Review: The Meadow by James Galvin

Once in a while someone lends you a book that opens a new world, becomes a place to find writing treasures, day after day, and as the last page is turned, you know that each word on every page has its special place in your memory. That’s a rather fanciful sentence, I can hear you thinking, how can a book be all that?

And my answer after reading The Meadow by James Galvin is by the way its prose is poetry, by the way it shakes out the in and outs, up and downs of the natural world, by the way it moves with ease through time, people, place.  But most of all by the way it pays such close attention to topic – in this case, life in the American West, the life of a meadow and the struggles of living in those places.

Galvin writes mainly about the lives of men, Lyle, Ray, Abb,: his slight references to women left me wondering who has detailed their lives in that place? And is this a novel, is it biography, is it a nature story – probably its all of those.

Thank you Susan, B-R for lending me this book … a good deed done.