American Rust

great book!

I really enjoyed this book. It was a really quick read and I liked how the book was divided into 6 books and was broken down, each chapter a few pages. I liked how the various viewpoints were captured this way. It is kinda like a snowball effect, from the actions of Issac, Poe, Grace, Harris, and Lee. This book has the small town flair to it, everybody knowing everybody else. An excellent character study!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Very Good.

Reading this book was like taking a wonderful but sad journey through the life of people you have just met. The book starts off with Isaac English and Billy Poe, two young men who are a well of lost and wasted opportunities. Isaac has just stolen $4,000 from his father and is leaving town to chase a better life for himself. Poe decides to walk him a short distance but intends to return home shortly. Unfortunately, nothing turns out as planned for both boys and a man ends up dead.

Isaac possesses the intellect of a genius and everyone in town expects that he will end up in a great college and excel even higher than his older sister who attended Yale. But his mother dies, his father is crippled by a job related accident and his sister leaves for college. For reasons which seem unfathomable, he chooses to remain at home rather than go to college. Billy was once a star athlete with scholarship offers from top universities. But he squanders all these opportunities by choosing to remain in his small town doing practically nothing with his life. He seems to spend the rest if his time unemployed, getting into fights and being a source of worry to his mother. But as different as both boys seem from each other, they form a friendship. And though Billy seems from the aforementioned description to be a bad seed, there is something about this character that is intensely sympathetic. Billy like the rest of the characters in the book all make bad choices and tries to make the best of what the town and its surroundings has dealt them.

The town had once been a giant of the manufacture and sale of steel. But like many of such towns in America's rust belt, the factories had not been properly updated and had become less competitive in the market place. A vast majority of the men in the town had once worked in one of the many steel plants only to have their source of income taken away when most the jobs went overseas. The town is now a shell of its former self and half the population seem to be recipients of section 8, welfare benefits and other forms of government assistance. In addition, there is a good part of the population that is involved in ingesting Meth or cooking it for sale or private use.

The author is amazing at describing the physical decay of the town amidst the natural beauty that surrounds. You feel the breakdown of the town and the despair that its inhabitants experience as they try to just make it from day to day. Their psyches are broken and he is able to capture it in a very palpable way. He discusses contemporary American life and its problems without it sounding like he is preaching to you or fulfilling an agenda. His style is slow without being boring and detailed without meandering. I will say that his writing does take a bit of getting used to but I believe that the effort expended is repaid in full. There were parts of it that I felt were randomly thrown in without any real purpose but the substance of the novel makes you forgive this. The story will transport you from your chair to an economically devastated landscape whose inhabitants' dramatic lives will entertain, horrify and sadden you. I would highly recommend this book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Like an old friend who you want to finally get things right after seeing them make some bad choices

The characters choices were at times annoying but this made the book feel all the more real. Who of us hasn't watched a friend or loved one make a bad decision and not felt annoyed at their indescretion? This is what makes this book a piece of literature: you start to think of the characters as friends or family and sometimes you want to turn away (or yell at them and tell them what they should be doing) when they're making a mistake. Phillip Meyer got the feeling of the dillapidated ex-steeltown pretty much dead on, and he captured the wanderlust of the youths growing up there and the dispare that goes along with it. Think of this book as a friend who has made some annoyingly stupid decions. If you know this going into reading it, you won't be disappointed.

Entertaining but bogs down midway

I thought Meyer's story, setting and key characters were all quite original in American Rust. It is well-written and Meyer's depictions of the landscape were image-provoking. On the negative side, Meyer spends too much time in the heads of his characters for my taste, and I thought this caused the story to bog down a bit halfway through. But the pace picks up in the last third and I thought the ending was clever.

An incredible new novel by a remarkable writer

American Rust is the story of the lives of ordinary people who deal with extraordinary situations and who make difficult decisions. The book is a page-turner. Once it gets going, you'll have a problem putting it down. It is a remarkable portrait of contemporary America, written by a young writer whose talent is already established. One issue it focuses on is dealing what is legal, as opposed to what is moral. No easy answers to this one and the author, Philipp Meyer, ensures that the reader gets involved. The characters are well-drawn. I believe that years from now this book will be established as a classic. Go for it!

Very Disappointing!

I ordered this book based on some of the reviewers comparing it to Steinbeck (one of my favorite writers) with anticipation of a great read. I was extremely disappointed!

The book starts out well where we meet the two main characters Isaac and Poe, who are both bored with there current lives in a Pennsylvania town and decide to go off together to seek a better life. Inclement weather causes them to seek shelter. While in the shelter they are confronted by a couple of transients. Trying to defend Poe, Isaac kills one of the transients, dashing Isaac and Poes plans for escaping the town to a better life.

The book goes downhill from there as Harris, the local policeman has evidence implicating Isaac and Poe in the transient's murder but be decides to cover it up. We meet Isaac's sister Lee, who Poe has a kind of "buddy" love affair with and Poe's mom who has been relegated to living in a trailer without heat. The book moves incredibly slow from there and I had a hard time caring for any of the characters. This is unlike a Steinbeck novel where all the characters are well developed and interesting. It was very difficult for me to get through the rest of the book and I definately cannot recommend it.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Good Initial Effort

A tightly composed and realistic read. Kinda dark, kinda brooding. Well written and a great initial effort. Made me know the characters.

gritty and tough lives

I originally picked AMERICAN RUST because I was intrigued by the cover. After reading the synopsis, I knew that I had to read this book. With today's economy, many can relate to the hardships of a dying town and its people. This novel revolves around a murder and the connection of those involved. Philipp Meyer has written such an intense story where each chapter is seen from the eyes of one of the characters. This made me want to learn what happens with each and every person as they were interesting characters and therefore I couldn't put the book down. This is a story of depressing lives, but not ones without hope and dreams.

American Rust

I am not sure why the author thought this story was worth telling.

AMAZING!

I could not put this book down! I'll be honest I don't have a lot of time so it's not too often I can finish a book in a few days (It sadly some times takes me a couple months). But once I started this book I had no other choice but to finish it. If I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about reading it! I recomend this book to anyone looking for something new and great to read!!!!!!

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

A really magnificent first novel. From the opening scenes Meyer created a world where lives hovered on a knife's edge of disaster. Poor choices and bad decisions land his characters in nasty situations any of us would have difficulty confronting. Readers have a sense of the big picture only because the author told his story from so many points of view. But he doesn't tell us the future before he is ready and it is with a sense of impending doom that we watch the story unfold to what we fully expect will be its dreadful conclusion.

This novel did not get nearly the attention it deserved when it was published in February this year. If I have any complaints at all it is merely that it contained more words than it needed. The characters are drawn with sensitivity and depth and the scenes have added details that crank up the reader's sense of foreboding to high. I hope and expect that the author will get more attention from future work, though I hope his publisher puts this work up front for promotion.

It is said that men don't really read novels. If all novels were as good as this one, I think we'd see a lot more men among the converted. This should appeal to those lovers of the Palahniuk oeuvre, though I hate to limit his appeal. It is a man's novel like Black Flies (Shannon Burke, 2008) was a man's novel. It is firmly from a man's point of view. Introspective, but not internal.

Ecellent book!

This book is simply excellent. The author does a great job describing the socioeconomic challenges of small town America today while respecting his characters and going b7ack & forth between their inner thoughts and spoken dialog. The story is very captivating in itself, but the characters and insight they demonstrate towards their lives is very well done. At times these characters are borderline crazy and at times as mentioned deomonstrate insight & intelligence. Probably like most of us. It gives me new repsect for individuals living & understanding the detioration of the small town American dream in the coal & steel towns of yesterday but of course it is also important and relevent for us all as we are turned upside down by this changing economy. Read this book!

Meyer is NO KEROUAC

The lack of writing talent in the United States these days is not surprising, given the fact that during the last thirty years millions of people have worshiped at the alter of the almighty dollar. Meyer is no Kerouac and his writing is not even of publishable quality. I suggest Meyer attempt to create computer games; he may have more luck. Kerouac would not be impressed with this book. Of that I am certain. Yuck!

0 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

American Rust

American Rust is a story about two your men, Poe and Issac who are coming
of age in a blue collar Pennsylvania steel town. Times are hard, the steel mills have shut down, the older residents are giving up and giving in to just surviving. The younger people accept their fate or not and some leave without looking back. This story deals with what happens to us when our dreams are shattered, when all that is left is the people that we really are without the comfort of daily routine and the promise of a paycheck.
Something happens in this story, someone is killed, it is an act of self defense but neither boy sees it that way. Immaturity leads them to try and hide the evidence when a small act of courage could have saved a whole lot of worry and regret. Will Issac and Poe rise above their situation? This is their story of what is true friendship is.

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