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A review by bawright1987
Pickard County Atlas by Chris Harding Thornton
2.0
BOOKS: 3: Okay, so this one was not my shot of whiskey. And I'm torn on how to review this. It's not that it's a bad story, I think it's simply one of those stories that hits a very personal raw nerve. Pickard County Atlas is set in a dusty town in Nebraska's Sandhills in the summer of 1979 and takes place over the course of a few days. It hones in on two families, each ripped apart by tragedy, whose paths come colliding together in one ultimate showdown.
Having grown up in a small town (which I hated and, I'll be honest, I have a large bias), I've read small-town stories that I absolutely adored (The Wolf Wants In by Laura McHugh comes immediately to mind and 100% recommend that!) so I can't even say for certain that's where my dislike comes from. I finished it, so it's at least a halfway engaging story. However, I felt the characters were all terrible; the only one I semi-liked was the matriarch of the Reddick clan and she doesn't even show up - and never speaks for herself - until the last twenty pages or so of the story. As is the case in most literary fiction I read, I didn't feel any of them were well-developed and in discussing their backstory, simple explanations were given for what were, in actuality, very traumatic events.
*SPOILER* And I suppose therein lies most of my dislike for this story. By the time all is revealed, it's simply a small-town WYSIWYG mystery. I was expecting twists at the end: that the secrets and the lies by omission were actually hiding something in the shadows. But no. The peppering of clues throughout only revealed some basic bitch, plain-as-day - albeit, odd - literary metaphor of death and the cycles of trauma that people, especially small town folks, seem doomed to repeat because big fish, little pond and all that.
Things I did like:
1. The setting. It's clear that Thornton knows her Nebraska. Thorton's a seventh-generation Nebraskan, and, in her writing, you can really sense the Sandhills, in all their dryness, in the middle of summer. It did make me appreciate my recent travels to western Nebraska so that I could visualize what the characters were seeing.
2. The characters. Right, okay, so I said I hated them all, and that's still true. But Thornton does an excellent job at showing what small town life is like. I'll be honest, I love the concept of a small town: the rural, slow, lifestyle, the "neighborhood watch" of looking out for one another and having each other's back. But that's a pretty piece of fiction, unlike any small town I've ever encountered. Instead of neighborly goodness you get malicious bullying, nosiness and gossip. And that's exactly what Thornton shows.
Having grown up in a small town (which I hated and, I'll be honest, I have a large bias), I've read small-town stories that I absolutely adored (The Wolf Wants In by Laura McHugh comes immediately to mind and 100% recommend that!) so I can't even say for certain that's where my dislike comes from. I finished it, so it's at least a halfway engaging story. However, I felt the characters were all terrible; the only one I semi-liked was the matriarch of the Reddick clan and she doesn't even show up - and never speaks for herself - until the last twenty pages or so of the story. As is the case in most literary fiction I read, I didn't feel any of them were well-developed and in discussing their backstory, simple explanations were given for what were, in actuality, very traumatic events.
*SPOILER* And I suppose therein lies most of my dislike for this story. By the time all is revealed, it's simply a small-town WYSIWYG mystery. I was expecting twists at the end: that the secrets and the lies by omission were actually hiding something in the shadows. But no. The peppering of clues throughout only revealed some basic bitch, plain-as-day - albeit, odd - literary metaphor of death and the cycles of trauma that people, especially small town folks, seem doomed to repeat because big fish, little pond and all that.
Things I did like:
1. The setting. It's clear that Thornton knows her Nebraska. Thorton's a seventh-generation Nebraskan, and, in her writing, you can really sense the Sandhills, in all their dryness, in the middle of summer. It did make me appreciate my recent travels to western Nebraska so that I could visualize what the characters were seeing.
2. The characters. Right, okay, so I said I hated them all, and that's still true. But Thornton does an excellent job at showing what small town life is like. I'll be honest, I love the concept of a small town: the rural, slow, lifestyle, the "neighborhood watch" of looking out for one another and having each other's back. But that's a pretty piece of fiction, unlike any small town I've ever encountered. Instead of neighborly goodness you get malicious bullying, nosiness and gossip. And that's exactly what Thornton shows.