31. The Burgess Boys - Elizabeth Strout

Random House, 2013

320 pgs.

CRF for adults

Finished 8/17/2013

Goodreads Rating: 3.53

My Rating: Liked it quite well (3.5) 

Acquired: TPPL

Setting: Contemporary NYC and rural Maine (with a few pages hiking in the AZ desert...)

1^st sentence/s: "On a breezy October afternoon in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, Helen Farber Burgess was packing for vacation."  (There was a prologue, but I chose to ignore it for the purpose of 1st sentence, it had nothing (much) to do with the story....and gave away a few hints that I would have rather figured out myself as I read.)

My comments:  What do I think? Hmmm. Hard to say. First off, this was definitely a "Maine-Basher" book, which turned me off completely. I am a Mainer, and proud of it. However, I loved the way that Strout developed the characters. At first I felt the plot was being forced, but then when I understood the reasoning behind poor Zach's behavior (throwing a pig's head into a mosque!) I no longer felt that. When you have genuine feelings for characters (hatred, pity, apathy...), I guess you're relating to them, and isn't that what you want in a book? And thirdly, I will think about this awhile, even as I read other stories. It's not a forgettable story - at least not for me. Yes, I liked it.

Goodreads Review:  Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.