarette, she can have the boat for a hundred dollars and the promise that she will kill him before his nieces manage to drag him off to a nursing home.
Margo, desperate, takes the bet. When she succeeds in this trick shot (which was a famous one for the real Annie Oakley,) the old man is crushed. He was so sure that she would miss and he wants desperately to die rather than go to the nursing home. The relationship that ensues between this two is only one of many people who touch Margo's life. The only constant to this girl is her River.
I couldn't recommend this book more highly - I just don't have the right words. It's unusual, and it's written so beautifully that one prays they'll never "make a movie" out it, because so much of the beauty lies in the author's words. You owe to yourself to read "Once Upon a River" - I can almost guarantee that it will win a prize of some sort, and remain a classic of literature.
This is a rare jewel. It's a story that American writers seem to be particularly good at: books that convey a strong sense of place. In a way, this could be seen as a modern "Huckleberry Finn" - except that the main character is a girl. Margo was born on the river, and has lived her life in a true throw-back type of community. Margo's hero of all times is Little Annie Oakley, Miss Sure-Shot. Because Margo is quite a sure-shot herself. She roams up and down the river in an old teak boat that she inherited from her grandfather, shooting "critters" either for food or fur. In one of the most memorable of all the scenes in the book, Margo meets an old man named Smoke, who is dying of lung cancer. He has a lovely little house boat that is anchored outside his little house. He hasn't used the boat for years, because he's in a wheelchair. Margo is at the end of her rope, having been raped, and recently discovered that she is pregnant. Her beautiful teak boat was stolen and destroyed by her cousin, so she's camping on the shores of her river. At any rate, when she offers to buy the old man's boat, he makes a bet with her. If she can shoot the ash off his cigarette, she can have the boat for a hundred dollars and the promise that she will kill him before his nieces manage to drag him off to a nursing home.
Margo, desperate, takes the bet. When she succeeds in this trick shot (which was a famous one for the real Annie Oakley,) the old man is crushed. He was so sure that she would miss and he wants desperately to die rather than go to the nursing home. The relationship that ensues between this two is only one of many people who touch Margo's life. The only constant to this girl is her River.
I couldn't recommend this book more highly - I just don't have the right words. It's unusual, and it's written so beautifully that one prays they'll never "make a movie" out it, because so much of the beauty lies in the author's words. You owe to yourself to read "Once Upon a River" - I can almost guarantee that it will win a prize of some sort, and remain a classic of literature.
November 6, 2011
Would it be enough to say, "This is a superb book. READ IT"? Because the reviews of this book made me want to NOT read it, but somehow the book lured me anyway. Essentially it's the story of a teen-age girl who is raped and abandoned and runs away from home to live by her wits -- her rifle, her ability to skin animals and catch fish and build fires, her knowledge of nature's power and its gifts. Mostly people who live by their wits in books lie and steal and eat out of dumpsters. This young girl does her share of stealing, out of sheer necessity; she takes a few hits of marijuana along the way and a sip or two of whiskey, but even though she ends up a pregnant high school drop-out, she is never a bummer. She is victimized, but she is not a victim. She learns from life the hard way, and she takes pleasure in caring for herself. And then there's all the stuff about nature. I'm not a fan of reading about nature, generally, even though I understand that writing about it is a sign of both virtue and higher consciousness. But nature in this novel is not just observed, it is lived. This is one of those books that can change your life because you enter into it so fully you feel as though you too are living on that river. And the pages turn and turn because of course, you want to know what happens to yourself. And for a day or two, after you finish Once Upon a River, you feel more appreciative of the ragged contours of your own life, even though it has very little to do with nature. You may never be able to shoot, skin, or cook anything you've shot or skinned over an open fire, but hell, at least you can recycle.
December 16, 2015
4 1/2 stars. A rather somber literary tale about a 17 year old girl from the backwoods of Michigan, where she lives hunting and fishing amidst her kin who live next to the Stark River. An unfortunate sexual encounter with her uncle leads to tragedy, and she runs off to live on her own down the river a short way, with an inherited teak boat. She's a very independent girl, a dead eye shot, and a bit of a mix between the storied Indian maiden (though she's white), Annie Oakley, and Huck Finn. She may be victimized and poor, but she's no victim, and she owns her own sexual identity. The novel details her emotional growth as she encounters and creates relationships with the visitors and residents in the rural areas alongside the river. Very nicely written and thoughtful, not very cheery, but wonderful characterization and sense of place. I could see it winning awards, it's so well written.
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