What do You think about The Lost Get-Back Boogie (2006)?
Iry Paret has done his time in Angola, which is no country club prison, then or now. He's gone home, but there's nothing there for him any more. His family would just as soon he leave, and he does. He heads for Montana, because his prison pal Buddy Riordan has promised him a job and a place to live. Buddy is a musician, like Iry, and they both have a predilection for the bottle, although Buddy likes his dope, too. Iry is on parole, which means he has to behave in Montana or he can be yanked back to Louisiana to finish out his time. This is not something he wants to do.When Iry gets to Montana, Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley, he finds out that Buddy forgot to mention a thing or two. Buddy's father is a real piece of work, and has managed to piss off the vast majority of people in and around Missoula by filing a lawsuit and getting an injunction against the new pulp mill. He believes, and rightly so, that the pulp mill is an environmental disaster, polluting the water and the air now and as long as it is in business. Frank Riordan doesn't seem to much care about all the people he's going to put out of work; they, on the other hand, see him as the here-and-now problem and don't really want to worry about the long-term damage being done by the pulp mill. Buddy has an ex-wife, and he'd like to get back together with her. Beth has no interest whatsoever in any kind of relationship with Buddy, although she thinks it's a good idea that he still sees himself as an involved parent with their two sons. She's not so happy about the drinking and the drugs. Iry and Beth are attracted to each other, which presents some obvious problems, since Iry and Buddy are living in the same house. THE LOST GET-BACK BOOGIE is an amazingly powerful book, even after twenty years. Burke has such wonderful descriptive passages; it's easy to see that he loves Montana, at least the wilderness and the not-so-civilized portions of it. His people are just that: people, not characters in a book. Sometimes it's more like reading non-fiction than anything else, because these people do all the stupid things people do, make all those bad choices people make . . . but Burke lets the reader know them so well that these choices seem to be the only, the obvious choice to make. Even when we want to smack Iry upside the head and tell him not to go out with Buddy, don't have that one more drink, keep your mouth shut . . . we know that Iry can't do any of those things. THE LOST GET-BACK BOOGIE is Burke's first novel. It was nominated for a Pulitzer. It deserved the nomination. While this isn't a perfect book (skip the Epilogue, and it probably comes close), Burke's talent is so obvious, so true, that no one should be surprised at the quality of his body of work. He's good enough that I kept picking it back up even though I could see the train wreck coming, put it down because I didn't want to read what was going to happen next, but had to pick it back up because I was drawn back into Iry's life by the writing. It doesn't get much better than that.
—P.J. Coldren
As someone who lived in Missoula,Mt for over 30 years, it is fun to read a book that is easy to imagine the scenery and the places they go. This definitely made it interesting for me, but the characters were not people that I would hang with nor would I go to the places they go. Two are ex cons who drink and booze all day and night and for most of the book they are either in a bar or diving up and down the highway south of Missoula drunk. There is a good story line, but it frequently gets lost in the bottle!
—Betty
The Lost Get-Back Boogie, by James Lee Burke, B. Narrated by Will Patton, Produced by Recorded Books, Downloaded from Audible.com.This is not a Dave Robicheau book. I’m not sure if it’s a stand-alone or not. Iry Paret has just come out of Angola Prison in Louisiana where he spent two years for killing someone. He has little connection to his family and decides to go to Montana to pass his probation on the ranch of a friend and the friend’s father. At first things seem wonderful. He stays under the radar of the sheriff and the probation officer. But his friend’s family is very involved, particularly the father, in trying to shut down a toilet paper mill due to its pollution, and the town is hostile because most of the jobs in the town come from that paper mill. So tragedy comes to Iry. Will Patton is as usual a wonderful narrator. But I just couldn’t get close to liking Iry or his friend. So, despite the fact that Will Patton could read the telephone book and I’d enjoy it, I have to give this book a B. I prefer Burke’s books in Louisiana.
—Kathleen Hagen
