- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: New American Library; Reprint edition (Jun 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0451215125
- ISBN-13: 978-0451215123
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.5 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 947,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Coal Run
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Product Description
Synopsis
Coal mining community deputy Ivan Zoschenko remembers the injury that ended his football career, prepares for a former teammate's release from prison, and confronts a secret that has troubled his conscience.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
I FINISH MY BEER, CRUSH THE CAN OUT OF HABIT, AND TOSS IT onto the floor of my truck, where it hits the other cans with a small clang. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I FINISH MY BEER, CRUSH THE CAN OUT OF HABIT, AND TOSS IT onto the floor of my truck, where it hits the other cans with a small clang. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Another gem from O'Dell. Similar to her first novel 'Back Roads' where she writes from the male perspective, this is a well-crafted novel with spunky dialogue, vivid characterisation, and a wicked sense of the absurd that had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion. Closer in feel to 'Sister Mine' which is set in the same coal-mining community, the humour and pathos are finely balanced. A book to read a second time for pure enjoyment.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
38 reviews
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
"You always belong where you're from"
22 Jun 2004
Format:Hardcover
Tawni O'Dell's lyrical, ambitious and tension-filled novel seems to emerge and explode onto the page. The story is rendered in such a tightly disciplined prose that the reader will probably be left overwhelmed by the strength of the author's vision. Ivan Zoschenko "the Great Ivan Z" is an aging, former football hero and drifter who has lost his father in a mine explosion that shattered the town of Coal Run thirty years ago. Now living in Florida he is sent a newspaper article telling him that an old teammate, Reese Rayner is about to be released from prison after fifteen years for murder and is heading back to the town. Reese had violently and brutally mutilated his wife, who was so badly battered that she remains hooked up to life support in a convalescent home run by Ivan's compassionate and kindly mother. Ivan returns to Coal Run a weather-beaten man intent on revenge - a man who remains bitter, angry, and with a penchant for wayward drinking. He scrapes out a living working as a local deputy, and sleeps either in his truck or on the sofa at his sister, Jolene's house. The story takes place over one week, from Sunday to Friday, as Ivan, conflicted with pent-up and astringent fury, begins to settle old scores, face the mistakes he made in his careless youth, and reconnect with the people he's either treated badly or ignored.
Packed into this bitterly powerful novel, is a dazzling array of well-chiseled, colorful characters: Ivan's former teenage idol Val Claypool, hangs around the town, and reminisces with a sense of palpable regret his time in the Vietnam War, where he lost his friends and his leg. The climate of mutual need is blended with a deep-seated contempt in the Raynor family, where Jeff Rayner, unemployed, desperate, and unable to provide for his wife, Bobbie and their children, is driven to the brink of fury and despair. The spent anger, the family dysfunction, the desperation, and the sense of disappointed lives going nowhere permeate this hard-edged story. Coal Run is not just a searing portrait of one man's chronicle of personal tragedy, but also a bitterly acute commentary on one community's disaffected and disparate inhabitants.
The book is strongest when it sticks to the poetic descriptions of and the destruction and the sense of hopelessness of Coal Run and the surrounding areas. The explosion in "Gertie," the local mine, left a town visibly on fire, and an entire community gone: houses raised, buckled sidewalks and driveways leading to nowhere and nothing, lawn ornaments and bicycles left behind in weed-choked yards. The coal that had once provided the town with life has turned to poison beneath it and caused its death. Questions of regret, disappointment, love, loss and the fragility of human life are woven together as Ivan tries to understand how he can dislike a town he still loves, how he can envy a way of life he doesn't necessarily want to have, and how he needed to leave his home in order to realize that it actually is his home.
Coal Run is richly and tautly rendered, and O'Dell has the shear narrative skill to present a story that is both complex and multi-layered. Her prose is meticulously whittled and surefooted and her powers of description are exacting and uncompromising - for one terrible instant Ivan feels he's been manipulated and pitted against the town for reasons he just doesn't understand and by forces beyond his control. Coal Run is narrated in a generous, patient, and intelligent voice, and the author almost presents the subject matter from the perspective of an insider, clear eyed and without sentimentality. This is a fine novel, about a man and a community who feels they have lost everything, and consequently, stands empty handed. Redemption and deliverance do come to Ivan and the townspeople of Coal Run, but only after much soul-searching, hurting, and pain. Mike Leonard June 04
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Really enjoyed this....
4 Mar 2005
Format:Hardcover
Very well written, very thought-provoking. Interesting that it's written by a woman but the narrator character is a tough guy. Recommend this highly.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Engaging, Poignant, Heroic -- This is Simply a Great Book
25 July 2004
Format:Hardcover
It may not be true that you can never go home again. Literature, as in life, is full of homecomings. What is always interesting is a person's motivation for returning home after a long absence, especially the motivation of a person who has deliberately distanced themselves from their hometown and past. What drove them away in the first place and what draws them back, and why now? What and where is home, really? These are questions explored in Tawni O'Dell's wonderful new novel, COAL RUN.
COAL RUN is the story of a small mining town, its inhabitants, its pride and shame, its tragic past and its hope for the future, all exemplified by the narrator, Ivan Zoschenko. Ivan, the town's most famous export, has returned home many years after leaving to play college and professional football. After a career-ending injury he moved to Florida hoping to leave his home and memories behind him. Ivan was one of the many residents who lost loved ones in a mining accident in 1967. But it wasn't really the loss of his father and other relatives that drove him away. Ivan carries a great and dark secret, and his return is partially inspired by the release from prison of Reese Raynor, a former teammate.
Ivan is not the only one coming home; his childhood hero, Val Claypool, has returned as well. As Ivan spends a week in the western Pennsylvanian town he thought he'd never live in again, he is confronted by all the hurt in his entire past and by the damage he feels he must inflict on another.
Why does Ivan want to kill Reese? Why has Val returned? What is Ivan's connection to the woman lying in a coma in a local nursing home? And who else knows Ivan's secret? COAL RUN is not a mystery, but as Ivan's story unfolds, these questions are answered and O'Dell gives the reader a vivid portrait of a small and wounded town, and a man struggling with his past and his future.
All of O'Dell's characters are interesting, intriguing and real. Ivan is a classic wounded hero, and the emotional journey he takes in the course of the novel is immensely readable. There are many sympathetic characters in COAL RUN, including Ivan's beautiful and independent sister, Jolene, her sons, his mother, the local doctor and the ghost of Ivan's father, who looms large throughout.
The coming home story is a genre unto itself. And O'Dell is perfect in her telling of this tale of redemption, family, regret, hope and home. She never resorts to the simple quirkiness of many "small town" tales or the morose and sappy stories of miners, although this is a novel set in a small mining town. Instead, COAL RUN is original and filled with wonderful humanity. Ivan Zoschenko is a likeable, though flawed protagonist. O'Dell has created a world that is touchingly real and that challenges the characters to sort out life's complexities and to face heartbreak and pain without giving up hope.
So many positive adjectives apply to COAL RUN: engaging, poignant, heroic. This is simply a great book.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
COAL RUN is the story of a small mining town, its inhabitants, its pride and shame, its tragic past and its hope for the future, all exemplified by the narrator, Ivan Zoschenko. Ivan, the town's most famous export, has returned home many years after leaving to play college and professional football. After a career-ending injury he moved to Florida hoping to leave his home and memories behind him. Ivan was one of the many residents who lost loved ones in a mining accident in 1967. But it wasn't really the loss of his father and other relatives that drove him away. Ivan carries a great and dark secret, and his return is partially inspired by the release from prison of Reese Raynor, a former teammate.
Ivan is not the only one coming home; his childhood hero, Val Claypool, has returned as well. As Ivan spends a week in the western Pennsylvanian town he thought he'd never live in again, he is confronted by all the hurt in his entire past and by the damage he feels he must inflict on another.
Why does Ivan want to kill Reese? Why has Val returned? What is Ivan's connection to the woman lying in a coma in a local nursing home? And who else knows Ivan's secret? COAL RUN is not a mystery, but as Ivan's story unfolds, these questions are answered and O'Dell gives the reader a vivid portrait of a small and wounded town, and a man struggling with his past and his future.
All of O'Dell's characters are interesting, intriguing and real. Ivan is a classic wounded hero, and the emotional journey he takes in the course of the novel is immensely readable. There are many sympathetic characters in COAL RUN, including Ivan's beautiful and independent sister, Jolene, her sons, his mother, the local doctor and the ghost of Ivan's father, who looms large throughout.
The coming home story is a genre unto itself. And O'Dell is perfect in her telling of this tale of redemption, family, regret, hope and home. She never resorts to the simple quirkiness of many "small town" tales or the morose and sappy stories of miners, although this is a novel set in a small mining town. Instead, COAL RUN is original and filled with wonderful humanity. Ivan Zoschenko is a likeable, though flawed protagonist. O'Dell has created a world that is touchingly real and that challenges the characters to sort out life's complexities and to face heartbreak and pain without giving up hope.
So many positive adjectives apply to COAL RUN: engaging, poignant, heroic. This is simply a great book.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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