- Hardcover: 491 pages
- Publisher: AmazonEncore; 2nd edition (April 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1592640508
- ISBN-13: 978-1592640508
- Product Dimensions: 22.5 x 14.9 x 4.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 794 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #654,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Transforming a kidnapping plot into an epic rural fable and then a touchingly poignant love story, Harington crafts a wildly imaginative tour de force about a young Arkansas girl who survives a harrowing abduction and undergoes a remarkable series of epiphanies. Robin Kerr is the prepubescent protagonist who is snatched from her single mother by Sog Alan, a former state trooper who takes her to his ramshackle house on the remote pinnacle of Mt. Madewell just outside Harington's beloved mythical village of Stay More. Her kidnapper's illness and impotence keep Robin from being ravaged, and she capitalizes on Sog Alan's twisted love for her to carve out a bizarre existence with her abductor, aided by Sog's dog, Hreapha, who is given a singular voice of her own. Sog Alan's failing health eventually weakens him, and Robin is able to shoot him during a final rape attempt. Her efforts to escape the mountain prove futile, though, and she slowly adapts to a hardscrabble backwoods existence, aided by a growing menagerie of pets that eventually includes a bobcat and a bear cub. Robin also receives advice from the spirit of 12-year-old Adam Madewell, the son of a cooper whose family owned the land before moving to California. Wary of civilization, Robin chooses to stay on the mountain even when she has the opportunity to leave, and her pristine rural existence remains uninterrupted until love comes in the form of the middle-aged Adam Madewell, who returns to Arkansas after a successful but unfulfilling stint as a California cooper and winemaker. Harington's taut storytelling lends edgy suspense to the kidnapping story, and the combination of wise, comic animal voices and Adam's disembodied incarnation adds life to the pastoral narrative. Harington has invented a unique post-Faulknerian piece of fictional terrain in his Stay More novels, and this powerful effort should further enhance his reputation as one of the great undiscovered novelists of our time.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Imagine if Larry McMurtry somehow teamed with Laura Ingalls Wilder to craft a postmodern, magical realist fable that dropped her frontier homestead on the outskirts of his modern-day Thalia. That's the neat trick Harington pulls off with this richly imagined, lovingly rendered exploration of the unintended consequences of human--and animal--desire. The story begins on a nightmarish note, with redneck Arkansas highway patrolman Sog Alan abducting eight-year-old Robin Kerr to a mountaintop hideaway they might never be able to leave. Alan wants to jump Robin's lovely bones, of course, but the narrative gears soon shift from grim to fairy tale. We watch enthralled as Robin forges a hard but wondrous life for herself, complete with Ouija-playing dogs, pet bobcats, and a ghostly young presence that teaches her how to do everything from curing meat to making lye soap. Instead of amping up the peril, this life-affirming saga accentuates the positive at every turn, showcasing the creative solutions Robin and her menagerie--which includes a homebody black bear, a snake, raccoons, and a broad-antlered buck--employ to tackle every problem. Only a keen longing for sex and same-species companionship can pull the maturing girl and her dog from the Eden they've created, setting up a sweetly satisfying resolution. With his delightful twelfth novel, Harington might finally be destined to lose the ironic designation "America's greatest unknown novelist." Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tad slow at times, but a must-read!!!,
By Aswell Cohen "theleetbeagle" (Canton, OH USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: With (Hardcover)
Harington obviously has a large arsenal of writing styles and imagination at his fingertips because this novel is unlike one I that have ever read before. If you enjoy the country life in any fashion, then you must read this novel. Like I said, there are a few areas where it reads a little slow, but slosh through it... the middle of the book, the climax and the resolution are all fantastic.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Discovery,
By
This review is from: With (Hardcover)
Harington has written a multi-layered, mystical tale about love and relationships, and the coming of age of a young girl, surviving alone in a mountain cabin. But this, as all his novels, is so much more than a simple narrative. An intellectual masterpiece,it is best enjoyed slowly, in sips, as the tale unfolds and the language enfolds. If you have not yet discovered Harington, you will be delighted with this book, and happier still to know that it is only one of a series about the people and events of Stay More, Arkansas.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of those original and finely crafted novels,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: With (Hardcover)
At the tender age of 8 years, Robin Kerr had to learn how to fend for herself on a remote, inaccessible, mountain-top in the wilds of the Ozark mountain range. Until she was 18, Robin had no human company but she did not lack for animal companionship and the company of the"live ghost" of a young boy who had himself once lived on the mountain. With is a major, 491-page novel that is written by author Donald Harington (a professor and lecturer of art and art history) with a feeling for language enriched with southern idioms and an almost lyrical sense of expression. Very strongly endorsed and recommended, With is one of those original and finely crafted novels that will be discovered with appreciation over and over by generations of future readers.
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