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Mink River

4.21 of 5 stars 4.21 · rating details · 943 ratings · 340 reviews

Like Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" and Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio, " Brian Doyle's stunning fiction debut brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people.

In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and

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Paperback, 320 pages

Published October 1st 2010 by Oregon State University Press

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Apr 29, 2013 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Teresa by: Joan Winnek

This is a novel unlike any other I've read before I think, even though for awhile I was reminded of Jon McGregor, especially pertaining to some stylistic tics (e.g., lists and no quotation marks for dialogue), an omniscient viewpoint and at times this view being one of a bird's-eye -- literally, at least in this book.

A couple of the characters quote William Blake and another reads the Acts of the Apostles, some of his thoughts intermingling, and in a King-James style, as he does. The language is...more

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Dec 13, 2010 Dianah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, quotes, favorites, autographed

I haven't enjoyed a book this much in sooooooo long! Set in a tiny coastal Oregon town, this story is populated with characters who seem to leap off the page and speak their lines directly into your ear: they are that real. Brian Doyle breaks all the "good writing" rules, yet this book is rich and layered and beautiful and profound. Riotous and complex, Doyle's lush tale compels you to read faster than you'd like, because you can't stand not knowing just what the heck is going to happen here. Ev...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Joan Winnek rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Joan by: Gilda

Shelves: for-book-club, re-reading

I finished reading this book on kindle and have now bought the paperback edition to reread for my book club. We will discuss it on January 11.

Words fail me: I can't find a way to describe the experience of reading Mink River. As I read I knew I would read it again and again.

January 1, 2013
I started rereading Mink River today.

January 3
Finished first section. This time I'm keeping a list of characters and noticing more carefully the handling of time.

January 10
Finished rereading, with enormous app...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Roozbeh Estifaee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mink River is more or less a countryside novel; something like those old Canadian TV series. It takes place at a small coastal town of Oregon State, named Neawanaka, and tends to stay away from cities and their hubbubs. The book covers many characters, almost all of the households of any dwelling present in the story, who add up to over twenty. But the main focus is on a family of three generations. There are so many short chapters, arranged in five main parts, and in each of these chapters the...more Mink River is more or less a countryside novel; something like those old Canadian TV series. It takes place at a small coastal town of Oregon State, named Neawanaka, and tends to stay away from cities and their hubbubs. The book covers many characters, almost all of the households of any dwelling present in the story, who add up to over twenty. But the main focus is on a family of three generations. There are so many short chapters, arranged in five main parts, and in each of these chapters the principal personas alter so that all the stories progress simultaneously.
The whole novel is interwoven with nature. The rural atmosphere of the story, far from those routine domestic concerns, allows people to be calmer and more involved with each other. Besides, they happen to find more time to think of themselves. But don't get me wrong. This is no happy rose fairy tale in praise of the good old times. On the contrary, you will be faced with some violent and drastic adventures which are far away from that quietude of the surroundings.
Brian Doyle shows to have a good imagination. In fractions, including the talking crow and the river-fished man, the novel is apt to get close to some "magic realism" of the South American. In addition, there seems to be a good big research in the background, and you can say this by the confidence that the author uses when he is talking about some local and specific facts. One more thing is the dexterity of Doyle in writing dialogues. This has been to a degree that reading the conversational parts has been the most joyful moments of my reading the book. But the book fails to be a huge one. Every so often, it becomes too slow and, more importantly, it has the problem of coming up with a generic perfect plot. The number of the key turning points which are caused by accidents is so high, and worse, there is a big enough number of acts that certainly have no cause. You just can't get that why some of the people, or things, do as they do. (Just remember the matter with No Horses. Why did she fade into blacks, and why did she come back? and seriously, why her?)
Mink River, as the writer claims, was supposed to be the story of small things and moments. It faithfully sticks to this premise, and can do what it had promised, but only to some extent, and this is how it happens to be good, but not very.(less)

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Nov 27, 2011 Meghan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, northwest, favorites, magical-realism

If you're going to visit the Oregon Coast, you must read this novel. So good - like, Sherman Alexie good.

I was hooked by page 16, by the sly humor and the descriptions of the natural world and the residents of the fictional town. The two employees of Neawanaka's Public Works Department discuss their jobs:

"Billy, he says quietly. Billy. We heal things. That's what we do. That's why we're here. We've always agreed on that. Right from the start. We do as well as we can. We fail a lot but we keep af...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Valerie Petersen rated it 5 of 5 stars

OK, I received this in the mail today and see that it is quite a large book with small print. So, I put down Songs of the Humpback Whale, which I was enjoying, and decided to start this one so I'll have it read in time for our August book discussion. It's received rave reviews on Amazon, so looking forward to it.

Well, when I first started this book, I didn't think I was going to like it very well. Lots of description and run-on sentences! Where was the plot? It did develop and I would call it a...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars

well, now wasn't that delicious?

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Jan 04, 2013 Trish Files rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is poetry. Not easy reading but fascinating.

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May 02, 2013 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, small-press

I've fallen in love. No more than a few chapters into the library's copy, I told Kerri we'd buy it - that I needed to dog-ear and mark up these pages. I know these characters, or versions of them, and I know this world, and I know these flora and fauna and goddamn this is the book I wish I'd written. How dispiriting is that - to have an idea for what you think the perfect story would be, and then find someone else went and wrote it better? Because that's what happened here.

David James Duncan is...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Sean rated it 5 of 5 stars

Last night I met with two library patrons for book discussion, and ultimately ended up kinda' dismayed because they disliked this book so much. Sure, I found the interruptions of a character's thought distracting with a comment about another character distracting. And, yes, the listing of every sort of animal eaten by a bear that seemed to me to come out of a guidebook for Oregon coastal animals slowed down my enjoyment of the story. Still, I wasn't bothered by the lack of commas and quotes or t...more Last night I met with two library patrons for book discussion, and ultimately ended up kinda' dismayed because they disliked this book so much. Sure, I found the interruptions of a character's thought distracting with a comment about another character distracting. And, yes, the listing of every sort of animal eaten by a bear that seemed to me to come out of a guidebook for Oregon coastal animals slowed down my enjoyment of the story. Still, I wasn't bothered by the lack of commas and quotes or the way the narrator's voice shifted. Nor was I unsatisfied because the book seemed to the other two people discussing to lack a definitive ending and hence closure. Instead I enjoyed the flow of story that echoed what I know of the Coast and that's liquid whether it's alcohol or coffee, rain or river or occean. The multiple storylines reminded me that we exist in a web, not only woven of our past and our ancestors' places in it, but also with the people around us (No one is an island, boyo!) and even with the animals and plants and ocean and sky. After all we react to these things so it follows logically to me that they're part of our web also. Perhaps because I'm Irish the old tales of Ireland and references to Irish heroes struck a chord. Perhaps because I was born in Hawaii and half-jokingly refer to myself as Polynesian, even though I'm as haole as they come, I enjoyed the Salish stories of the People. Perhaps because I acknowlege a spirit greater than myself and recognize the power and beauty of religious texts I could identify with Grace and Declan and Nicholas as apostles, as Saint Brendan, as Odysseus sailing home. Perhaps...well, this could on for more than you'd want to read so I'll say one more thing in reaction to my reading of this book and comments I heard last night about the lack of an ending. That's exactly what a web is or the flowing of water or story. These things don't have conclusive endings (although I suppose we might think there are endings and that we've found conclusions to things, but perhaps that's because it's sometimes difficult to see beyond ourselves and realize how we continue on and how we contribute to continusing on). That's life and it's a good, strong thing, positive and full of light. Read this book and don't worry about grammar rules and definite ends (which seem a little like death). Choose life you'll be glad you did.(less)

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Feb 14, 2013 Cindy Hudson rated it 5 of 5 stars

In Mink River, Brian Doyle melds Native American folklore, Irish storytelling, a host of quirky characters, and a little bit of the fantastical to bring a coastal Oregon town to life. The town is Neawanaka, whose residents get by as many real-life Oregon coast residents do: by logging, fishing, catering to tourists and dairy farming.

As in a good story told around a fire on a winter's evening, Doyle lets this one slowly unfold. Readers get to know each character a little bit at a time. Some are r...more

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Dec 12, 2012 David Pace rated it 5 of 5 stars

I meant to write a review of the sprawling novel of America’s Oregon Coast, Mink River by Brian Doyle over Thanksgiving, because it was what I was grateful for. As the year ends, I realize I’m thinking about it still. Grateful for it, still.

Doyle’s narrative style is off-putting (at first), but eventually one that wins you over by sheer earnestness. The narrative is episodic and, what you would call in the dramatic arts, an ensemble piece. If there is a protagonist it is the town of 500 resident...more I meant to write a review of the sprawling novel of America’s Oregon Coast, Mink River by Brian Doyle over Thanksgiving, because it was what I was grateful for. As the year ends, I realize I’m thinking about it still. Grateful for it, still.

Doyle’s narrative style is off-putting (at first), but eventually one that wins you over by sheer earnestness. The narrative is episodic and, what you would call in the dramatic arts, an ensemble piece. If there is a protagonist it is the town of 500 residents itself called Neawanaka on the northwest coast. The cast of characters as one would expect in an outing like this is many: the village doctor who smokes the same number of cigarettes each day, each smoke the name of one of the 12 apostles (plus Matthias who replaced Judas); A working intuitive named “Worried Man,” one of two who runs the tiny (and comprehensive) Department of Public Works; his married daughter who therapeutically carves massive wood chunks and is named “No Horses”; the owner/bar tender of the local watering whole who pines for a change in career, a change of a scenery; a crow named “Moses,” who talks and has, literally, a bird’s eye view of the town; a man who beats his son who is called “the man who beats his son”; another in hospital called “the man with thirteen days to live [or twelve…or two, or one…].”

You get the picture. It’s all rather disorienting at first, not unlike a long Russian novel is disorienting with its many characters with multiple names. But in the end, you love these folks, animated by their Irish, and mixed Irish-other (including Native American) heritage, who in a lesser work might be overtly referred to as the “salt of the earth.” You love the town and the smell of the alder and pine burns off the pages when it’s not, in the form of a log, falling off a truck and going through a windshield and killing a man named Red Hugh O Donnell, whose adult children, one a fisherman who is ambivalent about the sea, and his sister who has a drinking problem aren’t exactly sure how to process the death of their brutal father except, for the time being, to go back to the sea and drink more, respectively.

This is not to say there is no plot. There are several extended questions that inter-weave: Will the boy Daniel who fell off a cliff on his bicycle walk again? Will his mother be able to recover from “the unshakable sense of herself so shaken”; Will the opera-obsessed cop be able to capture the child-abusing fugitive arrested through Worried Man’s premonitions but who then escaped? Will Moses still be a crow if he can’t fly? How will there ever be enough money to survive in a town whose lumber industry has collapsed?

So there are these overlapping circles of human drama throughout, and that is stabilizing. Compelling as story. But then there’s Doyle’s experimentation which violates all kinds of novel-writing rules—at least the rules you might read about in a How-To Write book. His prose is purplish, excessive, and uses stacked up adjectives and nouns, and quotes from William Blake as if its creator is in a nursery, gleefully manipulating building blocks for the naked thrill of seeing how tall he can make it. Punctuation at times goes to hell. Sentences run on and on…and on. Narrative threads run the risk of getting lost right up until the end. This stuff careens all over the place and is, I would imagine if it surfaced in a graduate writing seminar, be deemed at minimum as “undisciplined,” “overwrought.”

But it’s also quite wonderful, perhaps the poster child of how inspired, visceral writing trumps craft…or more accurately, perhaps, becomes its own craft through its own internal logic. Known for his spiritual nonfiction, sometimes overtly Catholic, Doyle has a written a work with a beating heart that resonates with the perpetual sea that alternately nuzzles and violates the shore of this struggling, heart-broken town. And in the end, Mink River re-ups the author’s signature. This book will make you swoon with the relentlessness of life—as relentless as the mercurial sea—and the terror of the dark, damp woods. There are moments of awe and exquisite recognition that require that the reader put down the book, and quiet his or her heart. One of these episodes describe a fetus miscarrying from a swimmer in the upper reaches of the Mink and how it flows seaward and, like the personified protoplasm (or, if you’re Catholic, I suppose, like the person that it is) it sees and feels and glories, however briefly, in the wide, wide world before it plunges into the collective unconscious of the wet universe.

Doyle’s brand may be spiritualized naturalism, admittedly rawer than that of the English romantics’, his rhetorical style one that adds fifteen adjectives or twenty-five nouns in a single, micro description. But structurally, Mink River turns on the author’s periodic “checking in” of his unruly cast. As with the embryo flowing downriver, we get a sort of catalogue of what’s going on, the bird’s eye view of what everyone’s doing or thinking at one particular moment. To wit:
Rain in and on and over and through the town, gentle and persistent, gray and gentle, green and insistent, thorough and quiet, respectful and watchful. On Worried Man and Cedar in the Department of Public Works where they hunch over a table strewn and scattered with maps. On Declan staggering along the beach to the hulk of his boat. On Michael the cop as he drives gently through town humming Puccini and thinking of what to make for dinner for his wife Sara and their girls. On Sara as she spades their garden with the two little girls who are digging as fast and furiously as possible looking for worms because their daddy says if they find fifty worms he will take them fishing tomorrow morning rain or shine. On No Horses walking in the hills, up the old quarry road and through the forest and back along the old quarry road once twice three times. On the young female bear two miles upriver from the village where she found a dead elk calf…. (p. 141)

These surveys regularly appear but themed not just through behavior, but through thoughts, through fears and through prayers and dreams.

In this way, and in others more subtle, Doyle not only brings you along as every good novelist should, but plumbs the depths of his little site by broadening his canvas again and again. More accurately, he draws a broader and broader diameter of circles out and out, then back in and in until the gumbo—the ennui of the quotidian life, mythologies religious and otherwise, addictions, despair, tragedy, economic survival, sensuality, coitus and how one dies--convincingly converges into a satisfying whole.

Sort of like life. Sort of not. Like a river town in the northwest where the forest and the sea seem to be having one long, even eternal conversation—sometimes an argument--while the town’s denizens still, somehow, are living rather than just performing a life--thinking about or actually cupping one another’s faces with their hands to comfort and connect in any one moment. And that is, finally, what makes the town of Neawanaka and Mink River so remarkable: it countermands the narcissism of our age, and of our contemporary literature—so that life lived is just that: a life that is lived. Lives reflected in Doyle’s luminous prose through story in its most numinous sense. Story in the form of a novel that merits my thanks.
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Jul 21, 2012 Alice rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was a bit difficult to get into, but boy oh boy once I got into it, I didn't want to stop reading. The story revolves around a poor struggling town on the Oregon coast populated by a marvelous cast of characters and a fabulous bird (I won't give too many details for fear of spoiling the surprises). The writing is simply breathtaking in so many spots. The love between the characters -- husband to wife, wife to husband, father to son, mother to daughter, grandson to grandfather, friend t...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Carla Perry rated it 5 of 5 stars

The language, the writing style, the people, the philosophy? All great. I can't help but cry. I'm crying for the people in the book who died, who were lost, who were injured. I'm crying because not everyone dies when they could have. I'm crying because some people heal. Because some children heal. And because some people get to have love, give love, remain in love, which is so beautiful to walk among, my footsteps causing no distraction. I'm crying, too, because for some there is no love. I now...more

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May 24, 2012 Joyce rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club-choice

I gave my book club a hard time about this choice and, frankly, I was really rude about it - blowing into the group an hour late and I'd only read half the book. I probably broke every book club etiquette rule there is and I apologize. Now that I've finished the book, I was perhaps a bit too tough on it in my spoken comments.

There are many things I actually liked: the talking crow, the residents of the town especially Worried Man and Cedar, how depression is described and "brains against pain."...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Mary Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, lo-bookgroup

by Brian Doyle is a story about a small Oregon coastal town and some of the folks who live there. They include Billy aka Worried Man, a Salish Indian who can sense when others are in pain and his best friend Cedar, who works with Billy at the Neawanaka Department of Public Works. They believe their job is to help everyone in town, and their motto in Cedar’s words, is “Brains against pain” (15). They have a variety of projects, including an Oral History with which they hope to build “an impregna...more by Brian Doyle is a story about a small Oregon coastal town and some of the folks who live there. They include Billy aka Worried Man, a Salish Indian who can sense when others are in pain and his best friend Cedar, who works with Billy at the Neawanaka Department of Public Works. They believe their job is to help everyone in town, and their motto in Cedar’s words, is “Brains against pain” (15). They have a variety of projects, including an Oral History with which they hope to build “an impregnable bulwark against entropy” 15). In addition, Cedar wants to records sounds, for example the osprey calls, to see if “they are speaking in a different tone now than in midsummer or early fall” (15). This information will go on their list of Things to Know. Worried Man works actively to understand and control time, and he thinks “one way to defeat time is by recording every story possible” (15).

Other key characters in the novel are Moses, the talking crow; Maple Head or May, also Salish, Billy’s wife, schoolteacher, and mother of their daughter Nora or No Horses who is a wood sculptor, married to Owen, an Irish immigrant and owner of Auto and Other Repair with whom she has a 12 year old son Daniel. Minor characters include a doctor; the O’Donnell family: abusive father Red, oldest son Declan-fisherman, only daughter Grace, younger sons Niall and Peadar; and the policeman Michael, his wife Sara, and their daughters.

Doyle organizes the book in five parts, explains how Moses learns to talk (185-6) and explores death and its significance through the story of Moses’ first owner, a nun; O’Donnell; and a box man who is humanely buried at sea. The nun and O’Donnell become aware of the world around them, her stuck to a ceiling fan but able to hear all of the world and him floating with other spirits and able to see them. The box man first senses the world and then, just before thought diminishes, his awareness shifts to his children “when they were very small, the squirm and wrestle and tumult of them” (271). Daniel’s character is used in part to evoke stories from Billy and Owen about how they met their wives and what life was like in the past among the Salish and the Irish who are Owen ancestors.

Spoiler Alert – key details are revealed in paragraphs below.

The writing is full of imagery and detail in normal sentences: “And the light itself—well, there’s a certain certainness of light here, the way it shafts itself through and around things confidently, exuberantly, densely, substantively; it has something to do with the nearby ocean, maybe” (11). And, “Worried Man notes the hour—the golden russet slanting light, the hour when the angle of the sun heading toward the ocean illuminates everything seemingly from inside, so that plants glow greenly with their bright green souls naked to the naked joyous eye” (35). Other sentences are lists, long and unusual, evocative to readers like me, time-wasting drivel to others. The first extends more than a page.

The plot meanders, from the nun’s death to Daniel’s bike accident to Billy’s heart attack to the relationship of young lovers to Sara’s fear of being pregnant with a third child. The town is poor and has no viable source of income, but the residents have heart and the novel ends on a hopeful note because of that sense of community and place.

Billy is convinced that time “has a control mechanism either in the perceiver or in the delivery system” (139) and his determination to find it is his one selfishness. It results in paralysis of all but his head and left hand (288), but he bargains that amount of control out of the messenger who’s come to tell him that he’s moving into the “Seventh Stage” and from whom he learns that he is remarkable because of his kindness, his sense of humor, and his curiosity (286).

Cedar and the doctor are the characters that most interest me. Cedar helps Nora deal with depression telling her “when I was young I was always trying to find reasons for it. So I could assign blame” (204) but he found that what helped him is “a certain ferocious attention to things. …An intense attention … clarifies your mind. It could be anything. For me it’s nearly everything” (205).

The doctor, commiserating with Billy about their awareness of and focus on pain, says, “The best I can do is just witness the pain. Just stand there and watch it eat my patients” (226). He does much more, of course, and in the end seems slated for happiness with Stella as she plants a vineyard on some of the O’Donnell property and Grace turns the bar into a community meeting place.

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Oct 11, 2011 Dacia Grayber rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

"Mink River"... where do I begin? This book is the reason I joined goodreads, after reading a review of it here. It's been a while since a book moved me so deeply that I had to momentarily pause to put it down, breathe deeply, and revel in the absolute swell of feeling that washed over me.

I found this book at Cloud and Leaf in Manzanita, OR, the weekend I got married in the pouring rain and thick salty air.. so perhaps I was primed for this tale of a small coastal OR village and the characters...more

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Jul 14, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: creatures of habit with an artistic flair

Shelves: 2011

This book is a breath of fresh air. It is basically a story of small town life on the coast of Oregon where everyone knows everybody's business. It is folksy, mystical and modern all wrapped up in one. The characters range from The People (native americans), Irish settlers, a well spoken bird and regular folks all having interesting quirks that help bring out what are the best things about living in a small community on the coast, that you care for your neighbor and not only do you accept their...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Hank Lentfer rated it 5 of 5 stars

As I awaited delivery of Mink River, anticipation grew like a kid’s count-down to Christmas. I had visions of a story rambling (unencumbered by such pesky details as punctuation) into all the perfect places. So, image my disappointment when, all those bike trips to the post office later, the first copy arrived and I sliced the box open before taking off my helmet, cracked the cover and read those first short, chopped sentences. To think Brian Doyle, one of my favorite authors, had caved so quick...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Splashconception rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was a delightful read. About a small Northwestern coastal town that is conglomeration of all the Pacific Northwest coastal villages I have been to, with a healthy dose of Irish culture thrown is as well. The book has some beautiful narrative threads: following Worried Man, who can feel other people's pain and Ceder, an older gent who was born out of the Mink River, or at least came to on its banks after Worried Man rescued him, through their various projects as heads of the Department...more This book was a delightful read. About a small Northwestern coastal town that is conglomeration of all the Pacific Northwest coastal villages I have been to, with a healthy dose of Irish culture thrown is as well. The book has some beautiful narrative threads: following Worried Man, who can feel other people's pain and Ceder, an older gent who was born out of the Mink River, or at least came to on its banks after Worried Man rescued him, through their various projects as heads of the Department of Public Works. The idea of story-telling and the story as metaphor for the wonderful twists and turns of life is a prevelant plot throughout the book. It makes perfect sense, given that the two cultures Doyle explores in the book, that of the coastal tribes and Irish settlers, have cultures that are immersed in the power and significance of stories.
It would be wrong of me to say that Cedar and Worried Man are the main characters of the book, the novel is, after all, an exploration of an entire coastal town, and as such, it highlights many characters, both human and animal, that share the area. Doyle has done his research on coastal flora and fauna and his descriptions of the natural areas match his beautiful prose. I really enjoyed some of the structural techniques, paragraphs that are point-of-view scenarios split between two characters, alternating sentences capturing each character's point-of-view. Short chapters that explore ideas: every sound that is occurring in the town simultaneously; descriptions of the different habits of Northwest woods; how animals talk to each other in their own languages. Doyle is obviously a Catholic but some of the rituals he describes are quite a beautiful and he doesn't limit himself to this point of view. A fascinating exploration of Northwest Life and it was great to read during the midst of a turmoil within my own life. I was starting to lose hope with Oregon, feeling like maybe all the people headed to California had the right idea. But this novel brought me back to an appreciation of the wonderful culture and natural landscape that make Oregon beautiful. (less)

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Feb 22, 2013 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book had some really wonderful imagery, and writing throughout it. There was a real bouncy, alive feeling to the writing at times. My grandmother suggested this book for my partner to read, and I was struck at different times by this choice with my grandmother in mind thinking of my partner and what her reading interests are. There were a lot of ties to old traditions, day-to-day life in a small town, and the interconnected nature of nature and human society in the writing in this book (all...more

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May 04, 2013 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this book up at Powell's Books in Portland.
I was visiting the city and the store for the first time and wanted a book by a local writer that was set in Oregon. That was the main reason for selecting this book.

And it was so worth it. I really loved this book. It's so beautifully written. I haven't highlighted or unlined in a book since college, I think. Or written in the margins. But I wanted to very much in this book. There is so much I wanted to share. So much that it's easier to just...more

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May 29, 2012 LeeAnn Heringer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century, american-west, read-in-2012

I resisted this book. Everyone raved about it, it was on everyone's best books of 2011 lists, the book is about a place where my family is from, where I've wandered. How could it live up to the hype?

But then it did. If anything it exceeded my expectations. in a lyrical long-song of the dreams and visions of a small town on the Oregon coast over a single summer. I've heard the complaint that this book is about nothing, but this is a book that thinks so deeply about the meaning of time and how peo...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Mike Nettleton rated it 5 of 5 stars

Usually a book that's episodic will turn me off and I'll put it down early. Not so with Brian Doyle's Mink River. The story charmed me and drew me in from page one and despite the fact there really wasn't a discernible plot line running through it, he made me care deeply about the people populating his fictional village.

What made it hard for me to put down was Doyle's rhythms and unorthodox formatting of his text. The lines between poetry and prose blurred and sometimes I found myself bobbing m...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

I heard Brian Doyle in an interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting radio a year and a half ago. He was talking about his book, The Wet Engine, and the importance of bearing witness to each other's lives. He reminded me of Orson Scott Card in Speaker for the Dead, paralleling this idea that humans are more complex, more brilliant, more stupid, more beautiful and found and lost than we think. I decided during the interview to read Brian Doyle's work. Mink River's style - very stream-of-consciousnes...more

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May 14, 2013 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

I feel that giving this novel three stars is generous. The author may have a gift of the poetic, but there is a serious lack of plot in this novel.

What did I like? I loved the Native American lore and tradition of storytelling, the Irish tradition of storytelling, and the presence of the supernatural represented by the the talking crow, Moses and Worried Man. At times, there was the feeling of magical realism.

What did I NOT like? Besides the thin plot line, I felt the end was erratic. The first...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Larry Strattner rated it 5 of 5 stars

The flaws are pervasive and occasionally awe-insiring in their breadth. But its flaws are part of what makes the work spectacular.

The reader may learn more than desired about a number of arcane subjects. Perhaps, as the story goes on, some of the information-dump passages get somewhat wearing - but maybe not. The reader's reaction will be strongly personal. I found myself more than once staggered by some vivid picture called up during these tours de force.

But, as the wine people say, there were...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Adjective aficionados, lovers of lists, coastal Oregonians and wannabes

Recommended to Alan by: An absolutely amazing author appearance 11/15/2011

Brian Doyle loves the flow of his own words—something that could be considered a flaw if he weren't so very good at stringing them together. While Mink River is his first novel, and there are some places where it shows, where instead of choosing between two adjectives he simply includes both, Doyle is already an accomplished essayist, with numerous nonfiction works under his belt and an award-winning position as the editor of the University of Portland's Portland Magazine.

Doyle loves languages i...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Andrew David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Andrew by: Hannah Notess

It reminds me of Tim Winton's Cloudstreet--the scope and the setting and even the dialect are a lot different, but there's something about Doyle's way with words and unique characters that seems familiar. It's the kind of book that can peddle a bit of magical realism (though not much of it) without seeming farfetched, that can confront all the darkness and pain of everyday life and yet leave one feeling hopeful and blessed, and that can make a person go highlighter happy--the thoughtful poetry o...more

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May 14, 2012 Jean rated it 5 of 5 stars

I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time!It is going to be the book to beat for future reads in 2012.

Set in a tiny coastal Oregon town, this story is populated with characters who seem to leap off the page and whisper in your ear. They are that real. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on t...more

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About Brian Doyle

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Doyle's essays and poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The American Scholar, Orion, Commonweal, and The Georgia Review, among other magazines and journals, and in The Times of London, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Kansas City Star, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Ottawa Citizen, and Newsday...more

More about Brian Doyle...

Books by Brian Doyle

The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World

Epiphanies & Elegies: Very Short Stories

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