The pace of the book was quick, but I'm not sure if someone reading Klosterman for the first time would be sold on his style of writing. ( )

While I expected to encompass everything thing about Klosterman that I've come to love, I was worried that it might not hold on to my attention. Klosterman, for me, is still very much the music critic - how can he write about a small town in North Dakota and quite possibly make it interesting? Well, he managed to hold onto it. He managed more than that.

While reading the novel, I kept getting various songs stuck in my head, leaving me wonder if he listened to them while writing. It's not that he retold stories from those songs in his book, but they seemed to fit the mood. One of those songs would No Children by The Mountain Goats - but that was just for a brief moment while reading the novel.

And even though his wit and wisdom of popular culture - again, namely music - still graces the novel and that it still read like something Klosterman wrote (because, let's face it, if he wrote any other way, I don't think I've would've made it passed page two), the storyline seemed a little too down slope for me. There wasn't really anything that I could take from this novel like I have from others that I've read. Klosterman also remarked about this sort of reader: John Laidlaw, football coach and English teacher, read books only to imagine he was reading about himself.

What I do gather, and that's only if I read it right - yes, there is a wrong way to read a book - is that this isn't a novel in the most conventional sort. Character development happens and there's sort of a beginning, middle and end, but it feels more like a sketch. A slice of life of in the small town of Owl, North Dakota. And reading it that way, makes the book slightly more realistic. ( )

It's not usually a hard question: "What are you reading about?" Most books helpfully even give you clues on the back cover, with a quick summation you can offer up. "The history of the original Dream Team in 1992." "Jonathan Franzen didn't feel like enough people were paying attention to him so he wrote the same book three times."

When I got that this time, I hesitated. "It's about ... a small town in North Dakota, I guess?" Which is true, but it's not really about the town, it's about the people. And while that seems like the same thing, it's not. You're not reading the detailed history since its founding, you're getting a small snapshot of a few lives. The best description I could come up with was, "It's the story of a small North Dakota town in the 80s. The events that happen are fairly normal for a small town, or at least that would be, individually. Your average small town would have one or zero of these events happening. That four or five of them are happening is nonsense, but that's kind of immaterial."

I am not a great person to be asking for book recommendations.

The author, Chuck Klosterman, like him or love him, studies people. Profiling, describing and intuiting their reasons for existing, most of his authorial life revolved around trying to explain someone (or a group of someones).

So you can understand why, when he's trying to set a scene, it's a bit like listening to a German opera — intellectually, you understand that it's probably very beautiful, but in the moment it sounds like large bears mating. And, given that the novel takes place in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota, it's not even a very interesting German opera (or ursine copulation, depending on where you were in the metaphor).

The first third of the book is dull. A slog. I tell you this so you can prepare for it — gird yourself, lay in provisions, whatever you need to do to get through it. Because it's worth it. I've seen the other side, and it is sublime.

Because Klosterman eventually gets around to what he does best — explaining people. These characters are so vivid their mood swings started affecting how I was doing in the real world. Their actions and reactions and emotions are authentic, to themselves and to human nature. Even the most unbelievable, freakish characters are eventually explained and vindicated, even if that explanation is completely batshit crazy.

Explaining any of the plot seems simultaneously like cheating you and utterly pointless — without the connecting web, plucking at any individual strand leaves you wanting for the whole. It's raw, it's gritty, it's real, and it's definitely worth a read. ( )

Rather than getting straight to the hot new releases of every author, lately my tendency has been to start with their debut novels. This one was a little rough; although I liked the character development and the bleak setting (Klosterman grew up in a tiny isolated village like the titular location and it shows), the plot really didn't go much of anywhere until the final two chapters. Possibly a good read for a long flight, but I kept putting it down and struggled to get through it in multiple sittings. ( )

My adult son was a big fan of Chuck Klosterman's Fargo: Rock City, so I thought I'd give his novel, DOWNTOWN OWL, a try. And it was a most enjoyable read. It's what I have to assume is a pretty accurate look at high school life in the early 80s (twenty-plus years after my time in those grungy halls). As far as Klosterman's take on small town life and how stultifying and soul-killing it can be, he nailed that hands down, with his portrayals of the old-timers' coffee klatsch in the local diner and the desperate drinking of younger adults in the several seedy downtown saloons. Not to mention the exaggerated importance of high school sports and the football coach with a weakness for sixteen year-old girls.

And all the high school English classes are studying Orwell's 1984 as that year is rung in by the citizens of Owl, which gives the story some minor literary undertones, something the author weaves in well.

The popular music of the era can almost be heard blasting in the backdrop of this narrative of tiny Owl, North Dakota, and the surprising and catastrophic conclusion could probably only ring true in that flat and desolate setting.

Klosterman's dialogue and inner musings by his characters - teens and adults alike - range from moving to very dark to downright hilarious. Not a book for the squeamish, certainly. Highly recommended for the forty-something former headbanger crowd.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )