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Title: Crum: The Novel by Lee Maynard, Meredith Sue Willis ISBN: 0-937058-59-9 Publisher: West Virginia University Pub. Date: 25 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.41 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: You MUST Read This Book!!!
Comment: I first heard of Lee Maynard while listening to his interview with Terry Gross on NPR. I grew up in Chattaroy, not far from Crum - so, I was compelled to read the book. Even though I grew up there in the 1970s and 1980s, little had changed from the time in which the book was set. We were more mobile, but fundamentally, the same time and place. We did the same things and had as much fun, as many fights and forged enough friendships and memories to last a lifetime. It was a walk down memory lane and a fantastic journey for anyone. Read the book!!!
I've ordered Cannibals - now that I've finished Crum - I can't wait for it to arrive. I'll check back in with a proper review later.
A special thanks to Lee Maynard for pulling those memories back into my present.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Honest, Funny Portrayal, Not a Betrayal
Comment: I found CRUM while skimming through the Appalachian Lit section in the Trans Allegheny Bookstore in Parkersburg, West Virginia and picked it up.
I grew up in southern Ohio and northern West Virginia and was looking for some regional story that wasn't filled with incest, black lung, and all the other despair that seems to find its way into print. None of that had been my experience (thank God!). In fact, I thought it was very cool place to grow up.
While CRUM touches on the stifling air and dreadful boredom of that little town (what kid wouldn't feel that way about where they were from?), it also brings to life some of the interesting characters there and provides some laughs about growing up.
I've read some of the reviews here that complain about the PORKY's-style humor, but I believed it was part of the narrator's honesty, not gratuitous gross-out pandering.
As far as some reviewers' outrage that anyone would compare Maynard to Twain: is there anything in CRUM more unbelievable than Huck Finn passing himself off as a woman and getting away with it? Try to leave literary snobbery out of this.
I've passed copies of the book around to friends of mine, mostly outdoorsmen, campers, hunters, etc. It spoke to them and they loved it.
One friend always quotes his favorite line from the first page: "Across the river lie Kentucky, mysterious land of pig...."
Well, I'll let you finish the rest.
Rating: 1
Summary: A disappointment
Comment: "Crum," the story of a teenager growing up in Crum, WV in the 1950s, is a disappointment. The book reminded me more of the movie "Porkies" than it did of any well-respected coming-of-age author's work (some compared Maynard to Twain!). The original reviewer was correct in his statement that it will appeal mostly to adolescents or adults with the adolescent's sense of humor. I was not offended by the descriptions of this area of WV or the language, violence, or sex, but neither did I find any humor (one grin throughout the book)in the boys' antics or sympathy for the main character. In fact, I found I did not like any of the characters in the book. My mother and her siblings grew up in an area of WV similar to Crum in the 1950s (where Crum survived by the coal mines, my mother's family survived by farming), and the situations these boys found themselves in seemed a little over the top compared to the stories I have heard. The best part of the book is the final chapter Maynard added in the reissue entitled "Looking for Benny." In this chapter Maynard, speaking as himself, tells of his return to Crum as an adult. I found this chapter to be touching, and I could relate to his feelings of seeing monuments of childhood gone (the football field is now a parking lot). I think I saw the true Maynard here, and based upon this chapter, he would have done himself and his readers a big favor if he had written a straight-forward memoir of his life in Crum instead of the often-ridiculous portrait he offers the reader in his novel.
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Title: Screaming With the Cannibals by Lee Maynard ISBN: 0937058815 Publisher: Vandalia Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Far Appalachia: Following the New River North by Noah Adams ISBN: 0385320132 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 26 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Dogs of God by Pinckney Benedict ISBN: 0385511132 Publisher: Nan A. Talese Pub. Date: 01 December, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb ISBN: 0451184726 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: At Home in the Heart of Appalachia by John O'Brien ISBN: 0385721390 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 13 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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