Postcards, by Annie Proulx
309 pages, @1992
I was interested to read Annie Proulx as she is the author who penned Brokeback Mountain. Postcards is the story of the Blood Family (that’s right, you read that right, their last name is Blood). They are farmers in New England and have to confront all the forms of technology that are coming to be in the 20th Century, changing everything about the town they live in, the farm they run, and just life in general. At the beginning of the book the reader learns that their oldest son Loyal, has killed his girlfriend and buried her on the farm. He leaves that night for the open road telling his family that he and his girlfriend are going to forge their own success out in the American west. The rest of the book chronicles the rise and fall of the entire Blood family and their farm. Each chapter begins with a postcard, sometimes they are from Loyal to his family, other times they are messages pertaining to something coming up in the chapter or not.
I have to say that I didn’t really like this book. I felt it was very scattered. Some authors can pull of that scattered feeling by eventually pulling all the information together in a coherent story, but I didn’t feel that Proulx achieved that. I also didn’t like the postcards, which essentially provided Proulx with the title of her book, obviously she factors them as a strong vehicle to get her story across. I found them so annoying. Some were handwritten, some were typed, some pertained to the chapter that followed the postcard, and some never pertained really to anything in the story at all. They drove my crazy! My other big beef with this book was on the back, in the description, it says: “Yearning for love, yet forced by circumstance to be always alone, Loyal comes to symbolize the alienation and frustration behind the American dream.” I didn’t agree with this statement at all. Loyal left the farm and lifestyle that he loved (not just loved but lived and breathed for) because he killed his girlfriend and he had to run otherwise that piece of information was going to be found out and his life ruined. I would not classify him as someone that was out in the world looking to achieve the American dream, he was a murderer, forced into alienation and frustration in a life on the road by the circumstance he put himself in.
I didn’t find Loyal to be a particularly likeable character, he wasn’t someone that I connected with and was rooting for throughout the novel. It was more,what random thing is Loyal doing now. I don’t know maybe I missed the point of the story…but this book just didn’t do it for me, it was utterly depressing, dark and gritty. I kept wondering what the editor wondered when he/she first read this book. What did they see in it, that they said, this is going to be great? I can’t say that I would be interested in picking up Proulx again anytime in the near future.
Post in Comments:
Have you read Proulx? Do you like her writing style? If you’ve read this book, I’d be curious as to what you though made it a stand out novel?
