Even today, when the number of exceptional novels is few, I’ll read the end-of-the-year “Best Books” lists that are posted by numerous sites, including Esquire, which I hadn’t realized still commanded any attention. Probably doesn’t, but a Google search pulled their list. As a daily reader of fiction, I can’t think of five novels (or short story collections) from 2025 that merit the extravagant praise doled out by others. I’d go with Fredrik Backman’s mystical, near fairy-tale Among Friends, for the top slot, and Alexander Starritt’s Drayton and MacKenzie, and then I’m stumped. That’s okay, I found plenty to read, even if the books weren’t published this year, like Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation, which was gripping from page one.
Patrick Ryan, author of Buckeye, released in September, has racked up favorable notices for his too-long (I wish someone reminded him of the saying “two words are better than four,” unless you’re Donna Tartt—still MIA after The Goldfinch), decades-spanning story of two families in the small (fictional) town of Bonhomie, Ohio, starting at the end of World War I and ending in the 1980s. I’ll give Ryan credit for the fact that I finished Buckeye—its first half is superior to the second—and didn’t consider it a waste of time. That’s not so bad.
The best part of the novel is Ryan describing the anguish of Cal Jenkins, who tries to enlist the day after Pearl Harbor but is rejected because he was born with one leg shorter than the other. He curses his bad luck, and works at his father-in-law’s hardware store, as patriotism envelops the town. It captures the misplaced, but understandable, shame that men who couldn’t fight Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito felt as the streets were nearly devoid of young men. Cal’s married to Becky—in keeping with the era, at least in popular lore, they’re virgins until the wedding night—who’s a spunky presence compared to the shy and self-conscious Cal, and my favorite character in the book.
In short order they have a son, Skip, and when he’s sleeping or playing Becky keeps up a salon for visitors who want to solicit her advice on contacting the deceased. It’s a little much, and I wasn’t propelled to buy a Ouija board or try to commune with my vanished relatives, but entertaining. The other couple is the gorgeous Margaret, an orphan, and the well-heeled, fastidious and movie-star handsome Felix Salt (they have a son, Tom), who give the impression of a “perfect” couple. They’re not, as it turns out, and Felix, who returns from WWII a shattered man, hiding a secret, that’s explored with a late-20th century understanding.
Writing in The New York Times, Jess Walter is 90 percent enthusiastic about Buckeye, as demonstrated by his opening two paragraphs. “Other than bourbon,” he writes, “is there anything more reliably sweetened by the phrase ‘old-fashioned’ than the American novel? Patrick Ryan’s captivating ‘Buckeye” may provide the most recent proof. Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental, ‘Buckeye’ is a reminder of the deep pleasure of following a cast of characters over their entire lives, through births, deaths, marriages, tragedies and, in this case, hard-won reconciliations.”
(The Guardian’s AK Blakemore is completely smitten, and notes that Ryan’s short story collections have been compared to Faulkner and Salinger, by whom he doesn’t say. He concludes: “Ryan, unlike [Norman] Rockwell, is not interested in cute. With Buckeye, he strips away the Bakelite glaze of the American dream to expose the raw flesh beneath.” Hasn’t that been done, for better, and usually worse, about 100 times already?)
Walter excuses Ryan’s second half, when he throws in news and cultural events post-1945, saying that only the “most cynical reader” will be put off, but that’s a gentle slap on the wrist. Ryan whips through Korea, race riots, Emmett Till (I find it difficult to believe that his characters, with a very local newspaper, gleaned much about what was happening outside of Bonhomie, and conversed about it), JFK’s assassination, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, freedom riders, Be-Ins, My Lai, leisure suits, Watergate, That Girl and Green Acres, pet rocks, the Bicentennial, shag rugs, just many examples from a long laundry list which reads like a high school or college term paper, from the 1980s, when students were still required to complete such assignments. There are picayune inaccuracies—at one point a character disparages “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” even when The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper wasn’t released when the conversation takes place—but they bugged me. Again, that’s the result of no copy editors at even major publishers, in this case Random House.
As I said above, Buckeye‘s just another mediocre novel that 25 years ago probably wouldn’t merit a review, to say nothing of a Top 10 book of the year.
The picture above is of my mom (with the flower, top row) at a festive school gathering in the Bronx when she was nine. I see five boys in the photo, and wonder how many of them fought in WWII and came home in one piece. Lost to history.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Charles Curtis is the Senate Majority Leader; Congress passes the Air Commerce Act; DeFord Bailey is the first African-American to perform at the Grand Ole Opry; the SAT college admission test is introduced; the St. Louis Cardinals win their first World Series; Mel Brooks is born and Robert Todd Lincoln dies; Ray Price is born and Annie Oakley dies; Willa Cather’s My Mortal Enemy and Franz Kafka’s The Castle are published; Sinclair Lewis wins the Novel Pulitzer Prize; Blind Lemon Jefferson makes his first recordings; Gene Austin’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” is a popular song; Jelly Roll Morton’s “Sidewalk Blues” is released; and Gene Tunney defeats Jack Demsey for the Heavyweight Championship.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023