Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

Amy        

family drama, historical fiction

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan covers the lives of two families in small-town Ohio…childhoods, adulthoods, wars, lies, mistakes, abandonment, neglect, reconciliation, success, and failure.

This novel was largely a story about people going about their everyday lives.

Two people, (Cal and Margaret) whose childhoods left them neglected and unloved, end up finding surprisingly decent spouses, each with their own unique aspects.  Cal’s and Margaret’s back stories take up the first third of the novel. This was mostly boring, to be honest. In fact, at the 25% mark, I was looking to see if the book was almost over. Never a good sign.

In a few instances, what would have made for an interesting surprise had been divulged earlier in the book. This was disappointing to me but, I suppose, the foretelling was necessary to keep people reading. Without knowing the drama was coming, I certainly might’ve stopped reading. But giving these things away early reduced the impact when the situation eventually occurred.

I’m really not sure why this novel has a lot of accolades. It was ho-hum, slow-paced, and too long to me. I didn’t love the way Ryan presented the material. And the stuff that was the most interesting was soap-opera-y. The characters themselves were mostly disappointing, unremarkable, or emotionally stunted.

The cover art implies three stories about the same town. I suppose the three stories could be Margaret’s story, Cal’s story, and both of their families going forward from the point the two of them met. Maybe the three parts could be childhood, parenthood, and old age. Or maybe youth, choices, and regret. Obviously, the message of the art was not received clearly.

The audiobook was narrated by Michael Crouch. His voice acting was good but he spoke fairly slowly and had a very nasal sound quality. His tone reminded me a bit of Crispin Glover in Back to the Future. His vocal repertoire wasn’t large but his voice had an androgynous quality which made it easy to picture either a woman or a man speaking. I’ll give him a B+.