margaret_adams's review against another edition
Found this on a trip through Powell’s several months earlier; picked it up this week and ripped through it in a day, despite having to take deliberate pauses after each chapter. I wasn’t always sure about the transitions from chapter to chapter—it sometimes took paragraphs to understand who was narrating—but the completed-puzzle feeling of this novel as a whole was incredibly satisfying. I’ll be thinking about this one for weeks. I recommend this and look forward to Crutchfield's next novel.
bluepigeon's review
5.0
How to Catch a Coyote is the story of a family. An ordinary family, you could say, living in an ordinary town, with rather ordinary dysfunctionalities. You could use other words to describe these. You could use buzz words, troublesome words. But it's not just about those words. It's more than that. It's all of it.
The story is told through the point of view of a few of the main characters, even a supporting character or two get to voice their side. The writing and the story feels like Carver in short novel format. There is a sparseness to the language that lulls in repetition and allows the moments of brilliance radiate a sort of familiarity. It gets under the skin. It works its way around, like that splinter in Daniel's heel. Coyotes are ever present and they play an important role throughout without us (well, me) noticing. The chronology is well done; time slips back and forth as voices change, but it has a way of moving forward, a moving forward that is inevitable.
I am so glad I got this book on a whim one snowy day in Greenpoint (Word).
Recommended for fans of Raymond Carver and Tom Drury, and those who like to read about the small American town, coyotes, college essays, and, of course, rebellious older sisters.
The story is told through the point of view of a few of the main characters, even a supporting character or two get to voice their side. The writing and the story feels like Carver in short novel format. There is a sparseness to the language that lulls in repetition and allows the moments of brilliance radiate a sort of familiarity. It gets under the skin. It works its way around, like that splinter in Daniel's heel. Coyotes are ever present and they play an important role throughout without us (well, me) noticing. The chronology is well done; time slips back and forth as voices change, but it has a way of moving forward, a moving forward that is inevitable.
I am so glad I got this book on a whim one snowy day in Greenpoint (Word).
Recommended for fans of Raymond Carver and Tom Drury, and those who like to read about the small American town, coyotes, college essays, and, of course, rebellious older sisters.
daneekasghost's review
4.0
This wasn't an easy read for me. I had to sit down and think about it afterward. Not because the subject matter was disturbing or difficult, but the way the book was put together.
It's the story of a family, we're introduced to Daniel first, but there's also his mother, his father and his sister. The book moves back and forth in time, so I found myself often checking the timeline laid out in the first chapter to see what had happened and what had yet to happen.
The writing is straightforward, which managed to sneak up on me a little bit, because each section felt like I was getting it, and I was following everything. The family is poor and Daniel is going to be the first to finish college. The family has a history that's not helping in any way, all alluded to in the first chapter. The rest of the book carries us through all those events, and we get a real sense of all of these characters and how they struggle against those stumbling blocks.
I think the word I'm looking for is spare. The book is spare, but then you look back at it once you're done and it manages to add up to something that carries real weight.
It's the story of a family, we're introduced to Daniel first, but there's also his mother, his father and his sister. The book moves back and forth in time, so I found myself often checking the timeline laid out in the first chapter to see what had happened and what had yet to happen.
The writing is straightforward, which managed to sneak up on me a little bit, because each section felt like I was getting it, and I was following everything. The family is poor and Daniel is going to be the first to finish college. The family has a history that's not helping in any way, all alluded to in the first chapter. The rest of the book carries us through all those events, and we get a real sense of all of these characters and how they struggle against those stumbling blocks.
I think the word I'm looking for is spare. The book is spare, but then you look back at it once you're done and it manages to add up to something that carries real weight.
Spoiler
And then you get to the end and you realize that there are no chapters from the sister's point of view, even though she's the one that catalyzes most of the changes and events that got them here. This realization is what clicked a lot of what I liked about this book.
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