 | Price Comparisons: Rental | | Sorry, the textbook you were looking for is not available as Rental, at any of the stores we searched. | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | The author of Population: 485 returns, delivering a truckload of humor, heart, and . . . gardening tips? Think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, complete with stock cars, sexy vegetables, and a laugh track. "All I wanted to do was fix my old pickup truck," says Michael Perry. "That, and plant my garden. Then I met this woman. . . ." Truck: A Love Story recounts a year in which Perry struggles to grow his own food ("Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Penthouse combined"), live peaceably with his neighbors (one test-fires his black powder rifle in the alley; another's best Sunday shirt reads 100 PERCENT WHUP-ASS), and sort out his love life. But along the way, he sets his hair on fire, is attacked by wild turkeys, takes a date to the fire department chicken dinner, and proposes marriage to a woman in New Orleans. As with Population: 485, much of the spirit of Truck: A Love Story may be found in the characters Perry meets: a one-eyed land surveyor, a paraplegic biker who rigs a sidecar so that his quadriplegic pal can ride along, a bartender who refuses to sell light beer, an enchanting woman who never existed, and half the staff of National Public Radio. By turns hilarious and heartfelt, a tale that begins on a pile of sheep manure, detours to the Whitney Museum of American Art, and returns to the deer-hunting swamps of northern Wisconsin, Truck: A Love Story becomes a testament to the surprising and unintended consequences of love. 1006 |
Average Customer Rating:   Another Excellent Book by Michael Perry I love this book and read it three times so far. Since I am Mark's mom, I am probably partial but
laughed at how well Mike describes him. This is the fourth book of his that I have read and am
amazed at how many subjects he has covered. He has a way of making everyday things funny and
interesting and very real. Thank You. Good read Like many of the previous reviewers, I feel in love with Michael Perry's writing with Population 485. I think that was his best book-and his most cohesive. Truck is the story of his defrosting as a 40 year old gypsy and allowing himself to fall in love.
I was born and spent my childhood in rural Wisconsin. Perry captures that 1950's feel that is still evident there. Wisconsin is about close family ties mixed with a humorous tolerance for the weirdness in others. That's what makes it different from other rural areas like in N. England or Out West. Perry is less of an intellectual that Garrison Keillor and more P.G. than Tom McGuane-two other of my favorite writers that get rural living right. Great writer with real humanity This book has a lot going for it, and I think Perry talks about farm life, trucks, and being in relationships in a very accessible, thought-provoking way. I would read this and smile because I've grown up in the country my whole life, living on a tree farm and just hearing him describe his life gives me moments of clarity where I really get what he is trying to convey about being in and of the country. Mostly this is a story about his relationships, and he often writes eloquently and beautifully about love in its many manifestations. For truck enthusiasts, there is some good and relatively technical stuff about refurbishing his decades-old International pickup. I myself know only rudimentary stuff about cars and maintenance so I didn't really care to follow all of it, but some of it was interesting and I'd certainly recommend this book to anyone who wants a taste of what life and love is like outside of the urban growth boundary. It'll Make You Smile Michael Perry is an author from northern Wisconsin who makes no apologies for being from northern Wisconsin. I like that - because when I think of northern Wisconsin, it being a bastion of literary talent is not what comes to mind, trust me. (I live in southern Wisconsin) While Perry has a new book out called Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting, which I haven't read yet, it's his previous book, Truck: A Love Story (P.S.) that is one of my all-time favorite reads.
"Truck" is a memoir of Perry restoring his beloved 1951 International Harvester L-120 truck, yes, but it's much more than that. It's also a love story. And it's a peek into what it's like to live in a small Midwestern town from a man that clearly loves and appreciates where his life has taken him.
The story is written in Perry's typical down to earth fashion. You feel like you're sitting with him on his front porch as he shares his funny neighbor stories and snippets from his past. You will smile, even laugh as he brilliantly weaves the story of restoring his beloved truck with stories of his struggles with gardening, his love of cooking and meeting his true love. Somehow he makes it all funny and entertaining to the point that you can't put the book down once you've started it. He introduces you to his friends and loving family, and the woman that is the love of his life.
As with everything I've read of Perry's, "Truck" made me laugh out loud and even shed a tear or two (happy tears). As someone who prefers the big city life to one in a small town, it always surprises me how much I love Michael Perry's stories. For me, "Truck" entertains because of Perry's quick wit, sharp intellect and an easy-going writing style. It reads like a letter from an old friend in northern Wisconsin.
Good Prose Gets Lost in a Smarmy Swamp I read Population 485 which I liked a lot and looked forward to reading more by Michael Perry. He obviously has a lot of talent. He can turn a phrase, strike a metaphor and move a story along.
[...] called him a new age Hemingway. Consider this a warning in the future. New age Hemingway = Pansy Lit.
The book starts promisingly enough (I have to confess I only made it to page 148 before hurling the book into the Goodwill donation bag). There is a good, actually better than good, narrative about watching his brother law fulfill the author's dream of restoring his International Harvester Pickup. The author participates by watching, scraping paint off and doing various contributions a sixteen year old could handle. But he does capture the moment well and sets the backdrop of his northern Wisconsin hamlet with expertise.
Then he starts to bemoan his love life and the train comes off the track and crashes into the swamp of smarmy. Despite approaching middle age the author has the emotional maturity of a fourteen year old and ever so unfortunately draws this out in long excruciating detail. He meets a woman. Wow! He has had disastrous and near disastrous love affairs for the last twenty years. Oh my God! He starts mincing around this woman like a girly man. I can see a treatment for a sitcom coalescing before my eyes, called something like, Dude, Just Nail Her.
Too bad. Hopefully better things will come in the future.
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