Coop by Michael Perry

Michael Perry has a way of taking whatever's going on in his life and relating it to another, smaller event in such a way that you can understand what he's talking about without him going overboard in pointing it out.

For example, in Truck: a Love Story he talks a great deal about rebuilding an old International, but the real story is more about his impending marriage to his new wife, his brother's upcoming marriage, and the ways in which rebuilding a rusty old truck are similar to a guy who's maybe a little rusty himself trying to build a love life.

In Coop, he talks a lot about raising pigs and chickens, but more than anything it's a reflection on the life one lives while raising a family and how one's upbringing looks different when you're thinking back on it instead of living it in the moment.

There are three things I always love about Perry's books:

1. He has a very easy style. This is not to be confused for a book that's a quick read because it's all plot and dialogue. There's a lot in there, and Perry uses his writerly skills to bring the magic to the reader, making it seem like everything just happened when in reality it must take a tremendous amount of work to get these sorts of stories down on paper and have them read so easily.

2. He's self-deprecating. I know that might not sound like a big deal, but if you read a lot of memoirs, it really is. It's a tough skill to master in life, tougher in writing. Actually, that might be true of almost everything. It's tough to master a skill like small talk in real life, but it's even harder to make it palatable in writing.

3. He never gets too pointed about the over-arching metaphor. Even though it's clearly there, he never has to point it out, and I think you could enjoy the books without even considering them that way.

Coop, though not my favorite of his simply because it talks a great deal about two subjects that aren't really my thing, religion and family, still shows off his aw shucks skill as a writer. It's good for the world to have writers like him around, and maybe he said it best as he described the grief of farmers filing past a casket one afternoon:

...you see these sunburned old dogs approach my brother and break down weepingas they take his hand or wrap him in their bearish arms, and maybe they are wearing big belt buckles or unmodish jeans or have their sparce hair Brylcreemed in the style of a 60's trucker, but it strikes me again how much we miss if we rely wholly on poets to parse the tender center of the human heart. At times like this I am grateful I was not raised to be sleek.