A Country Called Home

by Kim Barnes

Book Overview

A Book-of-the-Month Club selection. In this engrossing and hearbreaking new novel, KIM BARNES reminds us of what it means to be young and in love, to what lengths people will go to escape loneliness,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307268950
• ISBN13: 9780307268952
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

rich reading

Written in almost florid language, this novel begins quietly but builds up steam and has a rapid and eventful conclusion. The rich language employed is evocative, poetic, but - for me at least - rather held up the narrative. As the story speeds up, some episodes appeared more padding than plot progression, but the overall effect is rewarding - believable characters set against a very well delineated landscape. I am keen to read more from this author.

A Commentary on How Idealism Isn't Enough

Kim Barnes was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her memoir In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, where she described growing up in isolated mining camps in Northern Idaho. She returns to the wilderness of her childhood, this time in a novel, set in the 1960's. Thomas Deracotte, a scholarship medical student, marries Helen, the daughter of a wealthy Connecticut family over their objections to his social status. Upon graduation, they move to Fife, Idaho, where his intention is to open a medical practice. Arriving at their home, they find the buildings in ruins and have to make do with a tent and open fire. Thomas begins delaying opening his practice, hiring a local teen, Manny, to help him work the land as a farmer. Helen quickly discovers that rural life is not for her, missing her previous lifestyle. She gives birth to Elise, and, as Thomas turns to drugs to deal with his inadequacies as a doctor, farmer, husband and now father, begins to contemplate an affair with Manny, while Manny begins to assume a more parental role in Elise's life. None of it ends well, yet for all the darkness, Barnes' use of language is stunning, making you want to re-read paragraphs out loud to someone else, so they can enjoy it with you, but not actually having to hand over the book until you are done. Being set in the 60's and into the 70's, it is less a condemnation of their excesses and more a commentary on how idealism isn't enough.

A classic already

A Country Called Home is an exquisitely-told story of a couple who leaves behind a privileged life in Connecticut to carve out a hardscrabble existence in the Idaho wilderness. The novel begins in 1960 when Thomas Deracotte and his young, pregnant wife decide to buy a dilapidated farm on the outskirts of a small town. After a sudden tragedy, the family is left to pick up the pieces in an unfamiliar, and often inhospitable, landscape. As the Deracotte's daughter spends her time riding horses and avoiding other children her age, Thomas Deracotte often turns to fly-fishing as an escape. This book's best passages describe the Idaho countryside, particularly the river running along the edge of the Deracotte's farm and its narcotic effect on the family's patriarch: "Even after all the hours spent with a rod in his hands, each strike seemed a surprise rather than the end result of his studied experiment: the fly carefully selected to match hatch and season; the cast so nearly perfect that the feathered hook whispered down like a caddis dipping its wings; the placement at the lip of current just shy of stone; the rise and roll and set. He would bring the fish in, cradle it just below the surface, and rock it softly until it spasmed free." This novel is deeply grounded in its western setting, which Barnes evokes with beautifully poetic prose. Despite her gift with landscapes, Barnes does not shortchange the human element of this story, and A Country Called Home is populated with sympathetic characters and several lively plot lines. Although the Deracotte's endure loneliness, death, addiction, and mental illness, their story is ultimately hopeful. It's rare to find such striking prose in a page-turner, but A Country Called Home has it all. The overall effect is a powerful book that feels like a classic already.

Written in beautiful poetic prose. Highly recommended!

At the heart of this disturbing novel set in the Idaho wilderness is the desperate hunger of its characters to escape ennui and emptiness--in short, to find love. In 1960, Thomas Deracotte, a skittish physician, and his pregnant wife, Helen, a free spirit looking for adventure, leave their home in Connecticut and settle near the small town of Fife. A young man named Manny becomes a hired hand on their fledgling farm. Numerous tragedies soon strike, but not according to the predictable formulas of run-of-the-mill romance fiction. Fast forward to 1976 and the Deracotte's daughter, Elise, faces troubles of her own: "It sometimes seemed to Lucas [Elise's boyfriend] that every man's life was destined by violence done and received." Written in beautiful poetic prose, A County Called Home is highly recommended. About the author: Kim Barnes is the author of the novel Finding Caruso and two memoirs, In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown Country--a finalist for the 1977 Pulitzer Prize--and Hungry for the World. She is coeditor with Mary Clearman Blew of Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers, and with Claire Davis of Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-five Women over Forty. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, MORE magazine, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.

dark family drama

In Connecticut scholarship medical student Thomas Deracotte met, dated, and married wealthy Helen over the objections of her upper crust parents; her father being third generation Yale especially detested this scholarship student. Soon after they exchange I do, the couple in 1960 moves to a farm in Fife, Idaho where he is to open up a medical practice; the current local health care comes from a pharmacist. Shockingly, Thomas delays starting his practice as he would rather work the land; Helen quickly misses her family and her New England upper class lifestyle as farm living is not the place for her. She becomes pregnant while Thomas hires teen Manny to work on the farm. Helen gives birth to Elise, but she soon wants freedom from her intolerant spouse and is lonely from the hours of nothing but motherhood; while her husband turns to drugs to alleviate his feelings of failure as a physician, as a farmer, as a husband, and as a father. She considers Manny for a fling and he is falling in love with her. However after a tragedy changes the family dynamics, Manny is more a dad to Elise while her biological father is deeper into drugs. This is a dark family drama that looks closely at the 1960s and 1970s when youthful idealism turned to cynicism and disappointment; yet with Elise there is guarded hope for the future. None of the four lead characters escape the bleakness, which in some ways becomes overbearing when one traumatic event is followed by another and another until suddenly Elsie is a teenager. Still in spite of the overwhelming sense of negativity, Kim Barnes provides a poignant look at idealism without pragmatism. Harriet Klausner