Beartooth by Callan Wink
Many thanks to Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley for
providing me with an advanced copy of Callan Wink’s evocative, exciting new
novel Beartooth. I had read a few reviews hyping this book up, so I was
excited to read it. Beartooth is the story of two brothers in their
twenties, Thad and Hazen, who are trying to find their way making a living in
the Montana wilderness a year or so after their father’s death. Their mother, a
transient hippy-type figure, intermittently returns after finding seasonal jobs
in California. These guys try to take the legitimate route of hard working,
selling firewood to locals who can’t always pay them and the growing class of
vacation home owners in Big Sky. However, like the narrator of Springsteen’s “Atlantic
City,” these guys have debts no honest man can pay. The story starts off as the
brothers attempt to extract a bear’s gallbladder, and they proceed to seek out
a bigger payday for a more treacherous mission from the mysterious middleman who
is only known as “The Scot”. Wink’s descriptive writing about the outdoors is transformative.
He truly captures the different colors of the changing seasons, along with the
sounds and smells of the outdoors. I’ve seen other reviews describe this novel
as “sensorial,” and I agree that this is an apt description. There were even
points where I cringed or shivered with the painful or cold descriptions of the
harsh Montana wilderness that provides the backdrop for much of the novel.
Although there are several events within the book, Wink’s
writing reminded me of another book set in Montana, James Welch’s Winter in the Blood, where the main character is somewhat aimlessly searching for
himself. The book’s loneliness and isolation, as well as the inability to
really connect with others reminded me a lot of Welch’s classic. I also kept
thinking about Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, and how much the
loneliness and isolation of Lester drives him to retreat to the woods and
create his own kind of fictional world. Similarly, both Thad and Hazen are adrift
after their father’s illness and death. Thad, the more responsible brother,
struggles to deal with the tax bill and the lien that is placed on their house.
While Thad often wonders about what makes a man and a father, Hazen is slightly
less interested and seems to take direction better, even if it involves doing
things that are morally questionable. At one point, Hazen takes a job as a
caretaker for sled dogs, and Thad notices that his brother brings home a foul
smell on his clothes. Thad learns that part of Hazen’s responsibilities includes
feeding the dogs dead, frozen mink. He also learns that the boss has asked
Hazen to put down some of the sicker dogs. Although Thad questions Hazen’s pay
for this job, it provides Hazen with some autonomy and sense of responsibility,
which as readers will learn, leads to some more questionable actions.
Nevertheless, despite the detailed descriptions, the events in the book don’t
always feel well connected, and seem somewhat aimless, like both brothers’
quest to find themselves and their purpose. I felt like the best part of the
book was the 2nd quarter where Thad and Hazen look to make some
money from the Scot through poaching elk antlers. Their quest through Yellowstone
to navigate some of the park’s lesser travelled areas and haul a large amount
of elk antlers was riveting and it kept me reading to see whether they would avoid
the bears, rangers, and other dangers that the wild presented.
While Hazen and Thad are two different characters who seem
to both compliment and contradict one another, other characters are not as well
developed. The Scot felt pretty strange as a villain. I actually wasn’t sure if
he was ominous or just kind of a weirdo, but he positions himself as an outsider
by wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes. Similarly, I wasn’t sure what Sacajawea’s
purpose was for much of the story. She seemed to be underdeveloped until the
latter half of the book, but even then, her interactions with Thad and Hazen as
their mother seemed strained. She did provide one of the more interesting lines
in the book “We’re born in one spot and spend the rest of our lives trying to
get back there.” It does seem like Thad is determined to stay in the house, and
that he doesn’t want to interact with others too much. Towards the end of the
book, he does speculate about settling down, but only after he can afford to do
so. Sacajawea, likewise, always ends up returning, pulled from her home by work
and the need for money, but always seeking to return even if her sons resent
her absences in their lives. Readers learn more about why she left, as well as
her own quest away from home and the trauma that sent her away in the first
place. In many ways, her escape into the wild is kind of similar to Thad and
Hazen’s own trips and escapades into Yellowstone after their father’s death. There’s
something in the book, too, about the nature of death and loss and how nature
can be a regenerative source for some. This book gave me a lot of think about—it’s
somewhat quiet and a quick read, and above all else, there are beautiful descriptions
of the wilderness. Other elements of the book including the plotting of events
and some of the supporting characters, are not as well developed. Nevertheless,
it’s worth the read, and I look forward to reading more from Wink.
No comments:
Post a Comment