No one appreciates the love of their family and small town life until they find themselves out of it and making their way in the big wide world. Adventure awaits the Martin family as the older boys, Joe, Peter, and Francis leave their small town of Galloway to go to college. Joe decides against college and instead becomes a truck driver travelling the united states. Peter is the star football player at high school and despite his worries of being a little fish in a big pond now, he makes the university team. Soft spoken and sickly Francis is not the sports type which doesn’t exactly make him popular with his sports obsessed family. He finds himself being sucked into the literary circles of the big city when he leaves for university.
This is a really long book and the problem I had with it, is that it takes so long for anything of value to happen it became a chore to read. There is an extremely long back story to each character in this book and so much unnecessary information is given that I feel like I am just spying on a family in their day to day lives. Ordinary conversations that does nothing to further the plot reigns supreme in this portrait of small town life. I really thought I would like this one because Kerouac is such a well known author and I grew up in a small town and thought I could relate.
I gave this book a 3 out of 5. For me, this book never really delivered after the slow and monotonous lead up. It is very much suited to a previous time when people were in a slower mindset, when slow build up was the norm. Because of the generational gap I never felt like I related to any of the characters or cared what happened to this. I was disappointed and have crossed Jack Kerouac off my list of authors to read more of.
Ripley's Book Reviews 