Indiana, Indiana by Laird Hunt

Indiana, Indiana Reviews

• 
  Angela M

  3.5 stars
  My introduction to Laird Hunt was his powerful and moving story
  Neverhome. I loved Zorrie Underwood in his novel
  Zorrie. Those books made me want to read this one . But I’m sorry to say that the disjointed structure, a mix of dreams , letters, memories kept me from fully engaging. I did still find some of the wonderful writing I was expecting and I recognize there’s a beautifully sad love story to be found here, and there’s a connection to Zorrie . Life happens and maybe my concentration was impacted so I’ll blame it on that because Laird Hunt is an amazing writer and I will continue to follow his work.
  
  I received a copy of this Coffee House Press through Edelweiss. Apologies to the author and publisher for taking so long to get to this.
• 
  Bridget S.

  I DNF and here’s some reasons why if you care!
  
  1) The biggest reason is that I really loved Zorrie, and all of the characters in Zorrie and could feel building resentment towards Hunt the more I read of Indiana Indiana. I didn’t want that to spoil my experience of Zorrie. Will consider reading some more works of his but didn’t want to continue with this one.
  
  2) The introduction irked me. It was too long and summarized the entire book. Why? This isn’t an old classical work of fiction, why did they have to include that?
  
  3) The chapter separations and their summaries. Why does everything have to be summarized before we read the actual book? Like just let us read the book?!
  
  4) The disjointed-ness and rambling was just too much. A way to do this without it having to be an insufferable read and still convey what you need to convey with disjointed and rambling characters.
  
  5) Picky and a personal problem, but the font was hard for me to read! Fonts matter!?
• 
  Brent Legault

  I am normally an ardent booster of Laird Hunt's work, but this one mostly irked me. I suppose it was due to its style, which has been aped by so many others. And also its dreamy, half-witted tone that reeked of MFA. There's good to be got from it -- I've never read a Laird that didn't have something brilliant about it. Perhaps it's just my own inner curmedgeon that won't let me fully enjoy what is probably a contemporary masterpiece.
• 
  LindaJ^

  After reading, and loving,
  Zorrie by
  Laird Hunt when it appeared on the 2021 National Book Award long list, I proceeded to buy all his books. I had planned to make January a Laird Hunt reading extravaganza, but like almost all reading plans, that did not happen. But the itch was there, so a couple of days ago I grabbed
  Indiana, Indiana off the shelf. It was short -- 204 pages, many with lots of white space -- and I wanted to find the tie to Zorrie.
  
  I found the tie but even better, I loved the book. Noah Summer lives on the farm next to Zorrie Underwood's, just as he did in Zorrie. He is the star of this book. Noah is old and reflecting on his life. While this may sound pretty mundane, I promise that little about Noah's life is or was mundane. And neither is the structure of this book. There are seven chapters or parts to the book. Each is proceeded with a page on which the contents of each chapter are found, with the upcoming chapter in bold. The contents reminded me of the chapter titles in old mystery novels. Each chapter has a mixture of styles - letters, dialogue (including Noah's conversations with himself, the cat and his dead father), uninterrupted prose - and jumps back and forth in time. Noah never left Indiana, as Zorrie did, but his life was certainly not boring. Having read Zorrie, I knew Noah had a wife named Opal who was in an institution for people with mental health issues, put there after she burned their house down and who he loved but was not allowed to see. But there's so much more to Noah's story.
  
  This book will go on the keeper shelf next to Zorrie and not too far from
  Marilynne Robinson's
  Gilead series.
• 
  Kierstyn

  Not a fan of Indiana and not a fan of this book
• 
  Kira Henehan

  I loved The Impossibly and The Exquisite by Laird Hunt, but was sort of disappointed with this one. I may have read it too distractedly; I'll probably try it again at some point because Mr. Hunt is usually worth it.
• 
  Tammy

  My Indiana is not farm Indiana, except to the extent that all Indiana is farm Indiana, but this peaceful, yet painful, portrait of farm Indiana resonated with me. I know these people. These people are my people, beautiful and sorrowful and broken. A lovely work.
• 
  Sara

  Naropa dude. 'Nuff said.
• 
  Marvin

  This novel was originally published in 2003; after the critical if not commercial success of the same author’s wonderful Zorrie, someone thought to republish this one in 2023. It’s set in the same place and time, with some of the same characters (Zorrie makes a cameo appearance near the end). But it could hardly be more different stylistically. Where Zorrie was simply but elegantly told, this is an obscure, confusing jumble (admittedly befitting the mental state of its main characters), jumping around in time, seemingly randomly, sometimes in third person, sometimes in first, though it’s not always clear who’s narrating, with frequent relating of dreams (almost always a problem for me), little one-paragraph nonsense stories told by one or another of the characters (which are like dreams, I guess), jumbled recollections, letters from an institutionalized character, and occasional stream of consciousness narration. It appears to me that this is the work of a young author trying to prove what a brilliant, creative writer he is; by the time he writes Zorrie two decades later, he no longer has to prove it so he can just tell a beautiful story.
  
• 
  Elizabeth Sowden

  I’ve had this book on my shelf for years; I interned at the press that published it and they paid me in books. I’m traveling in Indiana at the moment so it seemed like a good time to read this one. The story and the setting are interesting, but as other reviewers have mentioned, the style the issue. In all fairness to Mr. Hunt, he may have been one of the first to write in this style (though I’d argue it’s Faulkner-lite) and it’s not his fault that other litfic writers have copied it. But I read the lists of things strung together with “and”, along with stream of consciousness, run-on sentences and thought “I have read these exact same things so many times before.” This type of writing has become shtick. This book is almost 20 years old, and maybe it’s unfair that it seems stale now because books that came after it ripped off the style. But here we are.
  
  TL;DR I would have liked this book a lot more if it was written in a more straight forward, lest annoyingly postmodern style.
• 
  Suzanne

  Laird Hunt continues to be one of the most gifted writers I’ve ever read. His ability to create an environment and steep his readers in the sights, smells and sounds of it is beyond belief. If this tale left me a bit at loose ends, it was likely my limits as a reader rather than his as an author. This short book is written in a non traditional style that didn’t display well in the advanced readers copy that I used. The published version should be much more enticing. I received my copy from the publisher through edelweiss.
• 
  Julieann

  I enjoyed reading about my home state and have been to most of the towns referenced in the book. Having grown up on a farm, I could relate to culture - neighbors looking out for each other, taking pleasure in the simple things. However, I found the rambling style difficult to follow at times. I enjoyed the author's book Zorrie much more than this one but was interested in the connection between the two.
• 
  Bill Shultz

  A masterfully revealed and lyrical narrative set in the American Midwest, with its furrowed fields and old hickory.
• 
  Susan Beecher

  This is a beautifully written novel mostly about an unusual man and his family written from his point of view, his visions and strange rural life. Highly recommend.
• 
  Andrew Dobbs

  2.5
• 
  ★ sam ★

  i could not finish this, found it too difficult to connect to any of the characters. 2 stars because there were some beautiful moments of prose and visual imagery.
• 
  Eugene

  more straightforward than i expected. a familiar but not unaccomplished lyrical style and a comfortably-puzzling and fully-resolved plot... his afterward namechecks wg sebald, yourcenar, and ponge--but there's little of those folks' openness or difficulty or poetry. but there are some deliciously voiced sweet-sad characters. virgil and the saw musician two favorites.
  
  
  reminded often of the lovers of
  The Time Traveler's Wife, just in that the couple here has a similar melancholy (but not, unfortunately, an equal sizzle). also that in both one bounces back and forth in the timeline with facts slowly revealed...
  
  one other oddity i was surprised by: this, seemingly personal material, is told (as was
  the exquisite) in a voice that's strangely impersonal, distanced. maybe that's just because, despite it seems otherwise, we're not really in the characters' heads very much... i wonder if that was a conscious goal... the result is, for me, a certain staginess. i bet it could be easily converted into--in fact often felt like--a fairly traditional play.
• 
  Ellen

  I would probably have never come across this book but Buntport Theater has adapted it for their next production so I was curious. I have been trying to write a good review but, forgive me, I'm going to give up and blatantly steal from the book jacket: ""In the center of the county in the center of Indiana in the heart of the country, and down a long, dark hallway," Noah Summers, a simple man who has lead a far from simple life, sits before a flickering fire, drifting in and out of sleep. On this dark and lovely winter night, he sifts through the shards of his memories trying to make sense of a lifetime of psychic visions and his family's tumultuous history on an Indiana farmstead."
• 
  Sandra

  4 1/2 stars. Faulkneresque. But less abstruse and more readable. A very simple, haunting and haunted story. A beautiful story of love and loss, the unfairness of life, the everyday simple joys in the everyday simple things, the tragedy. I loved this book, born and raised in Indiana... Knew people who ended up in Logansport.
• 
  Paul

  I love Lairdo. For more reasons than just this novel, which is great. It had the curious effect of causing me to involuntarily remember dreams that I had many, many years ago.
  
  I felt like the time mimicked very closely the time
• 
  Marisela

  Poetic. The narrative structure is only revealed after reading several chapters since the story not presented in a linear timeline. I loved it. The lyricism of the writing really shone through.
• 
  Amanda Armstrong

  An amazing book which I'd highly recommend to readers who enjoy writers' tricks, word play, plot twists heightened by structure, etc.
• 
  Poupeh

  The beauty and pain of this book goes so deep inside, touching one with such soft intensity that not many books do.
• 
  Samuel Moss

  very nice little novel
• 
  Cherie

  Terrific, very postmod