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FY2019 /
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"Dave is fourteen years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood (or as Dave prefers to call it, like the Native Americans once did, Wy'east). He is entering high school, adulthood on the horizon not far off in distance, and contemplating a future away from his mother, father, and his precocious younger sister. And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms on Wy'east that summer. Martin, a pine marten (a small animal of the deep woods, of the otter/mink family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well. As Martin and Dave's paths cross on forest trails and rocky mountaintops, they and we witness the full, unknowable breadth and vast sweep of life, and the awe inspiring interconnectedness of the world and its many inhabitants, human and otherwise. Martin Marten is a coming of age tale like no other, told in Brian Doyle's joyous, rollicking style"--… (more)
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Martin Marten is a coming of age story, but so much more. The ages of the forest weave into the age of a boy; the timescapes and landscapes of man weave into those of the wild. Facts and figures and fun and fear and happiness all blend, and it’s not fantasy, but a kind of super-reality, that invites the reader to know how the world’s senses flow.
The author humanizes animals and humans in this novel, fitting us all together and giving us a place that’s convincingly called home—a place in a small community, with animals and nature close by, and friends and strangers sharing and twining their lives. It’s a wonderful book.
Disclosure: I read Mink River and I was eager to read more of Brian Doyle. I love his writing.
However, I have to say that I did find parts of this book offensive. I do believe that this author and I share a love for animals or he couldn’t have written so movingly about the affinity one species has with the other. But the book also contained rationalizations for the trapping of animals for their fur, such as when a trapper kills a fox, he saves the many animals that the fox would have killed. The animals are depicted as killers among themselves so why would it be any different for us to kill them. As for eating animals, the book states that humans are omnivorous mammals and that we have no choice in what we eat. There’s talk about how we must kill animals with respect and reverence for the life we’re taking. There’s even the statement that since vegetables are alive sentient beings, vegetarians kill them for food. All of this goes deeply against my personal beliefs.
It’s my hope that the parts of the book that deal with the death of the animals and depict beautiful creatures being strangled by wire traps will do its own work in readers’ hearts and minds. I do believe that it may very well have been the author’s intent to make those scenes especially vivid for just that purpose. After all, one of the main characters in the book is a marten and it’s his struggle for survival that’s one of the main components of the book. This is the first book I’ve read by this author and possibly others who have read more of his work would have better insight into his reasons for telling his story in this manner. But it’s a bit unclear to me what his intention is as the fur trapper was a very good man in every other way and seemed very confident in his right to kill animals for their fur. Only one young boy showed any objection to the trapping, calling it murder, but everyone else was very accepting of it. I can see this as a book that will open up much discussion and debate.
Though there were those sections that really got my hackles up, I still liked this book very much. That’s how beautiful and poetical it is. It will strike a chord with you on one page and then disturb you on the next. I truly did not want this book to end and wanted to stay awhile longer in the little hamlet of Zigzag. Several times throughout the book the author says “but that’s a story for another book” and I hope he means it.
I was given the opportunity to read this book by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Pope Francis would I am sure appreciate this book as it has so many features which fit in with Laudato Si'.
I found the characters likeable and of course at the end I wanted to know what happened to them. We find some pointers to that with Dave and Martin. There were similarities to Watership Down in that one always felt that some portentous event was hanging over Martin.
Mapping the world at different levels is a challenge this book throws up - this was Maria's specialty - how did the teachers at her school keep such a student engaged?
There's not really any plot. Good things happen and bad things happen, but ultimately everyone is kind and loving and nature is generous. Doyle writes with humor and empathy and a deep, deep appreciation of the variety and bounty of creation. I love Doyle's writing: he's full of kaleidoscopic lists.
This book is good for the soul. It's soothing and full of happiness and love.
If you are like me, and have wondered, from time to time, what it would be like to be an animal, or maybe a tree, this is a book for you. It's probably not a book for everyone, my daughter was dismayed to see that it doesn't have quotation marks, and is pretty gently plotted. A neighbor was unhappy at the violence in the book (nature, after all, being red in tooth and claw.). Another deficit in the book (IMO) is that everyone in the book is very good-hearted. People make mistakes, but there is not much in the way of mean-ness or selfishness here. Which is charming, but maybe not realistic?
However, the book has much to recommend it; lovely nature writing; wonderful quirky character, and a sweet philosophical narrative voice. Here is a piece of that voice, discussing a Marten who was tangential to this story:
"He will, for example, be hit by lightning and assumed to be dead but then rise up spitting and utterly alive as if by magic. He will briefly find himself atop a running horse, which is a remarkable story all by itself. He will be a rare and perhaps unique case of a Marten who learns to kill and eat porcupines after watching a fisher accomplish that potentially punturous and eminently painful task. He will father more kits than we could easily count if they were somehow piled wriggling in front of us in a seething mewling pile. He will die finally in an act of stunning courage in defense of his enduring love, a story which by itself you could write three books about, and by heavens what a terrific movie it would make. And he is only one of a million, no a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, than we could tell each other in a hundred years..... The fact is that the more stories we share about living beings, the more attentive we are to living beings, and perhaps the less willing we are to slaughter them and allow them to be slaughtered. That could be."