 It's finally time. I have no idea what I'm going to say about this. Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about Stephen Markley's Ohio. This one, I honestly don't know what to say about it. It's one of those books that is so amazing that I really don't have words. So I'm going to try and ramble my way through this review. If you want a more streamlined review, maybe check out someone else's video. But I'm just going to ramble and rant, not rant, but rave about this book for a little while. Who knows how long we'll be here. So the book is cut up into five novella length snippets, vignettes. Everything that happens in the present happens over the course of one night. I'm not sure exactly the time period, but it all happens within that time frame at night. It starts off with Bill Ashcraft. He's coming to town and he is loaded down, he's a mule at this point. And then it moves on to the other four people that you get in POVs. So you have five different points of view and I think part of the brilliance of this book is the way that it's sectioned up all the way until the absolutely crazy ending, which I loved. But one of the best parts about it being cut up into those vignettes is that I was able to take my time with the book and read each one as if it was a novella collection. In fact, speaking of novella collections, this felt a lot like, I want to say, if Stephen King and John Irving work together. It has a very tight prose, very clean, from what I understand he worked on this book for years. I could be wrong, but there's some information that I've read about Mark Lee and how he did writer workshops, all that stuff. The book is so well put together, it's one of the best novels that I have read. I don't know how it ranks right now between it and the Goldfinch, but it's up there with those three. So I'm going to have to do something about my top 20 once again. The book being broken up, I was able to read one, like novella, I'm going to call these, even though they're all interconnected, it's all one story. They are from five different points of view. And you end up bumping into the other characters through the eyes of other characters. So once you have Bill's section, Bill does come back for his own section again, but you don't get too much more after that. It's all basically epilogue stuff. You get points of view from all the people that you've been with the entire book. So I would read one section, and then I would go and read another book. The book is so well written that I never forgot anything about what was going on, and it was always motivation to get done with the book that I was reading now so I could get back to that one. Now, if you're thinking, hey, E, you're crazy. Why not just binge the book if it's that good? Because it took him this long to publish this one. We have no idea when he's going to come out with another one. So I was going to take my time with it. If people like Andrew Davidson and his book, The Gargoyle, we haven't heard anything from Davidson that I know of. If he's released other books that I'm completely unaware of, let me know down there in the doobly doop. But in that sense, he's a lot like Davidson also. It's a very, very clean experience, very tight prose, and the characters are fantastic. It's the, I don't want to say the best, but it's some of the best character work I've ever read. So I would read one section. I would go to another book. I would read another section, go to another book. And then finally, once I got to the very last section of the book, I took almost a month off because I wanted to savor it. And I read several books in between, mostly audio books. Then I went back and finished like the last, I think, 50 pages of it. I am completely flummoxed by how the plot structure worked as well as it did. I guess it's a testament to how good the book is written. I never forgot anything. These people lived inside my head. They're still living inside my head. Lisa, Tina, Stacy, even the side character, Bill of course, even the side characters like, what's his name? Cole. Cole, but in fact, speaking of Cole, there's a section in the book about war. And that was one of my favorite sections until I got to the section after that. Every single section is better than the one before it, but they're all fantastic. It just keeps getting better and better and better until finally you realize there's an actual plot to this story, and these people, some of them are in trouble. Some of them are hiding stuff. It works, and the feeling that you know these people and that you are living in this town. When I say Stephen King and John Irving, I'm talking about the tight writing of John Irving and the characters and location depth of a Stephen King novel. Now this isn't horror whatsoever. It does have some pretty horrific stuff in it, especially the war scenes. I don't want to give away too much. Like I said, there's going to be a rambly, rabie review. There's a certain, I guess, cutting section. When people cut themselves to release stress or deal with trauma or those things. That section really bothered me as much as the war stuff did. The first section with Bill, I had a lot of, I don't know, solidarity with him. I understood the mindset he was going through. Then you get to Stacey. The book deals with these characters and you spend so much time with them. You're dealing with them for so long. Like I said, each one is pretty much novella length. 100 to 140 pages long until the epilogue. That they just become part of, not really the scenery, but they become part of the societal quilt. Everybody has their own, there's numerous characters in here. Even though you only have the five POVs. Actually I think it's four because they all come back for the final one. But anyways, that doesn't matter. You spend so much time with these characters and you get to know them. You get to understand them. You may not agree with them, but you understand their plights. You understand where they're coming from. I don't know what else to say about this book. Aside from going to the spoilers, one of the best parts of this book is the discovery. You come across all these people and all these things that are happening in this town. You even have lore. You have stuff from the past. Now the book does jump back and forth from the present to everything that led up to the present. So it doesn't necessarily all happen in the course of this one evening, but all the flashbacks tie into the stuff that's happening in the present. So if you can't tell me, I'm blown away. I'm shocked at how good it is, especially for Davey. Now, I believe he's a screenwriter and some other stuff. I can't remember everything. Let me go ahead and look through, see if I can find any information on him. It doesn't look like it. Oh, here we go. Stephen Markley is an author, screenwriter, generalist, and graduate of the Ohio Writers Workshop. Markley's previous books include the memoir. This is a funny title. Published this book, the unbelievable true story of how I wrote, sold, and published this very book, and the travelogue, Tales of Iceland. He lives in Los Angeles. So he's done nonfiction. This is debut fiction. Again, the guy is obviously talented. He evokes raw emotion. The story of scenes and characters and just the overall tone of the book is such a... It's depressing, but there are certain sections that also give you a little bit of hope. They are few and far between, but there is a little hope in there. If we're talking as far as story and all that is concerned, think more of a David Joy, but instead of Appalachia, we're talking about Ohio. I have several friends who live in Ohio and every one of them that I know that has read this book has absolutely loved it. So he's gotten something right. I've long known that Ohio especially is very, very close to being like the South. That's why it's accents, politics, all that stuff. And it was interesting spending time with these characters and getting to know them. I feel like I've been to Ohio. I feel like I've been to this town. And it's the highest praise, I think, to have read a book and just have been there. I don't feel like I read this book. I feel like I experienced it. I'm going to stop rambling now, but I really... If you have not read this book, you really at least need to give it a try. It is a big old chunk of book. I think it's 500 and some odd pages, but it goes by very, very, very quickly. Once again, it's 482 pages, by the way. Once again, in that way, it feels like a Stephen King book because you're just breezing along, man. Now, the one thing I will say, I know there's a lot of you who think King overwrites and gives you a lot of details that don't matter. I disagree wholeheartedly. And if you start reading this book and you feel that way about this book, I would just ask that you just give it time because everything Mark Lee tells you is either to deepen the characters, to deepen the lore, to deepen the history of the town or just the town in the present day. Everything he does has purpose, and I absolutely loved it. But if you're one of those ones who are only there for the plot and you only want action, action, action, you're not going to get that here. This is a character study. And the writing is fantastic, but it's not flowery or overdone like some bigger books. I think for what he was writing and what he did, he actually used an economy of prose because every single word fits perfectly. And reading it is almost like having music that you can dance to. It carries that beat so well. But if you read Ohio by Stephen Mark Lee, I would absolutely love to hear from you, especially if you didn't like it. I'd like to know exactly what you didn't like about the book. If you loved it, liked it, felt mad, tell me why. If it's mad, maybe tell me what you didn't connect with. Let me know all that down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!