This Tender Land A Novel

Similarly to Ordinary Grace, this is a story that takes a close-to-archetypical story most people probably have read, and tilts it a bit. At times, it feels a bit like Big Fish. Not just because there’s a witch. It’s reiterated that not quite all of it is completely true. It’s kids-in-the-forest reminiscent of Stand By Me at times, hitting a nostalgic note, as a gaggle of kids run away from a residential school (which the witch runs) and collide with random and odd people and situations. Narrated by one of two brothers in the future, there’s a strong sense of the author being present, beyond his being the protagonist, as you’re aware he’s also colouring outside the lines of the story. Through the interrogation of faith and belief in religion and people, in general—especially after seeing some of the worst from people early on in their lives—characters encountered on their odyssey (literally dubbed so, called out in a chapter header) take on a symbolic, mythological quality which work to convey the thing out young narrator internalized at the time, as well as furthering the plot. Sometimes this really worked for me. Other times, the… tinge or ‘quality’ this has, the author with his thumb on the scales, was something I butted heads with. You know fiction is a series of choices. You know it’s not the actual story of the brother. And yet, it did bug me not knowing what was ‘real’ or not. There are a number of larger-than-life, melodramatic elements that present themselves. In a ‘pay attention to the strangeness of the dream’ way… I always wonder when an author does this to assuage the reader’s potential spotting of a contrivance. With me, though, it always underscores, highlights, and strikes the very thing they are trying to hand wave with a lightning bolt. It’s something like when people say they are doing a segue. You don’t draw attention to a segue: you just _do_ it. As such, I liked this book quite a book. It has something good to say. Draws attention to residential schools. Twists a tropey story into something else. Is competently, sometimes exceptionally written; especially with dialogue with some characters. But every time I settled into the fiction, invariably the narrator would point to the strangeness of the dream and I would be out of the fiction and pretty annoyed. Otherwise I bet this would have been a 5 star read. Closer to it, anyway.