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The School on Heart's Content Road
Carolyn Chute has been heralded as a passionate voice of the underclass, earning comparisons to William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Flannery O?Connor. Now, Chute returns to the unforgettable town of Egypt, Maine, and delivers a rousing, politically charged portrait of another group of lives on the margins of our society.The School on Heart's Content Road begins with the ...more
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Published
November 1st 2008
by Brilliance Corporation
(first published July 8th 2008)
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donald harington has ruined so many books for me simply by being a better writer than other writers. so when i read something like this, i am forced to obsess over the many ways this could have been better if his gentle hands were still with us...
occasionally, when i was reading this one, i was thinking of when angels rest, which is the closest harington ever came to writing a "war novel." in that one, WWII is brought close to home as the children of stay more, already engagi...more
occasionally, when i was reading this one, i was thinking of when angels rest, which is the closest harington ever came to writing a "war novel." in that one, WWII is brought close to home as the children of stay more, already engagi...more
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Much proselitizing going on here. I read the NY Times review and interview with Chute before I read the book, and I'll concede that it might have clouded my perception. At heart, the book is really focusing on the fact that we all have prejudices despite our best intentions. But, Chute lost me with her soapboxing about the miliita, the demise of education, the injustices the government inflicts upon its people, etc. I felt like I was reading a manifesto on cults and sects and why they are good. ...more
As if reading Apples and Oranges wasn't bad enough I get to follow it up with this horrible book. It is a novel set in some small town called Egypt, Maine. It's just plain boring. Unless I guess you're really into militias in which case even then it's probably really boring. Basically there is some compound led by some prophet, who doesn't think he's God or anything but hates the government and creates a co-op settlement where all these people live and subsist. He also has a bunch of wives,...more
I really love Carolyn Chute, even though she always makes me painfully aware of how really screwed up things are. This is another of her very political books focused on the lives of the backwoods underclass in rural Maine. She's definitely treading on familiar ground here, though she adopts a style of ordering her story that is a departure for her and works brilliantly. I think she does an excellent job of presenting her politics without being preachy, though i'm sure others would disagree. And ...more
Knowing the author from her book "The Beans of Egypt, Maine," I wanted to try this one. Being obsessive, I probably would have given it 3.5 stars. It held my interest and I was always anxious to get back to it. A 15-year-old dropout is evicted from the home of his half-brother, seemingly unfairly, as the boy seems to be trying to help support the struggling family as best he can. For a while he sets up camp in a tree house in the woods until he's drawn into two local groups, one a ...more
The characters in this story are highly believable. The story (there are actually about five different stories, five main characters whose lives all intersect) takes place in rural Maine involving people living in a communal settlement and developing militias (or associations with militias). Having spent the last three years in Idaho I can attest that these disparate people do exist, and their lives are probably very similar to that described within this book. I don’t know if that’s why this ...more
A handful of pages in and I can already tell that I am going to love this book!
[UPDATE} So I finally finished The School on Heart's Content Road this weekend and it did indeed turn out to be one of the best books I have read in a while.
The book describes the St Onge. Settlement - a commune led by their "prophet" Gordie St. Onge and his wives and the people of rural Maine who come into contact with them (a right-of-center Militia leader Rex York; Mickey Gammon, a...more
[UPDATE} So I finally finished The School on Heart's Content Road this weekend and it did indeed turn out to be one of the best books I have read in a while.
The book describes the St Onge. Settlement - a commune led by their "prophet" Gordie St. Onge and his wives and the people of rural Maine who come into contact with them (a right-of-center Militia leader Rex York; Mickey Gammon, a...more
This is the fourth book in a series of loosely connected novels that charts the lives of several families over several generations in and around Egypt, Maine. (I think Egypt Maine is a fictional town, but it reminds me a great deal of Mexico, Maine, which, for folks who haven't travelled that far down US Rt 2, is a small papermill town in the southern interior of Maine). Ms. Chute writes about what she is familiar with- the intense insularity of rural poverty, the inarticulate passions (love, ...more
I read this book for the promise of the tale. Her writing style was very frustrating at times and I didn't enjoy the symbols inserted throughout. Though the character list at the end helped me to keep track of the various story lines, almost one too many threads to really develop. I am starving for good fiction about compounds, communes, alternative communities, living off the grid, pologamist relationships and the like. (Its my Big LOVE phase). This book tried to fill that hunger. The character...more
It is funny, I had alot of trouble getting started on this novel, just didn't like or identify with anyone I met in the opening pages, and then once I got past the first 50 pages, it was remarkable--this is a window into a world that I don't live in, but have family in, and this gives a voice to those folks. The rural, lower middle class to poor, less educated to not educated, living in homogenous communities that seem to breed a bit too much hate and religious zeal for my taste, and for their ...more
A wonderful book about working class people and what happens when life gets cruel and changes around them. Chute understands her people, and how they are misunderstood -- either deliberately or through ignorance -- by the media and those in positions of power.
Chute has a deft hand for her characters, and for description -- some of which are absolutely breathtaking. Take this line, for instance: "Late-afternoon sun, autumnly and solid and cold as a refrigerated peach, roams entirel...more
Chute has a deft hand for her characters, and for description -- some of which are absolutely breathtaking. Take this line, for instance: "Late-afternoon sun, autumnly and solid and cold as a refrigerated peach, roams entirel...more
Carolyn Chute's sympathetic portrayals of the rural poor evoked comparisons to Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Upton Sinclair. Yet despite her strong main characters and keen insights, critics varied in their reactions: some felt overwhelmed by Chute's pervasive antiestablishment views, while others embraced, or were at least able to overlook, her polemics. Chute's unconventional language, profusion of characters (although she does provide a full character list), and multiple narrators—including the f
...more
I love Carolyn Chute. This was a big experimental book--many characters, many voices (including the voice of TV and the voice of Mammon). While the Beans of Egypt, Maine remains my favorite book, this one was really exceptional. She humanized people (in this case members of the Maine Militia) who are left out of most mainstream media discussions. She reveals the inner life of kids in a way that is both respectful and believable. I love her work. It took me a long time to finish this book b...more
I lack the time to seriously review this work. This story is the first of five parts of a much larger work Carolyn has been developing over the course of several years, and it is one of the best tales i've read in a long time. The School on Heart's Content Road will appeal to anyone who's the slightest bit suspicious of programming, indoctrination, mainstream media, law, or the false dichotomies of left vs. right. The story is told through the eyes of many familiar characters (birds, televisi...more
When my husband asked, "Haven't you been reading that book awhile?" at the dinner table this week, he probably could've told you my review wasn't going to be incredibly positive.
It's not always an indication -- because sometimes life gets in the way -- but you can often tell how much I like a book by how quickly I plow through it. I inched through School on Heart's Content Road for more than two weeks, an eternity for a reader like me.
I had no idea what the book...more
It's not always an indication -- because sometimes life gets in the way -- but you can often tell how much I like a book by how quickly I plow through it. I inched through School on Heart's Content Road for more than two weeks, an eternity for a reader like me.
I had no idea what the book...more
I love the unusual construction of this book. I had no preconceptions going into it, except that I enjoyed her first couple of books, which I read when they came out.
It dragged a little in the last quarter as Chute allows her Prophet to speak his mind without constraint and my favorite characters, the six-year-old Jane and the fifteen-year-old Mickey fall silent for a dozen pages or more. The climax wasn't what I expected it to be, but that may not be a failure, it may be Chute's p...more
It dragged a little in the last quarter as Chute allows her Prophet to speak his mind without constraint and my favorite characters, the six-year-old Jane and the fifteen-year-old Mickey fall silent for a dozen pages or more. The climax wasn't what I expected it to be, but that may not be a failure, it may be Chute's p...more
Chute is an author whose works I enjoy. So I am a fan. Reading about northeast is interesting because it's so different from the west coast in many ways. I thought having us see the "community" thru the eyes of Jane and her glasses was intriguing. The characters rang true all the way back to The Beans of Egypt Maine. It is also similar in some ways to the HBO series, Big Love. Thought the ending was rather a fizzle.
Very good writing and an interesting story are handicapped by Chute's relentless, heavy-handed politicizing. (Could she make it a little more obvious that public school teachers are the scum of the earth?)It would have been much stronger if she'd done less with the politics and explored more of the ambiguities of the Settlement's situation. I did love the characters of Jane and Mickey, though.
Mary
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone who questions our country as it is
Recommended to Mary by:
NY Times book review
This book is amazing. I recommend it to everyone! Told in many voices, the plot is about an intentional community in Maine that is into wind and solar and gardening and homeschooling (and polygamy), that also starts to embrace/talk to the militia movement (which is into guns and survivalism.) Every once in a while, the TV voice is interjected, which I think may have been my favorite part.
This is a rambunctious doozy. Obviously the story is not the book, but the author. In this case, all the kindling for combustion but no flame. I wish the work itself was worthy of the limelight, but that's the difference between light and limelight, isn't it?
The School on Heart's Content Road can be read as an intimate view into the lives of those considered on the "fringe" of mainstream America and how those "outsiders" can come together to be a positive (or not) influence on their communities. As the saying goes, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
Carolyn Chute knows her working class characters well--from the Beans of Egypt, Maine to the militia members in this book, she writes convincingly of their lives. This book shouts at the reader regarding the politics of the working poor, and so is not as successful as her earlier exploration of Maine folks. However, the voice of the six-year old narrator, Jane, is so endearing that it's worth reading all of the book to hear her story.
It was better than I expected, and a good airport book. The structure allows you to pick it up and put it down without loosing your orientation. The story is good, characters are rounded, the culture depicted familiar in a side-glanced kind of way. I may try to get a copy of her first book, Beans.
I didn't even finish this. I thought it was going to be cute and creative with the little icons and sections, but, yuck. I could not get into the characters at all, and I was going to rip the pages out if the author reminded me one more time that therre a character list at the end of the book!
Similar tone to Kurt Vonnegut. Poignant and came to the edge of tragedy without going over the falls. Author of THE BEANS OF EGYPT, MAINE. Great characters. Heart-warming and scrappy. Survivalists meet genial, good-hearted polygamist commune.
I had to return this book to the library before I finished reading it, but that was OK because I never really got into it. I didn't care about the characters and not enough happened to make me want to find out what did happen,
I read as much of this book as I could and just couldn't read anymore. It was horrible. I had no clue what this book was about. The crow talks, the tv talks, different stories intermingled. It read like a play but very bizzare. I saw no order to it. I usually finish a book no matter how bad but I just couldn't do it. Had to be the worst book I ever attempted to read.
UGH!!!!
I thought Chute's first book--The Beans of Egypt, Maine--was excellent, but this book is rubbish--strident, irksome, cranky, poorly written, with characterizations that don't ring true at all. Avoid this book.
I thought Chute's first book--The Beans of Egypt, Maine--was excellent, but this book is rubbish--strident, irksome, cranky, poorly written, with characterizations that don't ring true at all. Avoid this book.
Not sure about this one - she is preaching for sure - especially given the autobio info I know about her. I do not object to her position - just that it is too overt and too much! She is clever in pointing out that the very situation we may- in our self righteous indignant mind sets- be trying to end - in our response to militias and fundamentalist religious communes - we are practicing the same narrow tolerance that these groups are. This is not put very well. The bottom line is that I really...more
This book opened my eyes to the militia culture in this country and issues I was surprised to find myself agreeing with, which is a great part of why I like the book so much. Rousing and tragic.
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Chute's first, and best known, novel, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, was published in 1985 and made into a 1994 film of the same name, directed by Jennifer Warren. Chute's next two books, Letourneau's Used Auto Parts (1988) and Merry Men (1994), are also set in the town of Egypt, Maine.
Chute also speaks out publicly about class issues in America and publishes "The Fringe," a mont...more
More about Carolyn Chute...
Chute also speaks out publicly about class issues in America and publishes "The Fringe," a mont...more
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