Three down, one to go. This is the third book I have finished reading on our vacation, and maybe because I picked it up in the latter stages of the trip, when we were winding down our adventures and spending more time relaxing, I sped through it in the time I did. A comment on the cover of the book sums it up: the story makes you want to linger but you simply cannot. It starts with a description of an event that is so striking that it would not leave my brain through the entire rest of the story, although it is not revisited until the denouement, when so many other things have happened that I was unable to discern what it was or where it would fit in. This isn't a mystery novel, in the conventional sense, but this element is a hallmark of a successful mystery. Aside from that, the engaging nature of the prose and the intriguing, almost-unlikeable protagonists kept me turning the pages. In fact, the undercurrent of menace was so subtle that I almost didn't realize what it was until it exploded in my face and I had a moment where I actually didn't want to go on reading, except that I couldn't stop. The long denouement, which includes the unraveling of the initial intrigue, eventually draws the story together, and to a satisfying close. There is a kind of hipster quality to this writing, but I find myself hoping I read more of this guy's books, despite that. Also, as an aside, I will remind myself that I found this book by searching the term Wisconsin--Fiction in the library catalogue. All hail cataloguing and subject headings! ( )

What a pleasant surprise! I stumbled upon this book and found it to be one of the best books I've read in the past year! I plan to check out (no pun intended) his previous book now....what a terrific author. ( )

Mystery set in St. Helen's, WI, a small town near Madison. Main characters include Ben - ex-con -, his successful parents & sister, her father's brother, Denny, & his son Wayne, Lauren - became a dr & traveled the world, married Will, left Will - who is a nut case. Lots of twists & turns - last 1/4 of book was the most exciting/interesting. ( )

Not sure what to say about this one. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. It read well enough - I finished it in two days, but I felt like the book was having an identity crisis - it didn't know whether it wanted to be a character study, a mystery, a psychological thriller, or a literary fiction book. It just seemed disjointed. ( )

I eagerly anticipated this novel because I thoroughly enjoyed The Cradle. This novel is very different, though, and a much more ambitious work. The Cradle told its story in a straightforward fashion as a husband is sent out on a mission by his pregnant wife to find an ancient cradle her mother had when she was a child - and in that quest he discovers something much more vitally important to her. The story in This Bright River unfolds in a far less linear pattern. Two characters, Ben and Lauren, who knew each other in high school, return to their Wisconsin hometown in their 30s after each of them has suffered significant setbacks. But we don't get their backstory in a straightforward manner. We're given small details along the way, as the present story of their re-discovery of each other keeps circling back with revelations of partial details of their past - he ended up in prison after he exacted revenge against a friend and former business partner by burning the man's apartment down because the friend had stolen his girlfriend. She, after serving as a doctor in Africa, ran away from her husband, and is now deeply wounded and depressed from the turmoil of that relationship. Another key element of the story is the death of Ben's cousin, Wayne, who froze in the woods of his father's remote cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The novel progresses in even more than a circling pattern because, as the details build-up, the back stories also go down meandering paths, the relevance of which aren't apparent until the novel starts to bring all the pieces together near the end of the book. But even then the pieces aren't perfectly reunited because that's part of the books theme - that you can't ever discover the full meaning or hidden "truth" of events from the past. There's a moment of high suspense about three-quarters of the way in when Ben and Lauren's haunted pasts converge, but then even deeper family secrets are revealed as the novel returns to its moving contemplation of what dredging up the past means and whether it's ever possible to have any of it make enough sense to help you move forward. In the early pages, the novel requires a bit of patience as you get partial mysterious details about the characters, but it richly pays off if you stick with it. ( )