I am a nice Jewish (middle-aged) girl who moved to Fargo in 2016 from Atlanta, after having lived in Philadelphia, DC and Brooklyn. For those who haven't read the book, Fargo is the "nowhere" the author is 100 miles from. The rabbi who officiated at her wedding is MY rabbi (hi Janeen!) I have had the experience of returning to New York and not knowing whether to laugh or cry when I realized I had lost my edge and felt like a tourist.

When my book club chose this for our January book I read the description and laughed, I thought that this book was written FOR ME. I was wrong. After the first few chapters, which were fun and funny (the story about Minnesota salad cracked me up -- I had the exact same experience with Snicker salad!) I thought the book was reallllllly boring. The author started out observing delightfully quirky Minnesota through the eyes of an outsider ambivalent about even being there. She introduced us to interesting characters but they were rarely if ever were again mentioned. Very early on the book became simply about her. I felt like she was going for a sort of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek vibe, and while her writing is serviceable it has nowhere near the beauty and lyricism of Annie Dillard. Honestly, without the grace of perfect prose it is just the story of someone spending her days alone in an old house with a dog and a couple cats. I am sure she is a nice person, but very few people are interesting enough that their interior life can carry a book, and she is not one. I am not sure I would have finished the book if it had not been a book club book. If you want to read a book about rural Minnesota, I would recommend that you stick with Sinclair Lewis. ( )