The Orchardist

The novel is the story of William Talmadge who arrives in Western Washington with his mother and sister following the death of his father, a miner. The family settles on a homestead and begins to develop and orchard, and when the mother dies the brother and sister continue on their own. The disappearance of the sister one day shapes who Talmadge becomes as a man. Two girls arrive, pregnant runaways, and Talmadge is inclined to help them even when they steal from him. The rest of the book reveals his relationship with those girls and the daughter of one of them.

Read my full review here: Review of The Orchardist at Perpetual Folly

If you are into Oprah Book Club books, this one is for you.

When I first began “The Orchardist,” the descriptive passages led me to believe that I might be in for a pleasant surprise, although the summary on the dust jacket promised me “feral, scared, and very pregnant” girls. “In certain seasons, in certain shades, memories alighted on him like sharp-taloned birds: a head turning in the foliage, lantern light flaring in a room.” Sort of nice, no?

Then we spend pages and pages of Talmadge, the titular character, preparing this or that food and placing the plate on the porch with every creak of the elbow described. From there the book simply tries too hard to be sensational and manages to drag boringly while doing so. Not an easy task! (Spoiler) There's a sister who disappearing mysteriously (okay, that happened earlier than the endless delivery of plates, but it belongs in the list), girls hanging themselves from trees, a child prostitution house, horse wrangling, tree topping, an attempted assassination, and a jailbreak (or at least a attempt to flee on a flipping ferry), shootings...blardy blardy blah. All of this lurid, melodramatic fare is why I compare this to the typical Oprah Book Club book: not a lot of substance, but a whole lot of poppycock.

The conceit of characters trapped by a lack of communication (I could make a list of which characters, but only Caroline Middey sort of speaks her mind) could have been alright if the author didn't bludgeon the reader over the head with it at every turn of the page. There's so much dithering about whether to say SOMETHING that I just wanted the book to get on with already! Said dithering thus wiped out whatever interest was supposed to be created with the outlandish plot.

On a stylistic note, the author chose not to use quotation or other punctuation to set off dialogue. While there's a case to be made for trying out different methods of writing a story, this particular choice was distracting and annoying. In fact, the dialogue, such as it was, was poorly written. Was the lack of punctuation meant to make you think the dialogue was more exciting or to make you feel less connected to any of the characters? I wish I could say that a wise editor could have have saved this novel, but there were just too many negatives for me to enjoy it.