From one of todays most highly acclaimed authors comes Blue River, a tale of love, violence, betrayal and possible reconciliation. When two distant and disparate brothers are brought together, they must confront the realities of their past to face the future.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing People Don't Like This
Comment: Ethan Canin is one of my favorite modern novelists. That being said, I feel his books, while still good, have gotten progressively less interesting as he has gotten older. The first two stories in the Palace Thief are my favorite - along with Blue River.

Just the way Canin emotes the feelings created by the bonds of his characters in this book truly reveal how it feels to be a young man, what traits are revered by young men, what is found in oneself, and what is lost.

I don't know...not sure what there is here NOT to like.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: surprised by negative reviews
Comment: I too am surprised by the negative reviews. This may not be the best book ever written, but Canin has a remarkable skill with language and description that I found arresting.

There was a power, as well, to the device of at first seeing the brother as grown man, who'd lost his way, and then earlier, an all-knowing older brother.

As for tedium, I dunno what readers are looking for - a thriller perhaps? I read this without putting it down.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Examining a boring life through a high-powered microscope.
Comment: First, let me state that I have been impressed by all the Canin I have read prior to starting "Blue River." The problem with this novel isn't that it follows pattern similar to Canin's other works, most notably "For Kings and Planets," a far more mature novel, but that the protagonist is very hard to empathize with. A successful California optimologist, the protagonist spends the too much of the narrative defending his materialism. When he's not bothering with that, he's repeatly over-describing his less successful brother (After the first few times, I understood that the brother was violent and troubled during high school). There's a good story here, but it's trapped under a poor, plodding narrative.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazed by the reader reviews
Comment: I thought this was a very well-written and interesting description of the relationship between two brothers. I agree that pages 75-125 were slow but the rest of the book is by no means dull. Canin gradually reveals what caused the estrangement of the two brothers and his description of life in the small Wisconsin town where he grew up is often vivid with truly three-dimensional characters. I don't know whether anyone will believe me after reading the prior reviews but I highly recommend this novel.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Cry Me a Blue River.
Comment: I picked up "Blue River" after breezing through two delightful reads, "Emperor of the Air" and "The Palace Thief" both by Canin. I recommend reading every one of the short stories in each of these two volumes.

"Tedious." This word kept popping into my head while I labored into "Blue River." I thought it was me. Surely this story would improve and flower into a marvelous and richly colorful Ethan Canin story. 75 pages, 100 pages, 150 pages. Would this ever develop into something readable? Should I give up?

I didn't. And I had to laugh at all the other reviews here on Amazon.com "Tedious" "The shortest book I never finished." Naturally. They are all correct. Believe the negative reviews.

"Blue River" is a hugely disappointing, cliche-filled, seemingly unedited, overly stylistic diatribe that is boring. Not very far along in the book, the protagonist yuppie eye surgeon is "chasing his demons" and daring to drive through Pacific Coast Highway switchback turns with his eyes shut late at night. Uh-huh. Most assuredly, you too will root for a good car crash. No such luck, however, and the reader is taken back through an awful Cain and Abel coming-of-age saga set in Blue River, Wisconsin high above the banks of the Mississippi. The worst part is that it is written in this horrific style of a letter from the younger, angst-laden yuppie brother to the older miscreant brother. "Lawrence, you didn't know I knew that you knew" sort of technique. Ugggh. Spare us.

It's a shame this book turned out so badly because Ethan Canin is a very talented writer. I have confidence this was an early set back in a very promising career, and I look forward to finding the next Canin novel in my public library.

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