Review by Booklist Review
"Louise divorced Tiny that spring and found herself unable to watch television in a satisfying way"--such sardonic hints of contained disturbances suffuse a wonderful depiction of Grouse County, Iowa. The time is contemporary, the setting rural, and Drury populates the plat with people who mildly complain about their lives and local affairs. The scandal that sent Tiny packing was his trashing of a school's antivandalism exhibit; Louise then marries sheriff Dan Norman. The lives of the three meander over a few years and through about 30 other characters, and they absorb the strangenesses quotidian events deal out: the prank of painting a water tower, an abandoned baby, ~horses walking backward, the wreck of Dan's trailer home, and centrally, Louise's postpartum blues following her delivery of a stillborn. But more significant than the direction in which events trend is the imagery of the landscape and the quizzical, semiresigned comments the inhabitants make about it and each other. In this, Drury strikes gold, developing a personality or a scene in simple, unadorned prose. No detail presents itself uselessly: once laid down, it reappears elsewhere, building up, like thin layers of slate, a captivating world of wistful ennui. No grousing about Grouse County: this startling, affecting, and funny debut (serialized in the New Yorker) contributes to the American literary tradition of arch renditions of midwestern rural life. ~--Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in a small Midwestern town, Drury's first novel centers on a man who has yet to accept his divorce, his ex-wife and her present husband in this novel about the complexities of relationships and the simplicity of rural America. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the 296 square miles of Grouse County, Iowa, ``family agriculture seemed to be over and had not been replaced by any other compelling idea.'' Even so, Drury's fictional world teems with idiosyncratic life. We witness much of it through the eyes of Sheriff Dan Norman, who arrests Tiny Darling for vandalizing an antivandalism dance, marries the culprit's ex-wife, comforts a local stripper, and listens atop his trailer to a former actress witness for Christ. Drury's narrative style is as flat as the prairie land, but amidst apparent blandness we discover an abundance of droll characters and quirky events. Drury's first novel (much of which appeared earlier in The New Yorker ) affectionately chronicles the mundane but elevates it to a richly comic plane. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/93.-- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Drury's first novel, set in Grouse County, a network of small towns in the Midwest, is a poker-faced look at American folkways in a world that is precarious and perverse. Grouse County does not have cable, and it will never, ancient rumors to the contrary, play host to a farm movie starring Sally Field. On the other hand it does have Big Days, town meetings, and periodic elections for Sheriff. Instead of a plot, Drury provides a panoramic view of the county, a host of minor characters, and three major ones: Tiny Darling, an unconvicted thief; his wife, Louise, and Sheriff Dan Norman. While Tiny is an instantly recognizable lowlife, Drury constructs Dan and Louise almost stealthily, a detail here, a trait there. Early on Louise tires of her seven-year marriage to Tiny and throws him out. In short order, she and Dan are dating, sleeping together, living together, married. Dan is a laid-back sheriff, but he has no experience of domesticity. Bothered by insomnia, he sees a therapist who finds him unreadable, as does Louise, though she continues to love him. The crisis comes when Louise almost dies after her baby is stillborn. The irony (unforced) is that earlier Sheriff Dan had been led to an abandoned baby in a supermarket. The unwanted baby lives; the wanted baby dies. Shattered, Louise retreats to her aunt's house in Minnesota while Dan runs for re-election. A poor politician, he is almost defeated by a rich farmer's son and dirty tricks engineered by Tiny. Louise returns home. Slow fade. There's an awful lot here to like: the dialogue, the sly humor, the feather-light touch, the clean drive of the prose. All Drury needs is a plot for his work to really take off.
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