Charles Frazier's "Thirteen Moons"

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier is hard to get into, doesn't deliver a strong story, and doesn't have much "history" for a historical novel. My prejudice is that the author is more an academic than a novelist. He is more in love is texture and tone than with storyline. He plays with the reader at several points by saying that the story could have been A, B, or C and he doesn't know which it was. Hmm... the author doesn't know the plot line? Instead, he is trying to be "sophisticated" by letting you know that he views writing as "literature" which a meta-activity, not dingy wordsmithing for Charles Frazier. He is an "artiste".

I had seen an interview with the author and had expected the book to contain more history of the Cherokee removal and how a remnant was left behind in the Appalachian Mountains. The book's setting assumes this historical setting but doesn't provide the reader with much useful detail. I think I'm a typical male reader. I prefer non-fiction to fiction, so my taste in fiction is either toward full-bore entertainment or fiction laced with facts that makes me feel that I'm using my time wisely with the book. This book is just too much style and not enough substance for my taste. There is a lot of tale over many years but I come away saying "so what?". As a reader I want reward. I want to be wrapped up in a story and come up at the end gasping for breath after being pulled under a strong tide of storyline. Here I'm dabbling in the shallow end of the pool and never really get "into" the story. The author plays with me too much for me to hand myself over to his storyline.

I get introduced to characters, but I never really get the feeling that I'm able to get under their skin. I meet Will the bound boy who become the aged narrator, Featherstone who plays villain and patron, Claire as lover and stone-cold woman, Bear as father figure but as a figure who pops in and out of the story line and remains elusive. Characters come and go. The story line meanders. So what? If this is an academic exercise to show that life is without a driving theme, that it meanders, so what? I want my fiction to be more than just a mirror showing me how insipid life can be at one minute and how deadly another. I want moral, purpose, character, theme, progression, and a simulacrum of fact so that I can walk away feeling I lived in somebody else's shoes. I don't get that with this book.

Frazier wants to play on both sides of the street. On one hand he plays with the idea of storyteller and disdains the novelist who drives a plot along. On the other hand, he contrives a plot that is as fantastical in its happenstances (Will meets Claire 30 years later at Warm Springs) that are as flimsy and fanciful as any contrivance of a simply storyteller. This confusion of his craft makes this book fundamentally unsatisfying for me. I either a good story, or if you want to be a post-modernist, then give me something that dazzles my mind with its novelty and tongue-in-cheek playfulness with conventions. This book muddles between the two.