Scan barcode
bweaver1962's review
5.0
Nominally about a retiring cop's chase after a cult leader, the real story here concerns coping with changes in person's life. As Sunderson attempts to put the "great Leader" behind bars he faces the complications of how to deal with a retirement after 40 years as a Michigan State Trooper and how to deal with a marriage that is over despite his best wishes.
If you are a fan of Harrison and if you love the UP and if you can follow the meandering inner dialogue, then you will love this book.
If you are a fan of Harrison and if you love the UP and if you can follow the meandering inner dialogue, then you will love this book.
maa_pix's review
4.0
Great prose, great characters, great setting. Who needs plot?
Any book that successfully incorporates going 120 mph on the Seney stretch and singing the praises of a brisket on rye from Zingerman's has got at least three stars right out of the gate.
Keep writing, Jim, keep writing.
Any book that successfully incorporates going 120 mph on the Seney stretch and singing the praises of a brisket on rye from Zingerman's has got at least three stars right out of the gate.
Keep writing, Jim, keep writing.
kharmacat's review
3.0
Haven't read a lot of Harrison, but I needed something so I stole this off Ted's shelf. 98% of the book leads up to an ultra-quick resolution in the last few pages. I finished this awhile ago so it's not fresh, but a couple thoughts come to mind: Jim must have something against commas. Are all old men that horny, or just Jim and his characters?
pilgrimbookstore89's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
trish33's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
sueann's review
1.0
Pathetic pervert. The only thing good about this book is it made me want to visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
brianharrison's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
3.0
dougbrun's review
4.0
“He wondered if religion was partly the love for an imaginary parent and whether any steps to make contact with this parent were justifiable.”
Once, many years ago when I was living in Northern Michigan, Jim Harrison walked into the restaurant where I was dining. He didn’t so much walk in, in retrospect, as lumber in. It was the Blue Bird Cafe and I confess that I’d been hanging out there in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him. I was young, trying to turn myself into a writer, and seeking out an idol. Even back then, over thirty years ago, he had lassoed my imagination. Like, many other Harrison readers, it started with Legends of the Fall (1979), then continued with Dalva (1988), and later, The Road Home (1998), a book that changed my life. Much later, I devoured his memoir, Off to the Side (2002), then starting filling in the gaps. I studied his poetry, for Harrison thinks of himself first as a poet--and of course there was the column, The Raw and the Cooked in Esquire and Men’s Journal. I used to read the column at the grocery store, between the frozen foods and the bread rack, returning the magazine when I was finished. (Harrison was a foodie before it became sexy, though his style in no way suggests an affinity to the current legions of balsamic vinegar-sniffing poseur journalists.) The man has no gap in his repertoire.
That by way of introduction and confession: there will be no objectivity to this review.
I wish I’d mustered the courage to introduce myself and tell him how much I appreciate his work, but that’s not my style and I image it’s not his either. How do you approach someone who has peered so throughly into your being? A man the critics cite as the progeny of Faulkner and Hemingway? A real died-in-the-wool man of letters? A quiet and respectful distance is the way to go, at least that’s what we do in the Midwest from which we both harken. Anyway, he was seated at the bar. Bothering a man at a bar is bad form.
It has been said that Harrison is that rare writer who can successfully blend the life of the mind with the life of action. It is a formula, though I am hesitate to use that word, that most often appeals to the male reader. That said, the voice he created for Dalva, a woman, in the book of the same name, astounded critics for being so spot-on a female voice--and this from a manly man.
The Great Leader falls soundly into the Harrison oeuvre. It is the story of a hard-drinking, female-ogling fiercely-independent male, Simon Sunderson. (Harrison’s men ogle without the uncomfortable squeamishness of, say, those created by Roth or the hormonal blindness of Updike.) Sunderson, a recently retired detective, lives deep in Harrison territory, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “It was good to live in a place largely ignored by the rest of the world,” reflects Sunderson. Though now officially off the job, Sunderson can’t seem to call it quits and the novel finds him in pursuit of a religious cult leader with an affinity for young girls. Like so many of Harrison’s characters, Sunderson is not so much a reflection of biography as an amalgam ideas. Attempting to explain his current pursuit: “My hobby has always been history,” Sunderson says. “I became interested in the relationship between religion, money and sex.”
Sunderson, not without his personal challenges, is trying hard to be a better man. He misses his wife Diane who left him three years earlier, though they remain in close contact. (“With Diane he always felt a little vulgar and brutish…”) He is a father figure to a neighbor, a sixteen-year-old hottie who seems hell-bent on seducing him. (“The frankness of young women these days always caught him off guard and made him feel like a middle-aged antique, or like a diminutive football player without a face guard on his helmet.”) He drinks too much and is trying to cut back. He spends a lot of time by himself in the woods, thinking, walking around and resolving to make retirement work. His progress is slow on all fronts. He is racked with ideas, but execution is haphazard.
There is a character in the novel, a friend of Sunderson, who ruefully observes “that a central fact of our time was the triumph of process over content.” That notion is at the core of the Harrison attraction. His prose, like his characters, is direct and intelligent, without many grace notes and devoid of filigree. There is, in other words, a zen-like transparency to the Harrison process. That process, the act of conveying content, is trumped every time by content. Pulling that off consistently, as Harrison continues to do, is a talent that is reserved for the best of the best. This novel is an example of how rare such a voice has become.
Once, many years ago when I was living in Northern Michigan, Jim Harrison walked into the restaurant where I was dining. He didn’t so much walk in, in retrospect, as lumber in. It was the Blue Bird Cafe and I confess that I’d been hanging out there in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him. I was young, trying to turn myself into a writer, and seeking out an idol. Even back then, over thirty years ago, he had lassoed my imagination. Like, many other Harrison readers, it started with Legends of the Fall (1979), then continued with Dalva (1988), and later, The Road Home (1998), a book that changed my life. Much later, I devoured his memoir, Off to the Side (2002), then starting filling in the gaps. I studied his poetry, for Harrison thinks of himself first as a poet--and of course there was the column, The Raw and the Cooked in Esquire and Men’s Journal. I used to read the column at the grocery store, between the frozen foods and the bread rack, returning the magazine when I was finished. (Harrison was a foodie before it became sexy, though his style in no way suggests an affinity to the current legions of balsamic vinegar-sniffing poseur journalists.) The man has no gap in his repertoire.
That by way of introduction and confession: there will be no objectivity to this review.
I wish I’d mustered the courage to introduce myself and tell him how much I appreciate his work, but that’s not my style and I image it’s not his either. How do you approach someone who has peered so throughly into your being? A man the critics cite as the progeny of Faulkner and Hemingway? A real died-in-the-wool man of letters? A quiet and respectful distance is the way to go, at least that’s what we do in the Midwest from which we both harken. Anyway, he was seated at the bar. Bothering a man at a bar is bad form.
It has been said that Harrison is that rare writer who can successfully blend the life of the mind with the life of action. It is a formula, though I am hesitate to use that word, that most often appeals to the male reader. That said, the voice he created for Dalva, a woman, in the book of the same name, astounded critics for being so spot-on a female voice--and this from a manly man.
The Great Leader falls soundly into the Harrison oeuvre. It is the story of a hard-drinking, female-ogling fiercely-independent male, Simon Sunderson. (Harrison’s men ogle without the uncomfortable squeamishness of, say, those created by Roth or the hormonal blindness of Updike.) Sunderson, a recently retired detective, lives deep in Harrison territory, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “It was good to live in a place largely ignored by the rest of the world,” reflects Sunderson. Though now officially off the job, Sunderson can’t seem to call it quits and the novel finds him in pursuit of a religious cult leader with an affinity for young girls. Like so many of Harrison’s characters, Sunderson is not so much a reflection of biography as an amalgam ideas. Attempting to explain his current pursuit: “My hobby has always been history,” Sunderson says. “I became interested in the relationship between religion, money and sex.”
Sunderson, not without his personal challenges, is trying hard to be a better man. He misses his wife Diane who left him three years earlier, though they remain in close contact. (“With Diane he always felt a little vulgar and brutish…”) He is a father figure to a neighbor, a sixteen-year-old hottie who seems hell-bent on seducing him. (“The frankness of young women these days always caught him off guard and made him feel like a middle-aged antique, or like a diminutive football player without a face guard on his helmet.”) He drinks too much and is trying to cut back. He spends a lot of time by himself in the woods, thinking, walking around and resolving to make retirement work. His progress is slow on all fronts. He is racked with ideas, but execution is haphazard.
There is a character in the novel, a friend of Sunderson, who ruefully observes “that a central fact of our time was the triumph of process over content.” That notion is at the core of the Harrison attraction. His prose, like his characters, is direct and intelligent, without many grace notes and devoid of filigree. There is, in other words, a zen-like transparency to the Harrison process. That process, the act of conveying content, is trumped every time by content. Pulling that off consistently, as Harrison continues to do, is a talent that is reserved for the best of the best. This novel is an example of how rare such a voice has become.
dujyt's review
2.0
The complete title of this novel is "The Great Leader: A Faux Mystery" and I probably should have realized the FAUX really does mean false in this book's case. I kept wanting the mystery plot to take off, but the story kept unraveling as the retired detective narrator went off on tangents and rants and macho-man ruminations about his life. While I did find myself interested in some of the observations Det. Sunderson made about life, I was stunned by his absolutely crude and raunchy descriptions of his sexual thoughts and adventures. Since one of his major turn-ons was a 16 y.o. girl (reminiscent of Lisbeth Salander in the Dragon Tatoo series), the pedophilic nature of these musings were just a little too *much* to me.
The resolution of the mystery was pretty anti-climatic and I finished the novel wishing the author had stuck with the mystery.
The resolution of the mystery was pretty anti-climatic and I finished the novel wishing the author had stuck with the mystery.
ikelewis678's review
4.0
Most of this book would get a 3-star review from me. Harrison’s signature memory-flow point of view gives us an inside look at a retiring detective dealing with his own coming irrelevance. He grapples with self-destructive binges, male urges he regrets or excuses in turns, and the fact his wife left him over the cynical workaholism of his career. In all, most of the first two acts didn’t give me hope for the character and left me feeling as strung out on booze, motel rooms, and bad sex as he was.
The last act earned another star. He slowly sees himself for who he is, and accepts his irrelevance by accepting his inability to effect an outcome on his mission. As if in response to this acceptance, two actions by two other characters bring the two threads of the story to a close. The irrelevance is complete, and instead of a hero, we see a man — a man at peace with the inscrutability of “why”.
The last act earned another star. He slowly sees himself for who he is, and accepts his irrelevance by accepting his inability to effect an outcome on his mission. As if in response to this acceptance, two actions by two other characters bring the two threads of the story to a close. The irrelevance is complete, and instead of a hero, we see a man — a man at peace with the inscrutability of “why”.