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Cargando... Martin Marten: A Novelpor Brian Doyle
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This is a coming-of-age story about two males: one is a 14-year old human (Dave) and the other is a young marten (Martin.) Dave lives with his hardworking parents and little sister in a cabin on Mount Hood (or as Brian Doyle prefers to call it, Wy'east, its Native American name.) The parallels and contrasts between their two lives, their struggles and successes, their periodic sightings of each other, made this a “feel good” story. Doyle’s philosophy of caring for each other and the land and plants, animals, insects, etc. will appeal to nature lovers. I especially liked Dave’s spunky little sister and Martin’s live-saving heroics. After awhile, I got bored. Martin Marten is ostensibly about the first two years of the life of a marten named Martin who lives in the forest on the slopes of Mt. Hood in Oregon (Doyle uses the Native American name for the mountain, Wy'east). Martin is actually just one of a myriad of characters whose lives are described in this book: we also follow Dave, a teenage boy, his parents, his precocious sister Maria, the giant elk Louis, a trapper named Mr. Douglas and his charming horse Edwin, the local store owner Miss Moss, a stray dog who decides to move in with a substitute teacher, a fox, a guy who likes riding his bike really fast all the time, and several other characters. But what the book is really about is the beautiful abundance and interconnectedness of nature, and how the world is jam-packed with stories if we just stop to pay attention. There's not really any plot. Good things happen and bad things happen, but ultimately everyone is kind and loving and nature is generous. Doyle writes with humor and empathy and a deep, deep appreciation of the variety and bounty of creation. I love Doyle's writing: he's full of kaleidoscopic lists. This book is good for the soul. It's soothing and full of happiness and love. Brian Doyle evokes the life of a marten just as deftly and convincingly as he does that of his teenaged protagonist, skirting the boundaries of anthropomorphism so perfectly that you’ll believe you know how a marten might feel. Maybe you (an adult reader) might learn how a teenager feels too, though the book is really written for teens—perhaps they’re trying, like Dave, to understand adulthood. Martin Marten is a coming of age story, but so much more. The ages of the forest weave into the age of a boy; the timescapes and landscapes of man weave into those of the wild. Facts and figures and fun and fear and happiness all blend, and it’s not fantasy, but a kind of super-reality, that invites the reader to know how the world’s senses flow. The author humanizes animals and humans in this novel, fitting us all together and giving us a place that’s convincingly called home—a place in a small community, with animals and nature close by, and friends and strangers sharing and twining their lives. It’s a wonderful book. Disclosure: I read Mink River and I was eager to read more of Brian Doyle. I love his writing. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"Dave is fourteen years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood (or as Dave prefers to call it, like the Native Americans once did, Wy'east). He is entering high school, adulthood on the horizon not far off in distance, and contemplating a future away from his mother, father, and his precocious younger sister. And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms on Wy'east that summer. Martin, a pine marten (a small animal of the deep woods, of the otter/mink family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well. As Martin and Dave's paths cross on forest trails and rocky mountaintops, they and we witness the full, unknowable breadth and vast sweep of life, and the awe inspiring interconnectedness of the world and its many inhabitants, human and otherwise. Martin Marten is a coming of age tale like no other, told in Brian Doyle's joyous, rollicking style"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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If you are like me, and have wondered, from time to time, what it would be like to be an animal, or maybe a tree, this is a book for you. It's probably not a book for everyone, my daughter was dismayed to see that it doesn't have quotation marks, and is pretty gently plotted. A neighbor was unhappy at the violence in the book (nature, after all, being red in tooth and claw.). Another deficit in the book (IMO) is that everyone in the book is very good-hearted. People make mistakes, but there is not much in the way of mean-ness or selfishness here. Which is charming, but maybe not realistic?
However, the book has much to recommend it; lovely nature writing; wonderful quirky character, and a sweet philosophical narrative voice. Here is a piece of that voice, discussing a Marten who was tangential to this story:
"He will, for example, be hit by lightning and assumed to be dead but then rise up spitting and utterly alive as if by magic. He will briefly find himself atop a running horse, which is a remarkable story all by itself. He will be a rare and perhaps unique case of a Marten who learns to kill and eat porcupines after watching a fisher accomplish that potentially punturous and eminently painful task. He will father more kits than we could easily count if they were somehow piled wriggling in front of us in a seething mewling pile. He will die finally in an act of stunning courage in defense of his enduring love, a story which by itself you could write three books about, and by heavens what a terrific movie it would make. And he is only one of a million, no a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, than we could tell each other in a hundred years..... The fact is that the more stories we share about living beings, the more attentive we are to living beings, and perhaps the less willing we are to slaughter them and allow them to be slaughtered. That could be." ( )