r/TomsCrossing

I'm casting no shade on those who love the book, indeed I envy you. I loved House of Leaves, so tried this one out.

I'm now about 2 hours in, and ready to bail. TWO HOURS (two round-trip commutes for me) and I'm barely past the initial scenes with Tom and Kalim and Linsey (pardon any misspellings, I'm listening to the audio) at the horse barn. I finally had to shut it off some time while hearing about how Tom always protected Kalim from Linsey at high school.

There's no possible way I can listen to 58 hours and 10 minutes, all narrated by an excited small-town gossip with ADHD, relating it as if I (of course) knew everyone in the town, both past and present. If all the tortured countrified metaphors and pointless digressions were stripped out, there's perhaps a paragraph worth of actual plot so far.

Question 1: Is the entire book told by this same character, and in this same style?

Question 2: is there anyone here who listened to the audiobook (all of it) ... and enjoyed it?

I see people calling the book amazing, life-changing ... and I'd love to get to that part. But - I just have no patience for the way it's being told so far. If I do give it another try, I think I'll playing it at double speed.

I fell absolutely in love with Tom’s Crossing last winter, and it inspired me to go on a trip to see the mountains that inspired the story. For reference I’m from a pretty darn flat area, no mountains (or really even hills) around. Today is my first non-travel day in the area.

Everywhere I look, I’m stunned. It’s breathtaking here.

I’m not a fit man, but I did go up Dry Canyon trail on the area just west of Timpanogos, and it was surreal going through something that felt like the beginning of the journey: driving through a residential area, to a parking lot, which stops next to the canyon trail. Two big cliffs face each other like they’re the gate of the mountain. I went up until the trail forked, had an apple and some cheese, and came back down, all in all about 2.5h. Of course, I was barely making it while people were jogging and biking up and down lol.

I’d be interested in more real-life places that might have inspired settings in TC, what do y’all think? I’m here for the week and want to soak in as much as I can :)

No, I don’t mean emotionally, but it did do that too (who knew a two page story from a horse’s perspective could move a grown man to tears). The problem is, it has ruined me for other books.

I’ve read twelve books since TC. Some were very highly regarded and reviewed. A couple were classics. None of them has scratched the surface of the emotional and literary journey of TC. None of the has anywhere near the richness of the prose and the characters.

It is making it very difficult to find new reads. I was already frustrated with aggregate ratings due to the number of highly rated books that turned out to be straight bad. But now, I’m basically done with the scores completely, which makes it even harder.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my frustration with the few people I thought might understand. Hopefully the rest of you were able to move on and aren’t still stuck in Orvop as well.

Someone has already asked about this, but I didn't see any responses to it. It's driving me crazy! Page 1222: "Twice more his palm knew that cursed steel. Once egregiously, the last time less so." Then, we hear the story about Kalin shooting the birch when the workers are shooting holes in the bottom of tin pails.

But there's no description of the other time! Is this described one supposed to be the one that was egregious or is the omitted one? The common English meaning of egregious doesn't fit shooting the tree, IMO. However, Merriam-Webster is telling me this: "The​ Latin forebear of egregious, egregius, literally meant 'out of the herd' but was used figuratively to mean 'outstanding in one's field.' " So, maybe egregious in that older Latin sense. Could the Latin root's allusion to a herd and this being a demonstration of his outstanding shooting be a coincidence? Or is there some other unexplained shooting I am supposed to connect back to Kalin that is egregious as we would today understand that word? I can't think of anyone Kalin would want to shoot except Old Porch or his dad (but very doubtful of that), but they both died in prison of natural causes.

Pages 1224-1225: I think it is clear from the description of their daughter finding Kalin dead at the foot of that elm that he did not shoot himself. Page 1224: A reference to the daughter finding him "in that halo of white." Earlier in the paragraph, there's the description of "the canopy above thick enuf to hold off the snow." Is that snow the "halo" referenced? On page 1001, it says "Kalin watched Landry spin in a halo of blood..." when she was shot. I mean, there's a parallel, but the tone of the kid finding Kalin under the tree completely convinces me he just died peacefully there. And if it were a suicide, it likely wouldn't be described as *less* egregious than the described tree thing. The last time was *less* egregious. I'd reject a suicide interpretation.

Maybe we're simply not told about the other time he held a gun after Pillars Meadow. 🤷‍♀️ Interested in theories or help understanding. Thank you for not making fun of me; I'm just grasping at straws trying to make sense of the reference to "twice."

I finished the book early in January and something has been bugging me since, and I’m really afraid this is a dumb question. The chapter in the Art Gallery towards the end really seemed out of place and I’m still not totally sure why it is there. What am I missing? And apologies in advance if it’s obvious and I’m just missing it.