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Montana gothic
First edition. light wear on cover
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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198 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 17, 2020
the book is an elegy
dig your own grave, gravedigger.
become what you hate and let eagles feast upon your heart...
run from your lost love, young lover.
make a new love of this murderous land...
your fantasies become a reality, empty-eyed princess.
your family is a trap, bitter young prince.
together you can burn it all away...
ride lonesome, pale rider.
shoot yourself down...
☠
the book is not Horror
well, it is not capital-h Horror, it's not of that genre. and yet it is rife with horror, and poetry, the horror-poetry of Flannery O'Connor's Southern gothics and Cormac McCarthy's desolate landscapes, a closed circle of a family by way of Shirley Jackson or William Faulkner.
the book is not a Weird Western. sadly, the marketing geniuses at Avon Books slapped a cheesy cover on its first edition: a skull-faced cowboy roaming a western landscape. the cover fits, but only if you look at it as a kind of cartoonish representation of the dreamlike reality that lies within its pages. this is a work of literary fiction and all that that implies: poetic prose, challenging themes, rich characterization. characters and narratives that have a double life as actual characters and plots as well as metaphors and analogies for a place, a time, for places and times and people and fates that change, must change. unknowable places; remorseless Time; people who are callous and cruel and tender and tragic; capricious and sardonic Fate.
so this book barely had a chance; thanks a lot, Avon. no wonder it is buried treasure. the author wrote one other book: a nonfiction book called "The Ecological Citizen". I wonder what it is about.
☠
here is a spoiler
a spoiler for the book, and for life in general: all roads lead to death.
make your plans accordingly!
☠
and here is a synopsis
4 stories in 8 parts that span many decades in fearsome, lonesome Montana. morticians and cowboys and a decaying old house with a decaying old family and towns that are unfriendly to the past. the characters overlap, in a sense. you meet a character in one story and he will likely die in the next. or not.
Montana Gothic is a meditation on loss. it is bleak and beautiful; it is a tall drink of icy cold water; it is a dark, sad dream of a book.
dig your own grave, gravedigger.
become what you hate and let eagles feast upon your heart...
run from your lost love, young lover.
make a new love of this murderous land...
your fantasies become a reality, empty-eyed princess.
your family is a trap, bitter young prince.
together you can burn it all away...
ride lonesome, pale rider.
shoot yourself down...
☠
the book is not Horror
well, it is not capital-h Horror, it's not of that genre. and yet it is rife with horror, and poetry, the horror-poetry of Flannery O'Connor's Southern gothics and Cormac McCarthy's desolate landscapes, a closed circle of a family by way of Shirley Jackson or William Faulkner.
the book is not a Weird Western. sadly, the marketing geniuses at Avon Books slapped a cheesy cover on its first edition: a skull-faced cowboy roaming a western landscape. the cover fits, but only if you look at it as a kind of cartoonish representation of the dreamlike reality that lies within its pages. this is a work of literary fiction and all that that implies: poetic prose, challenging themes, rich characterization. characters and narratives that have a double life as actual characters and plots as well as metaphors and analogies for a place, a time, for places and times and people and fates that change, must change. unknowable places; remorseless Time; people who are callous and cruel and tender and tragic; capricious and sardonic Fate.
so this book barely had a chance; thanks a lot, Avon. no wonder it is buried treasure. the author wrote one other book: a nonfiction book called "The Ecological Citizen". I wonder what it is about.
☠
here is a spoiler
a spoiler for the book, and for life in general: all roads lead to death.
make your plans accordingly!
☠
and here is a synopsis
4 stories in 8 parts that span many decades in fearsome, lonesome Montana. morticians and cowboys and a decaying old house with a decaying old family and towns that are unfriendly to the past. the characters overlap, in a sense. you meet a character in one story and he will likely die in the next. or not.
Montana Gothic is a meditation on loss. it is bleak and beautiful; it is a tall drink of icy cold water; it is a dark, sad dream of a book.
September 4, 2016
Closer to 4 stars, this novel has some intriguing characters - some familiar to the western genre, and some remarkably original. Despite the creepy cover it is not a horror novel, but it's also not a stereotypical western. "Gothic" is a suitable descriptor. It is well-written, and yet at times the prose was too dreamy, too meandering, and too sleep-inducing. There is a dream-like quality to the whole book, though, so in that sense it works. All in all, an enjoyable out-of-print read worthy of hunting down for its uniqueness if nothing else.
May 2, 2020
I actually gasped in horror and shock -- not something many books have done for me -- at the ending of the first chapter in this book. A young man seeking a new life moves out to Montana in 1913 to become a mortician. Things get bad, and then worse and sickeningly worse.
This book is dark and bleak with just a hint of black humor at the absurdity of life and fate.
The horror isn't supernatural, but rather comes from the cold touch of reality. In this book, sex may lead to death, and gruesome maulings and unspeakable acts may be close at hand. Death comes swiftly when we least expect it.
As the title suggests, it's very Gothic, but not in a cliched way. The cruel twist endings and bleak view of humanity are reminiscent of Shirley Jackson.
The death and trauma characters experience may lead to a grinding loss of hope over a lifetime. They pass these on through the ages to new characters, from 1913 to the present day of the book's publication, in 1979.
The book has a bleak view also of grand myths like Westerns. It doesn't so much as engage with that genre as much as shoot the legs out from under it. The wild, grim landscape of Montana is all that's left standing, but to seek comfort from it, as characters learn, is deadly.
Sure, the dialogue in the book sometimes abandons being naturalistic in favor of spelling out the book's themes too obviously. But the book still leaves enough to ponder, and indeed be haunted by, in it's events and stories. It's not a book of realism but larger than life, like a series of bleak fairy tales.
I actually like this book's cover art, but it does make the book look cheesy when it's anything but.
Montana Gothic is highly recommended for those who appreciate dark stories. As other reviewers have noted, this book is unfairly neglected, and deserves to be better known.
This book is dark and bleak with just a hint of black humor at the absurdity of life and fate.
The horror isn't supernatural, but rather comes from the cold touch of reality. In this book, sex may lead to death, and gruesome maulings and unspeakable acts may be close at hand. Death comes swiftly when we least expect it.
As the title suggests, it's very Gothic, but not in a cliched way. The cruel twist endings and bleak view of humanity are reminiscent of Shirley Jackson.
The death and trauma characters experience may lead to a grinding loss of hope over a lifetime. They pass these on through the ages to new characters, from 1913 to the present day of the book's publication, in 1979.
The book has a bleak view also of grand myths like Westerns. It doesn't so much as engage with that genre as much as shoot the legs out from under it. The wild, grim landscape of Montana is all that's left standing, but to seek comfort from it, as characters learn, is deadly.
Sure, the dialogue in the book sometimes abandons being naturalistic in favor of spelling out the book's themes too obviously. But the book still leaves enough to ponder, and indeed be haunted by, in it's events and stories. It's not a book of realism but larger than life, like a series of bleak fairy tales.
I actually like this book's cover art, but it does make the book look cheesy when it's anything but.
Montana Gothic is highly recommended for those who appreciate dark stories. As other reviewers have noted, this book is unfairly neglected, and deserves to be better known.
July 18, 2016
This is a wild ride across a bizarro cowboy Montana with figurative stopovers in the manorial wolds of England and in Poe's imaginary, demented New England. It touches all the gothic points: isolation, yearning for a simpler world that never existed, irrationality, family secrets, supernatural or near-supernatural events, and a doomed struggle against fate. It is not for the faint of heart
August 4, 2023
One of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. I’ll have to sit with it a while before i can actually review it.
March 8, 2019
Pretty interesting book. Felt weird at the beginning but then I really got into it.
May 31, 2023
This book has a tip regarding sheep in boots that has haunted me, and made me laugh, to this day.
November 25, 2008
Weird book so far.
March 7, 2016
Public libraries challenge--Retained (1989)
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews