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    Mink River
    Mink River
    Mink River
    Audiobook12 hours

    Mink River

    Written by Brian Doyle

    Narrated by David Drummond

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman who is addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer, and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime is committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it's thinking . . .


    This is the tale of a town, written in a distinct and lyrical voice, and when the book ends, listeners will be more than a little sad to leave the village of Neawanaka, on the wet coast of Oregon, beneath the hills that used to boast the biggest trees in the history of the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 16, 2014
    ISBN9781494572617
    Mink River
    Author

    Brian Doyle

    BRIAN DOYLE (1956–2017) was the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland and the author of twenty books of essays, fiction, poems, and nonfiction, including Chicago, Martin Marten, The Plover, Children and Other Wild Animals, Mink River, and The Wet Engine. His other writings have appeared in Best American Essays, Best Spiritual Writing, the New York Times, Harper’s, the American Scholar, and the Atlantic.

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    Reviews for Mink River

    4.5/5

    160 ratings27 reviews

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    • 5/5
      So many exquisite phrases-poetry disguised as a novel. Beautiful words.
    • 1/5
      One of my favorite books. I’ve listened to it many times. Sheer energetic lyrical delight! The author brings in so many elements - nature, spirituality, community, love, a sense of place and home, a sense of help and healing. Brian Doyle is a bright light still shining.
    • 4/5
      Writing like poetry, sometimes repetitive, always descriptive. Strong sense of place. Great characters, including a wise crow and a nun who is beloved enough to have a pint pour on her gravesite.
    • 5/5
      Just glorious. It might be slow going, but it’s worth every moment
    • 3/5
      If the TV show Northern Exposure were a book, this would be it. I loved Northern Exposure, but as a novel, it’s a tad too twee for my taste. Everyone is just so good, and kind, and wise.
    • 3/5
      Lyrical. I'd never read a book like this before. I tried to read Gertrude Stein - which I feel is an influence - and could not push myself through her. This book sings its story.
    • 5/5
      Recommended to me by one of the patrons in the library who often asks me for book ideas. We've found ourselves enjoying the same kind of writing. This was a book I will need to own, one to share and one to re-read someday. I'm in love with Cedar and Moses (the crow). Reminded me of Driftless by David Rhodes. After introducing his small town in Oregon and her inhabitants we are soon carried off into a very expanded world of players. Don't expect this world to hinge on human activity, the natural world comes alive through Salish and Celtic voices and cultural tenets. A gorgeous reminder of the connectedness of our lives and the purpose. k ( ....on now to One Long River of Song also by this author. Can't wait.)
    • 5/5
      This is an extended dream of a novel, set in an Our Town that lies midway between Spoon River and Brigadoon – a place of mist and rains and tides, where animals talk and humans struggle to find that spot between surviving and truly living.

      Set in a tiny coastal Oregon village, the plot (such as it is) meanders about following various inhabitants as they work and love and think about the future. The main family is that of Worried Man and his wife, Maple Head, their daughter No Horses, her husband Owen, and their son Daniel. Worried Man, aided and abetted by his friend Cedar, run the Public Works department under a vague mission statement that seems to involve doing whatever they think would be a good idea for the town. The magical-realism tale unspools in multiple languages – English, Gaelic, Italian, Salish, Latin, and Bear, and Doyle brings the landscape to breathing, pulsating life on every page.

      Don’t think about it too hard. Just enjoy. As the crow says, “stories are not only words. Words are just the clothes people drape on stories.” And a magical drapery it is.
    • 5/5
      This book is utterly amazing.

      It perfectly evokes and encapsulates the Pacific Northwest: the cycle of nature, the trees, the ocean, the fish and birds, the Native American folklore that infuses the landscape, the brief giddy summer.

      Doyle's writing is delightful. He manages to weave together a lot of varied storylines and do justice to all of them. All of the characters are well-rounded and likeable - he even manages to make an abusive father into a sympathetic character. Sometimes the writing is like a prose poem, especially in scenes where all the characters are doing the same thing at once (everyone in town is on one knee, everyone in town is singing).

      The book explores a lot of themes: the importance of storytelling, the similarities and contrasts between Native and immigrant families, the quest to enjoy life, our relationship to nature and to time. It has characters in every stage of life, from birth to adolescence to mid-life crisis to old age to death, and does justice to them all.

      This one is worth re-reading every few years.

      I listened to the audiobook. It was a little tough to keep all the characters straight when I couldn't flip back to jog my memory, but the narrator did an excellent job.
    • 5/5
      This is hands down the best book I've ever read. Brain Doyle was taken from us far too soon and I cannot get enough of his beautiful mind.
    • 5/5
      If rivers could talk, would you listen? If your answer is yes, then this is the book for you, where author Brian Doyle brings to life a wealth of vividly real and enthralling characters, human and otherwise. Each voice is richly different. Each surface holds hidden depths of joy or pain. And each chapter of past recollection, future dream, or present hope is beautifully presented.

      Brian Doyle gives voice to Oregon’s coast in the same way Kent Haruf gives voice to the plains. Speakers and thoughts need no quote markers. Words in memory are every bit as real as those said out loud. And words of river or bird have just as much importance as those of a dying man or a wounded child.

      Thought provoking, inspiring, haunting, hopeful, honest yet filled with delight, Mink River reads like a song, like houses and trees, like past and present, plant and water, vineyard wine and the ocean rolled into one. I really enjoyed it.

      Disclosure: I’d long planned to read a book by this author, and started this the day he died. He will be missed.
    • 4/5
      Too many character threads to follow, needed a cheat sheet! I loved the Public Works Department's mission statement. This author has such a skill with capturing exactly the essence of a place or of an emotion. I did prefer Martin Marten, much the same style but fewer storylines and easier to follow.
    • 4/5
      This is a lovely, quirky book, about a small town on the Oregon Coast (Mink River) and people who live there. It's full of magic, spirituality and compassion for all living things.
    • 5/5
      This is an amazing book. I like the setting, the characters, the style of narration. It reminds me a bit of "Book Thief" and "All the Lights you cannot see". I like the fact that the nature is also a character in this book and I truly do not mind a talking crow and a few floating ghosts. And I enjoy the voice of the reading, excellent companion in my car.
    • 3/5
      There was a lot that I loved in this book, the parts told from the perspective of Moses the crow, especially. What I didn't like - the disjointedness of alternating between characters. If the author had stayed with characters longer before shifting the point of view, I think I would have felt more attachment to them and their personal stories.
    • 5/5
      This book was recommended me by a friend. Reading the first few pages, I was not at all convinced. I thought it was going to be one of those books you feel obligated to finish because someone you like and respect gave it to you. The prose was too flowery and self-indulgent, rambling and too clever for its own good. Somewhere after those first few pages though I lost the thread of my irritation and got swept up into the characters and the setting. Everything felt so familiar and I wanted to jump right in and be a part of this community. I didn't want it to end!
    • 4/5
      This is not the type of book I usually read, or enjoy! A little over 300 pages, crammed full with the most annoying broken rules of proper grammar, not to mention a book that is not so much a story as it is a rambling of observations. That being said Mink River was an enjoyable read. This is not a book you will race through- if you do you will be disappointed- since there is not really a story, there is not really a conclusion either.
      This book is like 40 year old scotch, made for sipping slowly and savoring, by the fire on a rainy night.
    • 3/5
      Even though I live in the pacific northwest and am into natural history, I just couldn't get fully into this novel. In my opinion, Doyle focuses too much on the observations of life rather than a compelling story with conflict and resolution. It has its moments of brilliance, but then it has long stretches of flatness. Oh well -- decide for yourself!
    • 5/5
      Ever read a book that ends up turning you into a short-term fanatic? Right now, I think Brian Doyle is the most awesomest thing since sliced bread. (Yes, I know. I meant to write it that way.)

      Mink River has been coming up on various "you'd like this" lists for awhile, and I enjoy his column in The Oregonian. His column in no way prepared me, however, for this novel. It blew me away.

      What I loved:
      * Characters. They are wonderful, deep, human, special. Magic.
      * Moses. An off-shoot of "Characters," but worth it's own asterisk. I love Moses. I want to know Moses.
      * Irish stories. Native American stories. Cuchulainn, my favorite literary hero has a place in this book.
      * A healthy dose of magical realism.
      * Spirituality, as seen through flawed souls.
      * Lyricism. This is lyrical prose. It's poetic prose. It's prosely poetics. Okay. It's just lovely. I had to read some passages aloud to fully taste the loveliness. My husband was frequently treated to "Hey, listen to this paragraph!".
      *Gentle and powerful.

      This isn't a book to power through. It merits listening. Some complain that it's got strings of nouns, adjectives, whatever.... but the thing is, that's a chunk of the point. Life, beauty, nature, societies - we're all a collection of things and sights and sounds, and those things together build a world. Doyle's world is full and magic and, to me, oh, so real.

      Sometimes, once in a great while, a book comes along that I just don't want to end. I begin reading slower, and slower, feeling the end draw near, and I just don't want it to happen. Mink River was one of those books.

      I look forward to his next novel. I'll be checking out some of his short story collections in the meantime
    • 5/5
      Somehow Doyle gets away with devices that usually leaves me cold in literature: meta-self-referential tropes, streams of consciousness, exhaustive and plotless lists of nouns. And yet I love this book hopelessly, adulation heaped on breathless joy through each vignette-chapter. It's perfection in its myriad imperfections. I'm from 'round here, the Pacific Northwest. Grew up here, walked in forests here, learned about the trees and the berries here, too, like his characters. This novel (if you can call it that) GETS it, the independent big-broken-hearted idiosyncratic hopeful hopeless hidebound nature-bound dreariness loveliness of the Pacific Northwest coast. Oh, and one of the characters is a crow. So, there's that, too.
    • 4/5
      I loved this though many of you won't. It's a gentle story of an almost mythic small town in Oregon, featuring the ocean and a river and a cluster of fascinating residents. There's Native American grandparents Worried Man (Billy), Maple Head (May), their daughter No Horses (Nora), her husband Owen and their son Daniel. They are surrounded by trees - alders, cypress, hemlock, spruce - and Nora's carving brings them to life. There's a doctor who houses a dying man who yearns for his first boat trip; Daniel, who broke both legs flying off his bike; and Kristi, raped by her dangerous stepfather.

      And then there's Moses, a crow with a voice. And Declan, who hates farming so much that he shoots his cows and then invites everyone in town to a gigantic BBQ.

      And the woods, and the water, and Mount Hood. And plenty of magical realism. And lots of magical writing.
    • 5/5
      Doyle casts a spell and the reader succumbs. The characters are marvelous and one can only wish that you knew them. I loved Moses the crow and the abundant kindness. A refreshing fantasy.
    • 5/5
      Extraordinary. I was tumbled under the wild rushing prose, tumbled and cartwheeled and somersaulted through this book full of wondrous and outrageous people, this book full of words sinuous as snakes that would out of nowhere take off and soar like very myth itself.

      Doyle's foray into fiction is not that far a leap from his past nonfiction- he's such a keen observer of humanity that his fictional people (even his fictional talking, thinking crow) are more real than some of the people I actually know. His sheer delight is alive in the words and it makes each and every page shimmer.

      There's something quintessentially Northwest about this book, there's the faint scent of Robbins, a sprinkle of Kesey, more than a smattering of the First Nations mythmakers, a spritz of Holbrook, a seasoning of Carver- but it's all infused with the mysterious aching Irishness of Doyle and the love he has for language and humanity and this land upon which I live. I don't mean to say it's at all derivative, because it is not. Not a bit. But it partakes deeply and fully of Place, and as such it rings echoes of those other great books that have come before.

      I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
    • 5/5
      This book defies being pidgeon-holed; I suppose if I was forced to catagorize it I would say "Great Storytelling." My gold standard for any book I read cover to cover is that I have to care about the characters - at least one of them. I loved every character in this book - encluding the crow. Especially the crow! Sadly, I would have missed it if it hadn't been recommended by one of my Northwest kids. I LOVED THIS BOOK. Anyone who is willing to think outside the box and would like to visit a lovely mythical town on the Oregon coast...this is the book for you.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. I will read it again - as soon as I can pry it out of the hands of my friend, who also loves it and has read it twice in a row. (She said she went to Hawaii to recuperate from reading such an amazing book. She makes retirement look good.) The story is rich, multi-layered, and intriguing. The lives of all the characters are very well-developed and quite enjoyable. And there's an undertow of mystery, mysticism, ancient honor, and a connection with Nature that we've almost forgotten in disregard. I love love love it, and will continue to recommend it and loan it out - even at the risk of being "Mink River"less.
    • 5/5
      This book has just enough magic realism and Native American mysticism entwined with the plot to make it necessary to suspect your disbelief and treat it as a fairy tale. Billy and Cedar are the self-appointed "Department of Public Works" of their very small town on the Oregon coast. Normally, this would involved streets and sewers and such, but this DPW is actually all about helping the citizens of the town, based on Billy's (or Worried Man's) ability to feel the pain of others. They are assisted by a talking crow, a doctor who smokes cigarettes named after the Apostles, Billy's wife Maple Head and many other citizens of the small community. If you want to read something out of the ordinary, this is a great book.
    • 5/5
      Small university presses put out some really fantastic material, but can suffer from a tragic lack of distribution and publicity. We're just going to have to hope that Mink River ends up on someone's 'Top Ten List', because it deserves to be read.

      Mink River is the story of a small Oregon town and the people that make it. Its first impressions are like a Pacific North-West Lake Woebegone with Irish and Native Americans instead of Norwegians and Swedes. Though not an inappropriate analogy, Doyle brings a depth of character and a beautiful mysticism to the proceedings that makes it so much more. His stream-of-consciousness prose captures the grandeur, mystery, and tiny humility of his natural setting. His characters range from sardonic to delightfully eccentric to terribly sad, and are above all real. The reader quickly learns to care for these terribly strange, terribly broken, terribly normal, terribly believable people who struggle, sweat, die, and somehow find joy in their lives. Doyle somehow maintains a casual, natural pace while at the same time keeping the reader anxious and eager to see how these people are going to deal with the mess around them and the even bigger messes inside them. I really don't have strong enough words to express how special this book felt. It was like reading a modern myth told and lived by the natives of this little coastal village, with all its sadness and splendor. It's just, well, it's really good. You should read it.