robla@sfba.club reviewed Heartland by Sarah Smarsh
Review of 'Heartland' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I had a hard time deciding how many stars to give this book. This felt as intimate (and almost as invasive) as reading someone's diary, and it feels mean to give Smarsh's deeply personal telling of her family's incredible story anything less than 5 out of 5 stars. But reviewing a living person's diary on a book review site is just weird. In fact, reading a living person's diary is just weird. And listening to the audiobook of the author reading their diary is really weird. That was my initial experience: it was weird.
For anyone who is looking for the raw, personal experience of a girl growing up in rural Kansas, this is a fantastic book. Of course, minimizing this as "diary" of "girl" is really unfair; Smarsh provides an incredibly detailed and intimate biography of her mother, and her mother's mother as told from her adult perspective. …
I had a hard time deciding how many stars to give this book. This felt as intimate (and almost as invasive) as reading someone's diary, and it feels mean to give Smarsh's deeply personal telling of her family's incredible story anything less than 5 out of 5 stars. But reviewing a living person's diary on a book review site is just weird. In fact, reading a living person's diary is just weird. And listening to the audiobook of the author reading their diary is really weird. That was my initial experience: it was weird.
For anyone who is looking for the raw, personal experience of a girl growing up in rural Kansas, this is a fantastic book. Of course, minimizing this as "diary" of "girl" is really unfair; Smarsh provides an incredibly detailed and intimate biography of her mother, and her mother's mother as told from her adult perspective. Anyone who really dislikes J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy should appreciate Smarsh's personally-informed perspective on the rural working class, and the care with which Smarsh doesn't conflate the experience of her ancestors with her own. Anyone who is unsure about whether to read Smarsh's book first might consider reading her very popular October 2016 piece: "Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans (The Guardian)". Her commentary is a searing critique of all of the journalists who were fawning over Hillbilly Elegy after its June 2016 release all the way until the November 2016 election of Donald Trump. She skewers the “liberal media elite”, who seemed to think they knew a thing or two about “flyover country” because they interviewed J.D. Vance, and maybe did some superficial hillbilly tourism of their own to confirm the stereotypes. Smarsh is an insightful and highly-informed pundit (e.g. her piece in The Prospect “Mapping the White Working Class”), and backs up her hard-earned intuition with cold, hard data.
Smarsh's commentaries reflect what seems to be her writing style: she focuses most of her attention on the conclusion, and creates abundant prose to reach her conclusion, which may or may not be very structured. Her piece for The Guardian took a while to get to the point, but was helped by a well-placed picture of the DeBruce Grain elevator just outside Witchita, Kansas, in the aftermath of the explosion that killed seven people in 1998. Smarsh has a well-integrated anecdote about the impact of the explosion on her community, and about the explosion's personal relevance to her. In her writing (especially in "Dangerous idiots..."), she's frequently able to paint a vivid picture in fewer than 1000 words, but sometimes, the pictures end up taking more words. And she tries to cram a lot of pictures into her Heartland scrapbook.
I think one of the more honest and useful reviews I’ve read about Heartland is Yun's January 2020 review here on Goodreads. Yun gives a very candid and somewhat unflattering assessment of the book, coming to a similar conclusion to my own:
In the end, I had such high hopes for this book, and it just didn't quite meet them. If you approach this book as another diverse voice that helps you understand a country full of diverse voices and experiences, then I think you'll get what you want out of it. But to expect any further insights would only lead to disappointment.
Yun might be selling Smarsh’s book a little short, but I'm guessing she didn't have the same personal connection to Kansas that I do. Smarsh told the story that I was hoping to hear, but Yun seemed to hope for other perspectives. Yun gave Heartland a middle-of-the-road rating of 3 stars (which she explains as "Liked it for the most part. Enjoyable read, but not really memorable."). I give the final hour or so of Smarsh’s nine-and-a-half hour book a full 5 stars. In it, she describes her political awakening as she transitioned to adulthood. I eagerly awaited Smarsh's book in 2017 and 2018, since I believe we need to hear more stories about political awakenings of smart kids in red counties. I believe we need a blockbuster success from someone other than J.D. Vance, but unfortunately, Smarsh's book probably isn't destined for that. And I'm not surprised; the first 80% of the book seem likely to be pretty tiring for many readers/listeners. Still, it's an incredible story, and I'm glad Smarsh told it. I'll give it 4 stars, because I really liked it.
(Note : the review above is rewrite of my much longer review over on Quora. I made a point of murdering my darlings before publishing here. )
