The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal

 

Amy   
Lynnie

contemporary fiction

In The Lager Queen of Minnesota, J. Ryan Stradal tells the story of a family in Minnesota centered around two sisters who were in high school in the 1950s. The story spans time through 2018. The novel also covers a lot of information about beer making and marketing which was mostly interesting. 

Amy's Review

This one never gained momentum for me. If this novel were a beer it would be a Miller Lite—fine but kinda boring. The pacing was slow. Edith, a midwestern lady who grew up on a farm and had middling life expectations and low self esteem just wasn’t very exciting to read about. Her sister, Helen, was much more full of life and energy. But she made a selfish decision, became a terrible character at the turn of a page, and was not heard from much again.

Basically, I didn’t love the story structure. Most of the characters were emotionless and rudderless. It didn’t make for an exciting story. I also felt that the author didn’t really understand his female characters. The men, Orval, Frank, and Andy, were the most thoughtful, supportive characters. Whereas most of the women just sort of existed and “made do” and were victims of their lives. Helen started out interesting but then she failed. The one exception was Diana who got more interesting as the story progressed. But then she was taken out of commission around the ¾ mark. At that point, the story finally developed some momentum. But it felt like the ending was the meat of the story but the setup had gone on for too long—a beer that had grown warm, if you will. 

I’m tempted to give it 2-1/2 stars because I kept being annoyed by issues. But I’ll boost it up because I liked the grandma story line very much.

Lynnie's Review 

There was a lot to like about The Lager Queen of Minnesota, but also a lot to be frustrated by. Individually, I enjoyed the stories of Edith, Helen, and Diana, but I never felt like Stradal gave me enough of anyone's story to really be invested in them. Just when something interesting would start to happen the narrative would make both a time and character jump and I'd be left wondering why the story had to be cut off.

I particularly enjoyed Diana's story, especially as it intersected with Edith's, but as with the rest of the book I felt like there was a lot of story left unexplored. About midway through the book I decided that if Helen weren't even a character, it wouldn't change the novel at all & the end of the book, however inevitable, did nothing to change that opinion.

It's a sweet story overall, but very superficial.