Meh. This book wasn't as captivating and impressive for me as some of his other works. I know I like OBrien's writing. In The Lake of the Woods and The Things They Carried are pretty epic. I think my problem wasn't the writing here, it was the story. I just couldn't get into it. I couldn't relate to the characters at all. Mostly I feel like this was a story about two grown men working through a life crisis, and while I get where some of the veteran's issues come from, I just couldn't relate to the tone of the thing.

A poignant love story between two brothers. XO

Northern Lights is the first novel of Tim O'Brien. Essentially it's the story of two brothers coming to grips with their strained relationship with each other and their deceased father. At the heart of the novel is the north woods of Minnesota, the small ex logging town they live in and the struggle for survival on a cross country ski trip through the wilderness. The characters seem real and you are drawn into their world which comes to life in the pages of this book.

I read Tim O’Brien’s wonderful “If I Die In A Combat Zone” some years ago - second only to “A Rumor Of War” in books about Vietnam- but this was the first of his novels I have read, now I have a long list to add to my wish list. This is a spellbinding novel of family ties which built up a gradual lay tightening tension leading to a totally unexpected ending. The characters are well drawn, and the small town life in which this is set evocative, but it is the quality of O’Brien’s writing that shines out.

I think this book has been a little underrated. The style is gorgeous and the repetition is intentional obviously. It's do with the stream of consciousness style. Funny how I don't like Virginia Woolf that much but find similar elements lovely here. I also hadn't previously recognized Faulkner's influence on O'Brien. Sentence structure is completely different but the feeling/tone is quite similar. AND somehow I didn't know this was his first book. I thought Cacciato was. So, bravo, as far as I'm concerned.

I've used some of Tim O'Brien's writing to teach descriptive writing in my classes and was intrigued by the description of the book. I like outdoor adventures. I like books where people learn about themselves and others as they re-examine their pasts. However, there was little I liked about the book. I did not care for either of the main characters, and I'm not sure what they learned about themselves or anyone else. I was waiting for something to happen, and I'm not sure it really ever did. I was about half way through the book with an intent to stop reading, but I read some reviews saying that the main event (getting caught in a blizzard) doesn't happen until halfway through the book and then the story gets really good. It didn't, at least not for me.

I’ve not read anything else by Tim O’Brien, and though I still hope to get to The Things They Carried, I’ll pick it up with some trepidation after reading Northern Lights - a book populated by characters about whom I couldn’t care less, who communicate in a language unfamiliar to the English-speaking world. There are moments of solid writing, and the story was compelling enough to overcome my instinct to simply put the book back on the shelf, but it’s not a book I would ever recommend. In many ways, this book is the literary equivalent of the films of Terrence Malick. It’s brooding. It’s self-indulgent. It’s populated by inaccessible characters. But still there are moments of beauty. With all of the great books in the world, don’t waste precious reading time on this dud.

This is one of my all time favorite books from one of my all time favorite authors. I can usually count on  Tim O'Brien for a good story that I can suck on and turn over in my mouth for a while, but this is one of my top three. (It's hard to rank this against  In the Lake of the Woods and  Going After Cacciato.) I keep this around for winter lulls and summer molasses because I can always count on it to take me to a dark, crisp, beautiful place where I feel alive and at peace.

Maybe nice to look at from a history-of-O'Brien's writing point of view, but ultimately a book rife with repetitions and flat scenes and overwrought dialogue. O'Brien himself dislikes the book strongly, although I agree with something he's indicated in interviews, that this could've been a good book with 80-100 pages cut.

This book was okay - it is entirely centered around character development rather than a strong plotline. I made it about 100 pages into the novel before deciding I wasn't intrigued enough to continue.

"Pretty good take on people in general. main charactor spends most of his time being depressed until his brother Harvey talks him into snow skiing 50 miles home, harvey gets them lost then is deathly ill with pneumonia and Perry has to take over. by the end of the book, Perry is taking chargr of many things, coming out of his depression. bother Harry never stops talking after he is back from Vietnam, repeating himself continuously. Perry's wife Grace is very meek and almost a non character. Perry takes charge at the end but many other story lines are undeveloped. Addie, Harvey's girlfriend is always teasing, but turns down marriage by harvey, and justly discussed in Dec. when we next meet"

Painfully repetitive prose and weird, unlikable characters somehow still succeed in a powerful subversion of wilderness survival tropes. A good exercise for the mind, not so good for the soul.