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In this unique novel, readers meet Raymond Dover, a self-trained piano tuner. In pursuit of business, Raymond finds himself in Bucksnort, a town entirely its own. Raymond embarks on his unique calling of providing services for a veterans' nursing home. However, shortly after his arrival in Bucksnort, a mysterious mental illness overcomes him, and readers watch as the protagonist’s idiosyncratic road to recovery unfolds. What readers also find in this book is the seemingly charming town of Bucksnort. However, like any other small town in America, Bucksnort is full of its own quirks, bureaucracies, and secrets, which leave Raymond, at times, scratching his head in bewilderment. Amid Raymond’s own story, the narrative details the ins and outs of the lives of those who inhabit Bucksnort and make it a town unlike any other.
This novel is pleasingly complex because it can be read in a number of ways. At first, in one reading, readers might feel that this book is merely Raymond’s story. However, given a second reading, one discovers that the book is Bucksnort’s story. Thus, the town itself is personified, and in Pynchon-like fashion, a place becomes a character with its own personality. Bucksnort also plays on the tropes and stereotypes of small, rural towns across America, where “residual” and personal boundaries are considered “cute, futile, and harmless, antiquated, and obsolete.” It is a place where sometimes the neighbors know an individual better than the individual knows themselves, and it exists “in a constant state of flux,” where the rules, the regulations, and the orders which hold society together and make it function “were bred to self-adjust.” This is a book that will leave readers laughing out loud, thinking more about humanity’s quirkiness, and wanting more of this author’s writing.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review