Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel

Some books do a great job evoking a sense of place and a general mood, which draw you even further into them. Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs is one such book. It's beautifully written—poetic, even—and tremendously compelling, and I read it between two short flights.Little Wing, Wisconsin is a small rural town. Henry, Lee, Ronny, and Kip were best friends who grew up together. While Henry stayed in Little Wing to take over his father's dairy farm, Ronny found some success on the rodeo circuit before his drinking led to a brain injury following an arrest, Kip moved to Chicago to become a broker for the Mercantile Exchange, and Lee was the successful one, becoming a popular singer.Ten years later, the friends are reunited for Kip's wedding, as he has returned to Little Wing to breathe life into the town's defunct mill. Lee agrees to sing a song at the wedding, and he finds himself caught between the magic of a new relationship with a successful actress and the desire to return home, where life is simpler. But the wedding also causes the start of some stresses among the friends, as they deal with the problems of their own lives and the envy, frustration, jealousy, and insecurity of small-town life when you've known each other forever.The book shifts in perspective between the four friends as well as Henry's wife, Beth, who also grew up in Little Wing, and had a special connection with many of the friends. It moves back and forth through time, touching on the victories and defeats, hurts and happy times. While some characters are more engaging than others, Butler has imbued them with such life and complexity that they feel almost larger than life, and you find yourself wishing you had friends like these. While nothing out of the ordinary happens in the plot, it doesn't matter, because you become truly invested in their lives. Shotgun Lovesongs is a paean to life in small-town America, its virtues and its disadvantages. It's a book about trying to live your dreams and worrying about what to do if the dreams don't turn out the way you hoped. It's a book about how far the power of love can take you and how far the power of friendship can carry you. And Butler's use of language is so evocative and mesmerizing, but yet still simple and appropriate for the story. Here's an example:"Strange, I thought to myself right then, how his life was like my own and yet not at all like it, though we came from the same small place on earth. And why? How had our paths diverged, why were they still even connected? Why was he then in my backyard, on my farm, the sound of almost two hundred cows, faintly in the background, mooing and lowing? How had he come back, this famous man, this person whose name everyone knew, whose voice was recognizable to millions in a way that made it impossible for him to be a stranger in so many places?"I really loved this book and didn't want it to end. I think it would be a great movie as well, because I would love to see these characters and their stories play out in front of me again. I'd encourage you to take a trip to Little Wing, Wisconsin and spend some time with these people. Their lives might not wow you, but their stories will hook you.

This is the first novel by Butler, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and I’m already yearning for his next one. We are all given gifts by the Holy Spirit but Butler got double portions in creative writing and inspiration. This is one of those writers for which my pen cannot do justice, cannot capture his brilliance, which is not to say that this is a perfect novel. Far from it, it suffers from many shortcomings, but what a start he has made and what a career awaits.Set in a small town near Eau Claire close childhood friends marry each other, raise families, or leave town to make their fortunes in the big city but keep returning to the small town, drawn by the real friends they made in childhood, sometimes to recharge their batteries, sometimes as an ego thing, to shown their chums that they have outdone the pitiful future allotted to them in their senior class yearbook. But where there are life-long friendships there are accidents, resentments, betrayals and missteps unforgiven that festoon the road to happiness that lies before them. And, of course, woe to the outsider, who tries to spread money around to capture some of this childhood happiness. In this town, that is reserved for the natives.But one book they must not study too closely at Iowa is Aristotle’s On Poetics that explained what a writer must do and what he mustn’t. There is no particular plot, per se, in this book but a collection of short stories only loosely connected to each other such as one might write as homework for tomorrow’s class. Obvious consequences of previous commitments are blithefully ignored in the welcoming beckon of new opportunity. A dairy farmer leaves for a long weekend and we hear more about what he’s packing for the trip than we do about who will milk the cows. In fact, so far as we know, he owns a peculiar breed of dairy cattle that do not need to be milked. Too many things happen in this book seemingly by chance, not as convincing consequences. Aristotle would be fuming.But there is a kindness toward all characters that subsumes this book, where no one is glorified or demonized, making this a feel good read even if the corrective surgery seems awkwardly done or leaves scars. This is a book that will make you feel blessed for your friends, and, if you are lucky, a loving spouse, and a book that can do that is a good book.

This author has talent, but he got off course in my opinion so many times and I just kept getting frustrated. The author has talent and is worthy but the story needed tightening up, too much rambling . The characters were all over the map . Too much information, than not enough The author focuses that back tracks like a ping pong tournament. Way too much description and detail to the surroundings ,to extreme overload and in all that description the character connection suffered. I think this author should keep writing but stay focused on the storyline , more depth of the actual characters and less of the other over telling of things that don't add to the story .The characters had some dimension but than just when it had some good stuff happening the author would get sidetracked with silly stuff.And I think the chapters should not just be the first intial of the character that is sharing their point of view, just use the whole name .The timeline was all over the place but again I was fine with that as long as the author stayed focused on keeping these characters interesting .And sometimes they were and other times they were not .Like my heading ,I liked it at times, I rolled my eyes and thought "come on ,what is happening here "at many other times and the ending was very anti climactic. If you are going to have all these characters than settle them down well at the end .They all had so many issues and some clarity of their lives and some closure and settlement of them all would have been very nice .More than nice , much needed.So I say I absolutely would try this author again but only if he settles down , settles in , and focuses on his characters better.

Four friends grow up together in a small town in Wisconsin. By their early thirties their lives have taken very different paths - one a farmer, one a businessman, one a rock star and one a recovering alcoholic - but ties to their home town remain strong and inexorably draw them together despite disagreements and differences.The book is essentially a hymn to small town life, the story unfolds slowly from five different first person perspectives as you come to understand what has made these characters the way they are, focusing on major events and shared experiences.This is a pleasant enough read in a sort of Leslie Thomas style though with a languid pace that can prove frustrating in places. Its worst flaw is that none of the characters has a distinctive voice, so it's easy to forget in mid chapter whose story you're in.Not a bad book but eminently forgettable.

Lovely read. A great story of the enduring power of friendship. A reflection on the simple life of hard work, warm hearths, in middle America where friends and neighbours come together to celebrate life's triumphs and give support in times of trouble. Look forward to reading more from this author.

What luck to find a final copy - hardback - of this wonderful novel which i read during Covid-19 isolation in the garden in the sun. Recommended to me by an utterly reliable independent bookseller in Bath, this writer - Nickolas Butler - yes with a 'k' - creates a convincing new world for me - that of Wisconsin - with a fine quartet of characters and compelling narrative voice, well voices, in a way that that huge novel 'A Little Life' for all its double length did not. A great story well told, secure in the hands of an assured storyteller. I'm so glad he has at least three more novels and a short story collection for me to read soon.

I purchased this book as a result of a review in the Daily Mail. It's a satisfactory read. There are no exciting plots only a couple of 'asides'. It wasn't a book that I wanted to sit and read, to find out what was about to happen next; more a book to fill in half an hour.The book was well written, with a certain prose but due to the lack of an ultimate plot, not a 'page turner'. I suggest that the book would be suitable for older school pupils studying for literature exams.

Stunning novel about a group of childhood friends and what becomes of them as adults. Like reading Kent Haruf or Elizabeth Strout at their best, I didn't want it to end.