A River Runs Through It

A River Runs Through It Norman Maclean 219pp.

Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It is a touching collection of short stories, all wrapped entirely around relationships between people and nature. These three stories all come from Maclean’s experiences in Montana during the first part of the 20^th century, reaffirming over and over again the clear virtue of closeness to the land. Maclean’s style is reminiscent of Thoreau, though it is much more heavily fictionalized. Happily, Maclean lets much of his philosophizing sit in the background of the text, choosing instead to extol the glories of actions, imperfections of life, and beauty of nature through his characters actions.

In the title story,  Maclean explores the relationship between himself and his brother during the last summer before his brother died. This story opens with a lengthy description of the pseudo-religious nature of fishing which he and his family practiced, then wanders through the season’s fishing shared between the Maclean brothers and the narrator’s brother-in-law. Fishing is explored as a symbol alongside the moral nature of each of the characters. The Maclean brothers, while not entirely upright men, are good and devoted fishermen who work by the incredibly demanding skill of fly-fishing. The brother-in-law, by contrast, is a layabout, portrayed without any manly virtues and fishes by the despicable technique of bait-fishing.

As the story progresses, Maclean attempts to help his brother straighten out the rougher parts of his life, but his attempts are rebuffed in a stiff, cold way. By the end of the story, which follows obsessively lengthy fishing trips, the two brothers have drawn closer together than they were as children and it seems as though this fishing therapy could straighten things out. But in a beautiful use of understatement, on the last page of the story Maclean simply reveals the brother’s death.

Maclean’s writing is beautiful, there’s honestly no other way to talk about it. Rarely, if ever, have I read an author who so well works the love of nature into his prose that the reader is fully transported into the stream and forest alongside the woodsmen and fishermen. I must make a brief acknowledgement that this over-pouring of love leads to one of the weaker aspects of the book. At points in the stories, Maclean makes such wide deviations from his narrative into lengthy passages about the landscape his characters inhabit and their history with the land that it makes the stories difficult to follow. This is shoddy worldbuilding, and it is surprising to find in the work of such an obviously talented writer.

At any rate, the stories in this volume are entertaining and touching, well-written to the point of excellence. I enjoyed A River Runs Through It tremendously and think that any reader would do the same. Perhaps the stories could have used a little tightening up in places, but their deviations and wandering, meandering pace lend an undeniable weight to the emotional punch at the end of the stories.

Would I recommend A River Runs Through It? Yes.

Score: 4.0/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? No.

-Mr. Cheddar