This was a fun, well-written tale about a woman looking for help to deal with the town bully/kingpin who's stalking her. The town sheriff is no help, but points her to the local rowdy boys. She hooks up with one of the old boys there, and a young tough, who agree to solve her problem. The rest of their day is mostly taken up on a Homeresque journey trying to locate the bad guy in one of his gritty haunts. The writing is punchy and colored with a strong feel for small town Northeast.

3 bones!!! ( )

I absolutely loved Freeman's book of linked stories, Round Mountain, which I read a few years ago. I immediately acquired Go with Me but for some unfathomable reason I left it languishing on shelf. I finally read it and it did not disappoint. This is a cool mix of Cormac McCarthy and Daniel Woodrell, with dialogue worthy of Elmore Leonard at his best. Lean, mean and starkly funny at times. At 170 pages, it will be over before you know it and you will be aching for more. ( )

A short and engaging thriller. Castle Freeman Jr.’s excellent writing ability helps elevate a story that lacks compelling characters. ( )

This one gets a firm 2.5 out of 5. Described as "lean and muscular", I found a surprising amount of unnecessary fat between its slim 160 pages. There are pages and pages of dialogue with Whizzer and DB and Coop that just circle endlessly, go nowhere, and add nothing to the story. I'd guess at least 4-5 full chapters, or about a quarter of the book.

Aside from that, the dialogue, while somewhat realistic, does tend to drone, in its choppy, staccato fashion, and I found toward the end that it became grating.

Finally, I have a hard time buying into two men willingly taking on the area badass simply because they're asked to, with no real motivation beyond that.

That being said, there were also some good points: the basic story overall, Nate the Great and Lester Speed, some of the interactions.

But all in all, it fell distinctly in the middle of the pack for me. ( )

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. ***** ( )