Go with Me (2008)

Recently I came across [All That I Have] and loved it, so I scurried to find another of [[Castle Freeman]]'s novels. Then I waited, afraid I wouldn't love it as much as the first.
But this one is even better. I am in awe, actually. Everything about the novel is so right, all the ingredients I love, including strangers riding around in a car together all day: the structure, the characters, the theme, the dialogue, the SETTING! Are all rural places the same? Well, they share commonalities, for sure, but Freeman knows Vermont. Really knows. There's a reason this state is still underpopulated, besides it being winter 7 months of the year, it is beautiful, but great swathes are not suitable for anything but admiring from afar. Even logging in those forests is treacherous and hard. That came across in [All That I Have] too. There is nothing cute and cuddly about this version of Vermont either. There is beauty, there is community, there is humor aplenty and there is danger and suspense. All in 155 pages. A young woman comes to the sheriff (retired in [All That I Have] wanting him to do something about a man who is stalking her, Blackway. Well, Blackway is the local villain, disliked and feared, but . . . well . . . Blackway, so you leave him alone, stay out of his way. The sheriff tells her to go look for this fella, Scotty Cavanaugh at the old chair factory. She does that and finds two knights, one old and one young, in tarnished, no, in NO armor but cunning and muscle to help her. They will find Blackway and they will take care of him. At the chair factory a greek chorus of older men spend the day chatting, playing cards, musing, and . . . there are delicious hints of divine (or semi-divine) intervention. And even some romantical nudging of two young people who just might suit.

Describing a man at one of those off in the middle of nowhere country bars that is only for drinking and fighting: "He was a big one, all right: six and a half feet and in no way skinny, with a long tangled beard that hung from his chin to his chest. The beard was black at the sides and gray down the middle and made the man look like he was in the act of eating a skunk headfirst."

Humor: "[The Fort] was not the kind of bar where you stopped for a drink on your way home from work. It was the kind of bar where you stopped for many drinks on your way to work, until soon enough they fired you and you could spend your whole day at the Fort."

A total joy. ***** ( )

“Go with Me” is a fast-paced, dialogue-driven moderate-suspense drama. This 2008 novel is set in the woods of Vermont and begins with the sheriff finding Lillian asleep in her car with a kitchen knife outside of the court house. She is being stalked by the local thug, Blackway, who has broken into her car and killed her cat. The sheriff can’t do anything about it and instead sends her to Whizzer and his band of friends. Amongst them, the elder Lester and the muscular Nate the Great join Lillian to help resolve this, but first, they need to find him. And what will happen when they do?

The book’s chapters alternated between the trio looking for Blackway and the gang back in the old Mill house that Whizzer owns. The trio find cohorts of Blackway and muscle or trick them for clues of his whereabouts. Meanwhile, the gang’s dialogue slowly reveals their backstories, especially that of wily Lester who knows all the “tricks”. Whizzer and his friends have a Robin Hood vibe, mocking, prodding each other, finishing each other’s sentences and will have each other’s back. Lester and Nate, though different in age, also had the same chemistry. In contrast, I was quite annoyed by Lillian’s character, asking for help but never trusted their decisions and questioned each step. I would have ditched her long time ago! Lol.

I found the book enjoyable, appreciating the wry humor the most. Though the rapid dialogue was part of the enjoyment, it also made the book feel like a script at times. Sure enough, a quick search revealed this was made into a movie, titled “Blackway”.

One thing I didn’t need to learn – a tree with a conveniently located knothole is called a “woods wife”. ( )

An odd book. Short stories connected by character & place. Little episodes or, in many cases, non-episodes. I enjoyed reading it, though he's not a writer of the first order. The best one is The Gift of Loneliness. When I got the end I thought I'd turned over two pages by mistake. "Eh?" I said , and then I cast my mind back and there's a throw away comment earlier on that makes the whole thing oh so deliciously clever. There're lots of little connections throughout the whole book but none as good as that one. It's designed to be read from beginning to end, like a novel. ( )

Castle Freeman, Jr. is a very good writer. So good that you never notice that his writing is any good at all; you're too busy following the rapidly moving plot, in which the tension is gradually mounting and things are about to go very wrong. You don't even notice the pitch perfect tone of the dialog because it sounds just like ordinary people sound, while talking about ordinary things. The cadences and patterns fall so perfectly that they are invisible and all you notice is a couple of old guys shooting the breeze.

In Go with Me, Lillian sits in her old car in the parking lot behind the sheriff's office. Armed with a paring knife, she waits to tell him that Blackaway's after her. He's killed her cat and he's coming after her. The sheriff sends her to the old mill to ask Scottie for help. What she gets isn't him, but an unlikely pair of protectors who set out for the backwoods of the lost towns to find Blackaway and get him to leave her alone.

Go With Me is a short book, but it's full of atmosphere and foreboding. There's not a wasted word in the book and each character is fully fleshed out in so few words, they shouldn't feel as fully alive as they do. Set in a forgotten corner of rural Vermont, Go With Me is close to perfect. ( )

This collection of interconnected short stories is set in rural Vermont, but the people and places described so beautifully by the author could have been lifted intact from my childhood in Northeastern Pennsylvania. In fact, while reading one of the stories I felt I was walking around inside a house I knew very well as a kid. I'd say Freeman has created an incredibly real world, except that I know he didn't make any of this stuff up. Maybe the stories came from his imagination, but the settings are tangible, and the people aren't "characters"...they exist too. The first couple stories seem almost unfinished, but as you read further you realize that they belong to the collection, and each subsequent story adds another piece to the whole. Some of them stand alone very well, while others need to be read in context of their companions to reveal their full impact. ( )