If I'd never been to New Hampshire before, I'd never go after reading this. Every character has a tragic story, I felt so bad for them as I was reading this. The book opens with a story about a woman who has guinea pigs, think crazy cat lady with way way too many. My absolute favorite story was the last one about a fisherman, another crazy character but at least he's seemed to find some peace admist the madness that surrounds him. ( )

A series of depressing character studies of the depressing occupants of a small depressing New Hampshire trailer park. It's well-written and sets a tone of American life, but it's actually not TOO gloomy, it is fiction after all. ( )

Just posted this review elsewhere on LT, so thought to add it as an actual Review...

I read Trailerpark at the recommendation of a fellow reader & writer. I'd also read Banks' longer work Continental Drift before and liked it a lot, although parts were incredibly dark and difficult to read.

Trailerpark has dark bits too, but also a lighter, more comedic edge. It's organized like a collection of short stories, each of which examines a single resident or family from a semirural - you guessed it - trailer park in New Hampshire. To avoid spoilers, I'll offer just one image: "the Guinea Pig Lady." That's the first story in the collection, and could easily stand alone. Sweet, sad, and utterly bizarre. The story grossed me out and pulled at my heartstrings simultaneously. So if you've never read Banks before, I'd recommend grabbing Trailerpark and reading the first tale, "The Guinea Pig Lady." Worth the price of admission on its own, as they say. ( )

A collection like this is valuable because these are stories of people whose stories rarely get told: "trailer park people"... Its extremely important for people to have stories, and to tell stories so that people not like themselves can empathize. Its important to humanize classes of people, to describe what their lives are about. People who have resources (education, money) are more often able to tell their stories in writing while others, like 'trailerpark people" are just plain forgotten in the story world.

A morose and gloomy book holds up well and feels in the end like a great book. The voice of the narrator is fine, classic Banks-- assured, critical, generous, and un-fazed by the harsh facts of the story. ( )