The Country Ahead Of Us, The Country Behind (1996) - Plot & Excerpts
As the title suggests , this collection of ten short stories looks ahead to the future and back to the past. If there's any theme that unifies them, it's a sense of aloneness, not loneliness so much as a feeling of isolation shown in these words from "The Flower Garden," ". . . suddenly I felt more alone than I ever had, more desolate, more burdened by my own soul and who I was, however ineluctably . . ." This is the last story in the collection, about the breakup of a romance and aside from the first story about the beginning of a breakup of a marriage, all of the other stories are variations on this sense of aloneness.Two of my favorites were ones about childhood; in "Moonwalk" the first person narrator talks about when he was 13 and his family moved to Seattle from a small town in Oregon. He had fantasies of becoming a great basketball player and would practice endlessly with his older brother until the day that his brother tore ligaments in his knee and stopped playing sports. A bond between them was broken and they developed their own interests. These events coincided with the first moonwalk and by juxtaposing this far off event with his personal life, a sense of a diminished outlook on life develops. In "Aliens" the narrator, again first person, remembers Dan Wyman, a student he first met in a high school Auto Shop class. They're a slightly social maladjusted pair who befriend one another and hang out together. Their time together culminates in picking up a pair of girls and giving them a ride home. After some awkward sexual fumbling with the girls, they drive off by themselves. That's it - they drift apart. "No sudden falling off, just a gradual drift, currents dragging at us from different opposite directions." Ten years later the narrator runs into Wyman. He's older, different, his hair is beginning to recede, his body has thickened imperceptibly, and the story teller knows they no longer have much in common. That's how life often is, and Guterson captures the small descriptive details that make this point.Two of the stories emphasize a brief period in a person's life where there is a real closeness and in each case it is between men who are on hunting or fishing trips.. "Wood Grouse on a High Promontory Overlooking Canada" made me think of Hemingway's Nick Adams fishing stories where the outside world of strife and war intrude. In Guterson's story, one of the individuals is a Viet Name vet. Guterson doesn't handle the situation as allusively as Hemingway, but there is the same feeling of something that is wrong. Gary has been in the war, his brother hasn't,, and their communication is imperfect. Gary says, though, "It's beautiful up here, I'm glad we came." So is his brother, but he adds, "I began to feel alone among all these mountains."In "Three Hunters", the world of violence again intrudes into a peaceful fishing trip when a menacing hunter with a loaded gun threatens two teen-age fishermen. On returning home, one of them tells his mother what has happened, and how angry and frightened he was. Her response, "There are evil men in the world. Do you think you can change that, Roy?" tOne other story, "Piranhas", has an oblique answer to that question. The world cannot be changed, obviously, but in this story, a twelve year boy who is feeling alienated from his parents , retreats into a hobby of collecting aquarium fish, specifically piranhas. Their flesh-eating capacity triggers a desire in him to control their violent behavior, but his parents make him get rid of these "strange" and "inappropriate" fish. He does, angrily, and in the darkest story in the collection, he fantasizes about getting rid of his parents as well. It's a fine collection of short stories. Someone once said that they didn't read short stories much as characters disappear just as you're getting to know them, and you'll never see them again. That's true, but life itself largely lacks continuity, and in these stories a reader has the pleasure to seeing these characters at important junctures in their life. That's enough in itself.
A very powerful, moving set of short stories, written in the same time period as Guterson's best known novel, Snow Among the Cedars. Most of the stories look back at a period or incident from the past - sometimes to the distant past, from age 70 to the storyteller's late teens; sometimes to the more recent past of 20 years or so. The author's clarity of vision or of remembrance is captivating, and reminds me very much of the author's descriptions of events in Snow Among the Cedars. There is a great love of language displayed and a deep understanding of life, aging, and the feelings evoked by that process.
What do You think about The Country Ahead Of Us, The Country Behind (1996)?
I have mixed opinions on this book. I really disliked the first two stories in this, they were extremely over descriptive. Fifteen words for every one actually needed! And this is exactly the reason I wouldn’t normally go near a short story collection. I persevered and I found it improved, however overall it has to be said it’s quite a ‘male’ book in that there’s a lot about fishing, shooting, basketball etc. I don’t like to be that stereotypical but I don’t think I’m the only person to have thought this.Really it’s the very last story in this book that raised my opinion of the whole collection, I absolutely loved it. It was a perfect description of growing up and falling in love for the first time. In fact I’m quite tempted to copy this one before I send it on to continue its bookcrossing journey.
—Hannah
These short stories by David Guterson almost sounded like the first chapters of books he just never wrote. They did not feel like they had closure at all. I understand that short stories are to leave the reader pondering what happens next and creating that in their own minds, but Guterson's short stories were different than that. As the reader, I expected to turn the page to read on to get more information, not just wondering what would happen next. I felt that I did not get to know the characters well, the plot lines for the most part did not have a clear middle nor end. But, I still enjoyed the writing. Guterson is a wonderful writer and can weave stunning pictures in your mind. I was just left wishing there had been more to each story...
—Kari
A solid story collection that shows the early promise in Guterson's writing. I always enjoy it when you can see the seeds for a writer's later novels in their first stories, as it's a tiny window into how their thinking evolved on the subject or characters. But, it's the final story here, "The Flower Garden," because it is so different than all the others and anything else I've read of his, which really stands out. It's a stunner that is uncommonly wise about young love and it's enduring effect on a life.
—Steven
