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17th out of 212 books
—
47 voters
Nickel Mountain
by
John Gardner
John Gardner's most poignant novel of improbable love.
At the heart of John Gardner's Nickel Mountain is an uncommon love story: when at 42, the obese, anxious and gentle Henry Soames marries seventeen-year-old Callie Wellswho is pregnant with the child of a local boyit is much more than years which define the gulf between them. But the beauty of this novel is the gradual...more
At the heart of John Gardner's Nickel Mountain is an uncommon love story: when at 42, the obese, anxious and gentle Henry Soames marries seventeen-year-old Callie Wellswho is pregnant with the child of a local boyit is much more than years which define the gulf between them. But the beauty of this novel is the gradual...more
Hardcover, 312 pages
Published
November 12th 1973
by Alfred A. Knopf
(first published 1973)
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I visited an old friend recently – John Gardner’s Nickel Mountain. I’ve been growing old waiting for the Gardner revival (the deceased literary novelist not likely to be confused with the living spy novelist John Gardner, although it bears mentioning), and was pleased to see October Light come back into print – a brilliant meta-novel fit to hold its own among the Lethems and Franzens and Safran Foers of today. Okay publishers: now it is time to reprint Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel, a more s...more
Believing that a novel should speak for itself, I usually recommend skipping introductions, however the William H. Gass introduction to Nickel Mountain is such a perfect gateway to both the book and its creator that I’d like to give it an additional five stars, for a total of ten. In a mere ten pages Gass has made me feel like I personally knew John Gardner and better understand the rather dogmatic times he had to create in.
Gass writes of Gardner: He caused to rise up like an enveloping vision...more
Gass writes of Gardner: He caused to rise up like an enveloping vision...more
I've just finished Nickel Mountain by John Gardner, one of those books where 'nothing' happens, just imagination at play on the characters' emotions. It's set in the Catskills which reads as very beautiful. Gardner is supposed to be one of those 'good' writers who are hard to read. I really like his prose, and this novel was accessible, like a soap opera with soul. It was particularly good on the difficult, compromised, disappointed and yet fulfilling ways in which people relate to one another....more
The plot is almost non-existent, and the characters failed to sustain my interest until the very end---in the interior monologues of George Loomis and William Freund---but by then it was too late. The relationship between Henry Soames and his teenage bride is never fully explored, even though the first half of the book is preoccupied almost exclusively with these two characters. The novel is set in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York which is one of the most scenic places in the eastern U...more
The writing is excellent. My introduction to Gardner's work was through his Becoming a Novelist book and then Grendel. Gardner's writing make me think.
The story of Henry Soames and Callie is so plain, and yet they live in a majestic setting. I suppose that's part of the point: look at the grandness of the world around these characters who really do not live lives worth noting. But don't most of us have such lives? And when we come to be at peace with ourselves (as Henry and Callie strive to do)...more
The story of Henry Soames and Callie is so plain, and yet they live in a majestic setting. I suppose that's part of the point: look at the grandness of the world around these characters who really do not live lives worth noting. But don't most of us have such lives? And when we come to be at peace with ourselves (as Henry and Callie strive to do)...more
After reading "On Becoming a Novelist", I was ready to snatch up anything Garnder had written. This was my first, and it just wasn't for me.
The story is a good one, but I think there is a lot of purple prose and wasted characters. The diner, while being an intricate center of the story, never really takes shape for me. It never moves past being just the diner, instead of this spot for out-of-towners and lost hope. Whatever, just not for me.
The story is a good one, but I think there is a lot of purple prose and wasted characters. The diner, while being an intricate center of the story, never really takes shape for me. It never moves past being just the diner, instead of this spot for out-of-towners and lost hope. Whatever, just not for me.
This is another 5-star book in my shelf.
Gardner not only preached superior writing but also excelled at the practice. I read this work with awe and wonder at what Mr. Gardner achieved with his prose. I agree with the Chicago Sun-Times reviewer who wrote: "There is enough life here for several novels." Mr. Gardner's prose is full of life. This is a wonderful American work by an American master.
Gardner not only preached superior writing but also excelled at the practice. I read this work with awe and wonder at what Mr. Gardner achieved with his prose. I agree with the Chicago Sun-Times reviewer who wrote: "There is enough life here for several novels." Mr. Gardner's prose is full of life. This is a wonderful American work by an American master.
I gave this a three star because I I love John Gardner's prose and attention to detail, but this one was a bastard to finish. It's a bad sign when you're rolling your eyes and trying to skip ahead in the last two chapters. In the end I felt like this was merely sentimental, with nothing to take from it except the usual "oh we suffer, and suffering is beautiful" cliche. I was disappointed.
This book is John Gardner's quiet lecture to those of us who too often need bombastic heroes and slavering villains in our morality tales. The hero is not very heroic, there is no villain, and indeed, there is not much of a plot. Just a story of ordinary people told in a very extraordinary way.
When I first read this book, as a college freshman in 1982, it moved me very deeply for reasons I still don't understand. Little did I know that at the very same time I was reading this book, its author died in a motorcycle crash. I went on to read Gardner's other fiction, as well as his two books on writing fiction, and appreciated all of them. Looking back, I probably read Nickel Mountain because it was by the same author as Grendel, the retelling of Beowulf that Gardner wrote from the point o...more
It was an interesting story capturing a piece of time in a small American town, but I closed the book kind of wondering where the point to it was. The plot just kind of meandered around for awhile without ever really stopping to rest long enough in one place.
John Gardner is an author who had a major influence in my life. I'm not a novelist, but more than anyone else, he made me want to realize that dream. If you haven't read him, this is the best place to begin.
Well written but not much story after the first few chapters. It was like looking at a well done painting.
It's been far too long since I read this.. I should go on a Gardner re-read!
I found this most disappointing. It was worthy and well-intentioned, but dull, reasonably predictable and not engaging. Some of main character Henry Soames actions are so stupid as to lose sympathy, and other characters are sketches rather than people. The story arc was hard to believe, and the pacing was off, with too much emphasis on some sections and not enough on others. It had the feel of having been rushed and not cafrefully edited. Fell very short of Gardner’s other novels, such as Sunlig...more
This is Gardner's early novel and it's wonderful.
Henry Soames--the morbidly obese owner of a truckstop diner in the Catskills, an angelic but tragically inarticulate soul--proposes marriage to his pregnant, teen waitress when the girl's boyfriend leaves town. Gardner was a medievalist and philosopher at heart, and this story represents perhaps his most successful blending of those passions with his high ideals about the modern novel. Must love always evolve into a decision--or could the decision, and a grotesque pairing, ever reverse that dyna...more
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I'll review later.
Americana...1950s New Carthage NY....small town lives, friendships, heartaches, deaths.
A good read - I 'found' this book while searching for something to meet the criteria of this challenge so I like finding something that hadn't been on my radar screen. Gardner is an excellent writer. It felt a little like short stories to me and was just a little short on plot to advance it along, but I can see why it was a bestseller when it came out.
Gardner is a favorite author of mine, as he is many, many others. NICKEL MTN has a wealth of interesting elements but struggled to keep my interest throughout. I don't think Gardner ever wrote anything poorly or anything bad, but some are better than others. For me, this came in as a fleshed out sketch rather than a finished book.
I didn't enjoy it as much as Mickelsson's Ghosts, but that's no slight to this work.
A character piece of the highest quality, I don't know why more people don't know/appreciate Gardner's work.
Human realtionships of all kinds are potrayed poignantly, and sometimes absurdly-but they always feel real.
-40
A character piece of the highest quality, I don't know why more people don't know/appreciate Gardner's work.
Human realtionships of all kinds are potrayed poignantly, and sometimes absurdly-but they always feel real.
-40
OK, so I didn't actually read this as a child, but my father would read me excerpts as bedtime stories. I think this explains a lot about me and my father. I frequently heard the description of the goat lady, as it was my favorite part.
I liked Nickel Mountain better than Grendel which was too odd a modern fairytale for me at the time. Nickel Mountain was closer in spirit to The Sunlight Dialogues.
The pacing might be a bit slow for those of you accustomed to Chrichton and Grisham and such.
A glimpse at rural Upstate New York.
A glimpse at rural Upstate New York.
Beautifully written, not exactly plot-driven.
Interesting characters, somewhat sad tho.
And yet, you start to care after a while.
I am definately enjoying this book.
May 18, 2013
Reed Thomas
marked it as to-read
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| Do you think John Gardner's work is often overly 'academisized' (for lack of a better term), as if he starts with a philosophical or maybe theological idea and then writes his characters and plots toward that? | 1 | 1 | May 12, 2013 02:46pm |
John Champlin Gardner was a well-known and controversial American novelist and university professor, best known for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth.
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner...more
More about John Gardner...
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner...more
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Mar 11, 2013 11:22pm