REVIEW: American Rust - Philipp Meyer (2009)

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 philippmeyer.net)

Set in the impoverished coal country of contemporary Pennsylvania, ‘American Rust’, Philipp Meyer's debut novel, is the story of Isaac English and Billy Poe whose lives spiral out of control when they get caught up in a murder. Friendship and self-preservation become juxtaposed as both young men need to come to terms with the end of their adolescence. 

As with Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. ‘American Rust’ is set in a period of economic depression. Like the Oklahoma ‘refugees’ in ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, the inhabitants of this Pennsylvania valley, the heart of the American steel industry, were never rich, but also they were never poor. But now steel has moved overseas and the new Great Depression has pulled the rug out from under the American Dream and the landscape is left with rusting and rotting factories and people, normal hard-working folks, are left without the power to make ends meet. Poverty, boredom, idleness - and crime set in, transforming Bud Harris’, the town's sheriff, once quiet easy-to-police community into one with big-city-problems. 

It is against this background that Meyer with a beautiful lyrical voice paints his story that pulls you in from the beginning and doesn’t let you go till the final page. The story centres on unconditional love between friends, between family. Love against odds. Unrequited love. The deep friendship between Isaac and Billy; The complicated relationship of Billy’s mother, Grace, with the town’s sheriff Bud Harris; The loss of Isaac’s mother, the illness of his father, the absence of his sister. All these relationships form the backbone of this story. And while, hopefully, most of us will never be as near to a murder tragedy as Isaac and Billy are, we can all relate to their humanity and its dilemmas. 

This is the best recent novel I have read in 2010. If you like Cormac McCarthy, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, William Faulkner; if you like films like the Deer Hunter (set in the same area) and Deliverance - You need to read this novel.

Let me know what you think of it.

Joran C.A. Monteiro © 2010