The Orchardist in Around the World in 80 Books

Feb 26, 2013 Laura (booksnob) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2013, literature

The Orchardist opens with a quote from poet Jack Gilbert. "The roses you gave me kept me awake with the sound of their petals falling". This quote made me pause and realize, before I even started the book, that I was in for a sensitive, thought-rendering read.

William Talmadge owns an orchard in the Pacific Northwest. He lives alone and spends his time lovingly tending the trees and fruit and selling it from his wagon in the town market. He spots two teenage girls with round bellies eyeing his pr The Orchardist opens with a quote from poet Jack Gilbert. "The roses you gave me kept me awake with the sound of their petals falling". This quote made me pause and realize, before I even started the book, that I was in for a sensitive, thought-rendering read.

William Talmadge owns an orchard in the Pacific Northwest. He lives alone and spends his time lovingly tending the trees and fruit and selling it from his wagon in the town market. He spots two teenage girls with round bellies eyeing his produce. They are pregnant. As he nods off in the warmth of the sun, they steal what they can and run for it. Talmadge does not chase them, he packs up and heads home and they follow him.

Della and Jane are running from a horrible situation which they vow never to return to. They are hungry and desperate for compassion. Talmadge is interested in helping these girls so he feeds them and makes no demands of them, slowly trying to build their trust. The girls awaken the ghosts of Talmadge's past, the loss of his mother and the disappearance of his sister. One can never escape life without tragedy and yet bravely Talmadge opens his heart and orchard to these girls.

The backdrop of The Orchardist is the turn of the century where The Wild West meets the Intercontinental Railroad. Coplin takes the reader on a historical journey in time to discover how a place changes over time, not only the landscape but the people who live there. The setting of the book is beautiful. Coplin paints a picture with words that is at once intimate and haunting.

The storyline of The Orchardist evokes the beauty of time and space, but it also encompasses the evil that exists and the tragedy of children who grow up immersed in dire circumstances. Coplin writes with compassion and her characters are wonderfully flawed human beings that you can relate to.

Have you ever read a book where you knew from the very first page that you were meant to read it? Where you knew that you and the writer made a connection with the turn of the page? This is my experience with The Orchardist. I felt the power of the story and I was hypnotized by it.

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Aug 20, 2019 Erica added it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I have strong, but mixed, feelings about this novel. It is memorable and well drawn. Its characters are psychologically on point, especially in terms of how intergenerational pain is translated between family members. The setting is fabulous, and exquisitely described. All of these things should make this a book that I love. Instead it is a book I will remember, but also simply feel sick about.

My issue with the book is this: I've come to notice that for a very long time now, "new" Westerns--mean I have strong, but mixed, feelings about this novel. It is memorable and well drawn. Its characters are psychologically on point, especially in terms of how intergenerational pain is translated between family members. The setting is fabulous, and exquisitely described. All of these things should make this a book that I love. Instead it is a book I will remember, but also simply feel sick about.

My issue with the book is this: I've come to notice that for a very long time now, "new" Westerns--meaning newly considered Western fiction supposedly based on deeper facts about the West--are really just more and more *violent* when they try to reach at some kind of perception of authenticity. We see this in every new western film: more violence = more "real." Supposedly.

The Orchardist takes this to a truly horrifying new level, considering the crux of the plot is a homestead in Washington State where little girls are hoarded, raped, and tortured. I was so distraught over the thought of this through the first quarter of the novel that I had two choices: either quit very early on (something I would normally do when a book isn't singing to me in plot or prose) and then live with my own mentally projected futures for those little girls, OR continue reading a book that was deeply difficult and not singing on any other level (other than landscape appreciation, which was truly excellent). I continued reading because I know my own torturous imagination for this sort of thing is far worse than most anyone else's, and so finishing the book would likely mean less agony for me in the long run. But then, what happened was a strange sort of continuing terror: was Michaelson (the key rapist and torturer) going to follow us in the story? Where would he pop up? Were there more sick things in store? Ugh. This question burned for more than half of the rest of the novel.

It turns out that nothing else horrifying happens with Michaelson, and yet three other key characters essentially and slowly self-destruct in his wake. And so the initial horror becomes compounded, deepened, as we watch these characters imprison themselves in their inability to escape/grapple with their pasts and pain.

And so, forgive me for bringing an early-21st century consciousness into this, but the novel ultimately underlines the even deeper horror that we all feel now, on a wider level, in society. (This is the real function of Westerns: they are always actually a mirror for what is occurring in society in the moment they are written, not the historical moment written about.) And the key lesson here is that the bad guys never pay. Instead, the good, hard-working, well-meaning people they hurt pay (with their sanity, their lives, their futures). And then those good people's families and children pay. The bad guys might fade away, but their marks are indelible for generations.

I realize that I was clearly not in the right frame of mind to read this otherwise very skilled novel. But I wonder if I would ever be in the right frame of mind--because I do not know where this kind of radical, unhinged pessimism--there is no light, no future--gets us. I did not need to cheer for characters; I do not need mindless pablum. I do need something other than "little girls are raped and tortured and then after many more lifetimes' worth of pain, we die." I know this was written in 2012, but at least right now, in 2019, with Trump as president and the planet hotter than ever before recorded, I need something different in a new Western. (Again, my apologies to the author, who is clearly very gifted.) ...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Susan rated it liked it

I wanted to really really like this book because of all the hype, but can barely justify giving it 3 stars. The writing was very poetic, but the story was slow moving, frustrating, a book that you want to end, instead of one you wish would go on and on. Main characters not as interesting as the 2 minor characters, Caroline and Clee. I kept wanting to read it only because I wanted things to happen in the book that don't. ...more

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