Mink River

Brian Doyle’s 2010 novel Mink River plays with the conventions of realistic narrative, character, and long-form fiction. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the novel traces the lives of the often strange and idiosyncratic residents of a small town, flitting episodically from person to person—and, in a touch of magical realism, sometimes to animals or inanimate objects—without a plotted through line. Instead, Doyle uses lyrical descriptions, digressive sentences, and other ways of playing with the third-person omniscient narrator’s voice to create a portrait of a place, where the place itself becomes the main character of the story he is telling.

The novel is set in Neawanaka, a fictional town on the coast of Oregon. There is no plot, as such, but we are introduced to a large cast of characters whose lives progress as the book goes on. One theme of the novel is the enduring ability of the town’s residents to come together, fueled by a shared past and remembered history, and by their love of each other. The easiest way to describe the narrative is simply to list these characters and their defining features, which is what this summary will now do.

The middle-aged Billy and George work at the Department of Public Works. Because the job is so small, the department also offers haircuts to town residents. As a member of the Salish tribe, Billy also has a native name, Worried Man. He is the town’s psychic, or intuitive, who has such deep empathy that he can feel the pain of those around him. His premonitions are useful enough that a child predator is arrested based on what Worried Man felt. But when this criminal escapes from jail, Michael, a police officer whose main passion in life is the operas of Puccini, pursues him until the criminal attacks and captures the cop. The cop is saved by Moses, a neighborhood crow, whose flight pattern gives it a bird’s-eye view of everything going on in the town, and who is able to talk to those who listen.

Owen owns a repair shop. His wife Nora, also named No Horses, is Worried Man’s daughter and works as a wood sculptor. She suffers from overwhelming depression, which she seems unable to overcome. Owen and Nora have a son, the 12-year-old Daniel, whose legs are severely damaged in a bicycle accident where he is thrown off a cliff. Moses the crow sees the accident happen and tells Owen about it. In the face of this horrible event, the town rallies around the family—and especially around Daniel—in order to put things back as well as possible. The taciturn doctor who treats the boy has his own quirks—every day, he smokes exactly twelve cigarettes, first naming each one after one of Christ’s apostles. Daniel, who had been desperate to leave Neawanaka, which had felt oppressively small, now decides, instead, to stay. At the same time, because of the help of her friends and family, Nora is able to claw her way out of her depression.

One day, Red Hugh O’Donnell, an abusive milk farmer, is killed by a log that falls off a truck and through his windshield. His adult children are at a loss about what to do. His oldest son, Declan, is a fisherman who doesn’t particularly like the sea. Since he has inherited his father’s farm, he tries to sell off the land and the cows, but it turns out that neither is worth anything. The son’s solution is simply to shoot the cows and throw the largest barbecue and picnic that the town has ever seen—a festive respite for the community in the middle of a terrible summer. Meanwhile, Red’s daughter Grace, a functional alcoholic, barters her father’s land for the town pub. Stella, the pub’s owner, has always wanted to grow a vineyard and has dreamed of Red’s land as the perfect location. Grace transforms the pub from a run-down neighborhood watering hole into a European-style pub, where people come to talk to each other rather than just to get drunk.

Worried Man and his best friend Cedar decide to climb nearby Mount Hood to understand the nature of time. Worried Man ends up in a cave where he hears a voice that explains something about time but also reveals that he will soon suffer a stroke that will leave him completely paralyzed but still conscious. Worried Man invokes some biblical predecessors to bargain with the voice—the stroke will still happen, but he will retain the use of one hand as well as his voice. Owen later builds him a wheelchair so he can continue his work.

Doyle’s writing style is polarizing for critics and readers. Although many praise the wordy and poetic sentences that span whole paragraphs, others find them distracting and off-putting. As the Kirkus Reviews puts it, “It’s much harder, though, to be patient with the author’s persistent overwriting. The logorrhea is intended to give the novel a tone that’s both impressionistic and operatic… But as the concluding chapters feature plot turns about a spiritual mountain trek and a gun-toting assailant, the novel’s initial home-and-hearth charm dissolves into hackneyed storytelling and grating, run-on sentences.”