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Title: Nickel Mountain

Author: John Gardner

Narrator: Michael Butler Murray

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-07-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

John Gardner's most poignant novel of improbable love.

At the heart of John Gardner's Nickel Mountain is an uncommon love story: When at 42, the obese, anxious, and gentle Henry Soames marries seventeen-year-old Callie Wells - who is pregnant with the child of a local boy - it is much more than years which define the gulf between them. But the beauty of this audiobook is the gradual revelation of the bond that develops as this unlikely couple experiences courtship and marriage, the birth of a son, isolation, forgiveness, work, and death in a small Catskill community in the 1950s. The plot turns on tragic events - they might be accidents or they might be acts of will - involving a cast of rural eccentrics that includes a lonely amputee veteran, a religious hysteric (thought by some to be the devil himself), and an itinerant "Goat Lady." Questions of guilt, innocence, and even murder are eclipsed by deeds of compassion, humility, and redemption, and ultimately, by Henry Soames' quiet discovery of grace.

Members Reviews:

Great book

Great book. I was hesitant to read any more of Gardner because of his book "Grendel" which was scary weird - I could not get past first few pages. But this book is nothing like "Grendel". It is a pastoral novel.

Characters first, plot second, if that's not your thing, find another book.

Nickel Mountain is not very compatible with today's reader, but that doesn't make it a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. Gardner, above all things, was a master of character. His books are about people (or mythical monsters) and not about events or wild plots. The most common criticism of this book is that "nothing happens" which is an exaggeration but also isn't terribly far from the truth. There are a few surprises along the way but mostly it's about people's lives and how they change with time in an area that also changes.

Gardner was also a master at creating a constant flowing "dream" of images in the reader's mind, and his dancing sentences paint marvelous pictures throughout the book. Even without a highly intriguing plot I felt myself motivated to turn the pages because I was busy visualizing the scenes and I was curious to see what would become of the characters Gardner invented.

This is one of his earliest works and can't be properly compared to his later ones, but as a case study on characterization and character before plot, this is a book you should read.

A novel of the first caliber!

"In December, 1954, Henry Soames would hardly have said his life was just beginning.

His heart was bad, business at the Stop-Off had never been worse, and he was close

to a nervous breakdown." So begins John Gardner's Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel

(1973).

Henry Soames, the main character of the novel, is proprietor of the Stop-Off diner

in the Catskills in New York State. A morbidly obese, "elephant" of a man, Soames,

42, has already had one heart attack, and he's forever munching on gingersnaps, Oreo

cookies, and cheese crackersâwhile popping little white heart pills.