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Grist Mill Road: A Novel par Christopher J.…
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Grist Mill Road: A Novel (original 2017; édition 2018)

par Christopher J. Yates (Auteur)

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4103361,028 (3.36)22
The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends--Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah--are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again--with even more devastating results--… (plus d'informations)
Membre:IntrovertedBooks
Titre:Grist Mill Road: A Novel
Auteurs:Christopher J. Yates (Auteur)
Info:Picador (2018), Edition: Reprint, 352 pages
Collections:Lus mais non possédés
Évaluation:***
Mots-clés:Aucun

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Grist Mill Road par Christopher J. Yates (2017)

Récemment ajouté parbibliothèque privée, JFB87, JoeB1934, drfrizzle, LisaTaylor22, laurabusshart, kitcaswe, JFBCore, libwen, owlbeyourfriend
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» Voir aussi les 22 mentions

Affichage de 1-5 de 33 (suivant | tout afficher)
This book is easily 150 pages too long. I think the author had a basic premise for the story but couldn’t come up with a way to make it a 300 page book. There is so much needless information in the story that adds nothing to the story.
Then after suffering through this book the ending is a complete letdown, with nothing resolved.

( )
  zmagic69 | Mar 31, 2023 |
Two boys from my childhood neighborhood—next door neighbors, in fact—remind me so much of Matthew and “Patch” (aka Patrick aka ‘Tricky’) that I immediately connected with Grist Mill Road. Our neighbor kids appeared to be best friends, but the mean one (there’s a mean one and an other one in my true story) once put a compass though the other one’s leg. Not a thing for telling direction, but one of those circle-making compasses. He drove the point right into the other kid’s thigh. Another time, we were all racing sleds in our back lot, which we called the “sand hills,” because they were sandy and they were hills, and the mean one reached the bottom of the hill first, only to bash the other one with the runners of his metal sled! The other one was okay, but it was, uh, tense? I should probably date myself by saying this would have been in the 80s, when bullying (and surviving bullying) was a rite of passage. Why these two boys hung out was beyond me, but they remained friends for as long as I can remember.

Apply this to Grist Mill Road, and put Matthew and Patch in the Swangum Mountains, Matthew, the bad one, with the infamous Red Ryder BB Gun. Tie a girl to a tree and let him shoot at her until he puts her damn eye out, while Patch, the other one, is helpless to do more than watch. He knows he should’ve stopped Matthew, and he regrets that he didn’t every day of his life, but at least he eventually nuts up and brings Hannah, the girl, to safety. Sure, she’s lost an eye, but Matthew (the shooter) pegged her for dead. Fast-forward way into the future and Patch and one-eyed Hannah are MARRIED. I’m like, whoa. How does that happen? There are pirate jokes. I kid you not. Many, many pirate jokes.

Grist Mill Road is all over the place. Then, now. Patch speaking sometimes and others, Hannah. Adult Matthew pulling it all together in the end. Throw in Detective McCluskey, an affable investigator, who protects Hannah and feeds her true-crime stories, which she writes about as a profession. The cast is great, and I LOVED the kind of crazy disjointedness that I would normally loathe. One minute we’re in the Swangum Mountains and the next, there’s a history lesson about the setting and solidity of cement (Hannah’s the progeny of a cement guru). And then comes Pete.

This might have been one of my all-time favorite books until friggin’ Pete. If you’ve read the book, you may be dismissing me as some sort of hate monger right now, but that’s not it at all. The author leads us down one path—the one where maybe Patrick isn’t the man Hannah thinks she married, or who she knew back in those mountains—and then the next, it’s like a whole other story is being told. One which doesn’t gel with the breathtaking opening chapter where bad seed Matthew seems to be enjoying the fruits of his ocular target practice. You can’t give me this perfectly twisted young man and then say, “sorry, didn’t mean it and you…” I won’t spoil it for you, in case you want to meander this world, but the victim blaming (including Hannah blaming herself) makes the ending of Grist Mill Road seem as convenient as it is contrived.

Damn it! I give the first two-thirds of this book a hand-clapping five stars! Applause! I give the ending a two. Maybe not even that. How does one come up with an average? I feel like mathematically this should be a three, but that I’m emotionally stuck at a three-and-a-half, for which I have to round up to a four (but won't, because Goodreads says four is "really liked it" and I can only "like it." So you do the math, but I don’t know what else to say other than that ending… Oh, Grist Mill Road, you had me, until PETE! ( )
  bfrisch | Dec 9, 2022 |
“How far am I prepared to go? I will go further than you. However many weapons you’re willing to bring, I will bring more. However low you go, you will never dig deeper than me. I will win, because what this will cost me in pain, I will pay. My resources are limitless, I will always outbid you and I will never back down.”
― Christopher J. Yates, Grist Mill Road

3.5 stars. This book was something! Review to follow one of these days..I'm drained!

Christopher Yates is an author I have loved since reading "Black Chalk" which I adored and which immediately landed in my "all time favorites" list. So this book has been on my radar for quite some time.

I am not going to do a plot recap of this one..although I do want to talk about the ending but will put spoilers up when I do that.

So this book, Grist Mill Road, was quite different then Black Chalk but still incredibly well written with sharp vivid scenes that jump off the page. I love the way he writes.

Yet I did not feel as connected to this story as I wish I could have. Nor did I adore it in the way I did with Black Chalk. I think some of that is just due to personal preference. I found Back Chalk's story more compelling.

But also I admit I had a tough time with aspects of this. The lack of quotation marks bothered me. But I did get used to it. But I just felt the book was so long and as other reviewers have said, there are times when the book goes into incredible detail about things not so much related to the story like rocks and cooking.

I did have to skim some parts myself, particularly the cooking aspects.Look I will deviate a bit myself here. I can't cook. I am a lousy cook. You would not want to eat anything cooked by me except for perhaps the easiest things to make. Soo..naturally for an undomesticated reader such as myself reading about cooking may not be as interesting as for other people.

And as darkly layered and richly textured as the writing is..and it is that and so much more..I could not connect to these characters. At least not at first.

That changed a bit as the book went on. I still wish it might have been shorter though. And I see this is labeled as a mystery and as others have said it really isn't. I would call this literary Fiction with a touch of Noir. It is fascinating in its way and it is by no means a bad book. In fact it's a good one. It just was not, for me, a favorite as Black Chalk was.

Now..spoilers:

I feel I missed something with the ending. I do not know if the writer purposely left it open to interpretation. But I was left thinking: "what happened"? Among my questions:

Did Patch shoot Mathew?

Was Mathew really dead?

Was Hannah happy Patch did what he did or not?

Was she just saying Mathew was dead because Patch was dying?

What happens to Pete if Matt is in fact dead?

So many unanswered questions. With Black Chalk there were unanswered questions too but I did feel the ending was COMPLETE. It was a fitting ending to a Masterpiece of writing. With this book, I did not feel it really wrapped up. After such a long story, I wanted to at least understand what had happened. And we do not get that. (Or we do and I missed something.)

As for the big reveal..why Mathew did what he did. Well I did not buy into that. Look, Mathew had a horrid childhood. Those scenes of his dad beating him were heart breaking. I felt for him.

But I expected more from the reveal. I understand he had just murdered his abusive father. He was probably lost in PTSD. But all I can say is: I know of so many people who come from abuse. And throughout my time on this planet I've met some nasty characters as have family members of mine as have friends of mine. Many of us have been called things as bad or worse then what Hannah said to Mathew. None of our solutions would be to tie the person up and torture them with a BB Gun. So while I did feel for Mathew as far as his up bringing is concerned I had zero sympathy as to the reason he tortured Hanna.

It also seemed to me he was not all that sorry. He had to know by reappearing he'd be bringing anguish to both Patch and Hannah. Some things are better off let go. Although I understand compulsions and maybe it was that biting need to play it out that drove him.

So to sum up..what I liked..Hypnotic writing, highly charged atmosphere, sad heart breaking story.
What I did not like..to long , went into to many other directions, incomplete ending.

I think those who like dark complicated Literary Fiction might like this. Also this book reminded me strongly of "Atonement" so there's that. At the end of the day, I'd give this 3 stars and I will read whatever Mr. Yates writes in the future. ( )
  Thebeautifulsea | Aug 4, 2022 |
Meh. The story is fully revealed in the first chapter. ( )
  Carmentalie | Jun 4, 2022 |
But for the Ending ...

Christopher Yates’ suspense novel has much going for it: an intricate, winding plot; well developed characters, not to mention just three of them to keep track of; and terrific geography that sounds to those familiar with the area like the Joppenbergh Mountain located west of the Hudson River and due north of New Paltz, NY. For most of the novel, these three elements work wonderfully to hold your interest and propel you onward, often feverishly, to figure what the heck is going on; what really happened that day in August 1982 in the Swangum preserve. Then, unfortunately, you reach the end, where everything feels anticlimactic and a bit too farfetched. However, until that point, for more then three-quarters of the novel, you’re in for quite an exciting thrill ride, enhanced by Yates’ skillful writing. And the less than pleasing ending, well, you know if you have read enough suspense thrillers, you’ll probably always will be a bit let down.

Hannah, Patrick (alternately known as Patch and Tricky), and Matthew, all twelve to fourteen, are childhood acquaintances in Roseborn, NY. Hannah is the rich girl, the daughter in a family founded on cement (called Roseborn, actually Rosendale, after the real village; you learn about cement in this novel) by her family. Life should be good, but given two lazy, pleasure addled older brothers and a mother from hell, well, not even money can buy happiness. Patrick comes from a well off middle class family, with a politically ambitious father. Patrick runs afoul of his father’s ambitions and causes the family to leave New York State for Maine. Matthew’s the new kid in town, a year older than the others, moved upstate by an abusive, drunken father who can’t hold a job for more than a month. Over time, these three get to know each other, with Patrick and Matthew becoming fast friends, and Hannah on the peripherally, admired by Patrick but drawn to Matthew. Then on August 8, 1982, when the novel opens, Patrick witnesses, and to a degree has a hand in, Matthew tie Hannah to a tree and pepper her with thirty-seven shots from their Red Ryder BB rifle. One BB strikes an eye, blinding it.

Fast forward to 2008, the year of the Great Recession, where we find Hannah working as a crime reporter in New York City, Patrick freshly unemployed but building his food blog, and the two happily married. Matthew enters the picture somewhat later in the story and stokes Patrick’s feelings of anger, resentment, and obsession on gaining revenge for his lost job; he follows his former boss, the head of an investment firm, around with thoughts of pummeling him, or worse. It’s when Matthew reenters the picture terrifically successful that Patrick really begins to breakdown.

Turns out that the BB gun shooting of Hannah that day back in 1982 was more than it appeared. It keeps Patrick on edge, because he knows a secret he can’t reveal to her fearing she might turn on it. Hannah, for her part, might not have been an entirely innocent party, at least in the eyes of Matthew, who paid a terrible price, a couple of them, for an indiscretion on her part. All is revealed from each character’s viewpoint and that of an all seeing narrator. All in all, a pretty good romp around New York and upstate, spoiled somewhat by a less than satisfying conclusion. ( )
  write-review | Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nom de l'auteurRôleType d'auteurŒuvre ?Statut
Christopher J. Yatesauteur principaltoutes les éditionscalculé
Bittner, DanNarrateurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Damron, WillNarrateurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Halstead, GrahamNarrateurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Maarleveld, SaskiaNarrateurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé

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The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends--Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah--are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again--with even more devastating results--

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