Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel

Some books do a great job evoking a sense of place and a general mood, which draw you even further into them. Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs is one such book. It's beautifully written—poetic, even—and tremendously compelling, and I read it between two short flights. Little Wing, Wisconsin is a small rural town. Henry, Lee, Ronny, and Kip were best friends who grew up together. While Henry stayed in Little Wing to take over his father's dairy farm, Ronny found some success on the rodeo circuit before his drinking led to a brain injury following an arrest, Kip moved to Chicago to become a broker for the Mercantile Exchange, and Lee was the successful one, becoming a popular singer. Ten years later, the friends are reunited for Kip's wedding, as he has returned to Little Wing to breathe life into the town's defunct mill. Lee agrees to sing a song at the wedding, and he finds himself caught between the magic of a new relationship with a successful actress and the desire to return home, where life is simpler. But the wedding also causes the start of some stresses among the friends, as they deal with the problems of their own lives and the envy, frustration, jealousy, and insecurity of small-town life when you've known each other forever. The book shifts in perspective between the four friends as well as Henry's wife, Beth, who also grew up in Little Wing, and had a special connection with many of the friends. It moves back and forth through time, touching on the victories and defeats, hurts and happy times. While some characters are more engaging than others, Butler has imbued them with such life and complexity that they feel almost larger than life, and you find yourself wishing you had friends like these. While nothing out of the ordinary happens in the plot, it doesn't matter, because you become truly invested in their lives. Shotgun Lovesongs is a paean to life in small-town America, its virtues and its disadvantages. It's a book about trying to live your dreams and worrying about what to do if the dreams don't turn out the way you hoped. It's a book about how far the power of love can take you and how far the power of friendship can carry you. And Butler's use of language is so evocative and mesmerizing, but yet still simple and appropriate for the story. Here's an example: "Strange, I thought to myself right then, how his life was like my own and yet not at all like it, though we came from the same small place on earth. And why? How had our paths diverged, why were they still even connected? Why was he then in my backyard, on my farm, the sound of almost two hundred cows, faintly in the background, mooing and lowing? How had he come back, this famous man, this person whose name everyone knew, whose voice was recognizable to millions in a way that made it impossible for him to be a stranger in so many places?" I really loved this book and didn't want it to end. I think it would be a great movie as well, because I would love to see these characters and their stories play out in front of me again. I'd encourage you to take a trip to Little Wing, Wisconsin and spend some time with these people. Their lives might not wow you, but their stories will hook you.

This is the first novel by Butler, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and I’m already yearning for his next one. We are all given gifts by the Holy Spirit but Butler got double portions in creative writing and inspiration. This is one of those writers for which my pen cannot do justice, cannot capture his brilliance, which is not to say that this is a perfect novel. Far from it, it suffers from many shortcomings, but what a start he has made and what a career awaits. Set in a small town near Eau Claire close childhood friends marry each other, raise families, or leave town to make their fortunes in the big city but keep returning to the small town, drawn by the real friends they made in childhood, sometimes to recharge their batteries, sometimes as an ego thing, to shown their chums that they have outdone the pitiful future allotted to them in their senior class yearbook. But where there are life-long friendships there are accidents, resentments, betrayals and missteps unforgiven that festoon the road to happiness that lies before them. And, of course, woe to the outsider, who tries to spread money around to capture some of this childhood happiness. In this town, that is reserved for the natives. But one book they must not study too closely at Iowa is Aristotle’s On Poetics that explained what a writer must do and what he mustn’t. There is no particular plot, per se, in this book but a collection of short stories only loosely connected to each other such as one might write as homework for tomorrow’s class. Obvious consequences of previous commitments are blithefully ignored in the welcoming beckon of new opportunity. A dairy farmer leaves for a long weekend and we hear more about what he’s packing for the trip than we do about who will milk the cows. In fact, so far as we know, he owns a peculiar breed of dairy cattle that do not need to be milked. Too many things happen in this book seemingly by chance, not as convincing consequences. Aristotle would be fuming. But there is a kindness toward all characters that subsumes this book, where no one is glorified or demonized, making this a feel good read even if the corrective surgery seems awkwardly done or leaves scars. This is a book that will make you feel blessed for your friends, and, if you are lucky, a loving spouse, and a book that can do that is a good book.

L'inizio del libro, corale, è molto bello e molto ben costruito mentre più avanti, non mi è piaciuto come viene sviluppato.

What luck to find a final copy - hardback - of this wonderful novel which i read during Covid-19 isolation in the garden in the sun. Recommended to me by an utterly reliable independent bookseller in Bath, this writer - Nickolas Butler - yes with a 'k' - creates a convincing new world for me - that of Wisconsin - with a fine quartet of characters and compelling narrative voice, well voices, in a way that that huge novel 'A Little Life' for all its double length did not. A great story well told, secure in the hands of an assured storyteller. I'm so glad he has at least three more novels and a short story collection for me to read soon.

A heartfelt story....very practical and i loved it

Je vous laisse découvrir par vous-même qui a gagné (ou si c'est un match nul). Quatre amis d'enfance et une petite ville du Wisconsin ( par vraiment "un bled perdu" car pas si loin que ça des quelques grand centres urbains du Middle West -- Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago.) Henry Brown, l'agriculteur, Kip Cunningham, le trader qui essaie de redonner vie à sa ville, Ronny Taylor, l'ancien cow-boy du rodéo qui se bat contre l'alcool, Leland Sutton (ou Lee, ou "Corvus") le musicien mondialement connu. Juste une question pour l'auteur. Si on est dans le Middle West et si il y a des Giroux (descendants de Québecois ?) où sont les Slagsvold et les Svendson? Ou sont les Koenig et les Mueller ? Ce que j'ai beaucoup aimé dans ce roman c'est l'authenticité -- le tracteur John Deere qui tourne lentement dans les champs, le silo à grains qui domine le paysage -- et la nostalgie pour la vie, idéalisée, certes, des petites villes américaines, des mariages qui réunissent toute la ville, des bals dans ce qui est vraiment des coins perdus, le bar où les amis se retrouvent. J'ai donné quatre étoiles au lieu de cinq car j'aurais quelques reproches à faire -- on a du mal à imaginer Henry en "vrai" agriculteur et il est presque trop bon pour être vrai. Et si on a des points de vue des autres personnages on n'a pas celui de Chloe, actrice célèbre à la Nicole Kidman. Vers la fin du roman j'ai été un peu exaspérée par la présence de f... dans chaque phrase; les personnages sont certes en colère et frustrés mais trop c'est trop. L'auteur dont ceci est le premier roman a réussi à m'émouvoir; par moments j'avais la chair de poule. Sa prose est belle et poétique. Et l'amitié entre amis d'enfance, ça existe à Little Wing et ailleurs !!

Sometimes the reading-Gods answer our prayers, and for me they delivered Nickolas Butler’s debut novel, ‘Shotgun Lovesongs’. For the last couple of years I have been a little bit obsessed with TV show ‘Nashville’ which, in it’s most basic tagline on IMDB is described as being about – “A fading country music star comes into conflict with a rising teen star.” Which does the show no justice at all. ‘Nashville’ follows the lives of famous country music stars and the complicated histories that helped write their most famous songs. We also see up-and-coming, stars-in-their-eyes singers as they start learning the same lessons as their idols when it comes to heartache being a solid muse. Connie Britton as Rayna Jaymes (her hair is my spirit animal) Hayden Panettiere as Juliette Barnes and the delicious Charles Esten as Deacon Claybourne. I freakin’ love this show! But because I am a reader first and foremost, I often think after nearly every episode how much I wish there was a book like ‘Nashville’ … and then ‘Shotgun Lovesongs’ came along. Set in Little Wing, Wisconsin – ‘Shotgun Lovesongs’ is told from the alternating perspectives of life-long friends Henry, Lee, Kip and Ronnie and Henry’s wife, Beth. Henry is a farmer, real salt-of-the-earth type who married his highschool sweetheart (who he’d known since kindergarten) and has three beautiful children with her. Kip left Little Wing and made it big in Chicago, working numbers – but he’s recently returned and poured all his money into a run-down mill and silos that he envisions turning into a landmark that will revitalize his old, beloved town. Ronnie was big on the rodeo circuit, a real heartthrob with a little fanbase – until drinking fried his brain, and now while he gets along just fine, people feel the need to keep an eye on him. Lee is ‘Corvus’ – a big country music star whose first album “Shotgun Lovesongs” sky-rocketed him to fame. But Little Wing has always been his home-base, the place he comes to unwind after the world tours and press gigs, studio sessions and failed relationships splashed all over the tabloids. Everyone is returning to Little Wing to see Kip get married – but what happens at the wedding sets off a domino-effect amongst these friends who suddenly find themselves tied up in secrets and confessions, frayed relationships and drifting apart. I so loved that the pivot-point of this novel is the friendship of these four men. It’s something very rarely represented outside of YA and children’s novels – men whose histories are entwined with one another, who feel a deep bond of brotherhood and need each other’s presence in their lives to feel right and orientated in this world. When I reviewed the book ‘Just Between Us: Australian writers tell the truth about female friendship’ last year, I expressed a wish for a male-equivalent short story collection … and I think I got it in ‘Shotgun Lovesongs’. Lee, in particular, relies on his Little Wing friends to be his calm after the storm of fame. Coming home for him is less about the house he owns and bed he sleeps in, but rather getting invited round to Henry and Beth’s place for dinner. Lee speaks so eloquently (if, internally) about what Henry means to him, even a phone call from his best friend; "Henry’s voice – the voice of an old friend – like finding a wall to orient you in some strange, dark hotel room. The world is still out there. Henry is still out there. Real as a fencepost." And these men have a complicated friendship. In the beginning Kip is seemingly cruel for the way he tries to distance himself from Ronnie, clearly embarrassed and unsure of how to treat his friend who isn’t quite the guy he used to be. Henry and Lee, meanwhile, are more open and physically affectionate with Ronnie (whether that’s something that changed since Ronnie’s hospitalization, I was never sure) happy to hug him, place a hand on the back of his neck for reassurance. And as a result, Henry and Lee’s relationship with Kip is frosty – but this is something he muses on while looking over Little Wing from his silo, something all four did as boys growing up. A lot of what we learn about these men is internal and kept from other characters’ knowledge– only readers know that Henry has started painting again (after being encouraged by his high school art teacher) only to burn the canvases and hide the evidence. Kip, seemingly so cruel, has a private story about once sharing a close resemblance to an elderly couple’s deceased son, who died while in Afghanistan … characters open up to readers in their narrated sections, beautiful vignettes that are pulled out like campfire stories while the bigger arc of the plot plays out around them. But the focus in this book is on Lee. Many of the characters muse throughout how proud they are of his success, and how much of his album ‘Shotgun Lovesongs’ is based on their childhood and shared history with the great Lee Corvus. Even Lee acknowledges the role Little Wing has played as his muse and key to his success. And as life-changing events unfold (not always dramatically, but in little increments as they do – drunken secrets admitted, the silence that grows in a marriage) we, as readers, start to see that there is inspiration coming Lee’s way – maybe for a new album? We may be privy, as his friends once were, to the groundwork that’s being laid for Lee’s next creative endeavour. I loved this book. Nickolas Butler writes with such a steady, assured voice that is at once tough and lyrical. He doesn’t sound like a debut author, but a rather accomplished storyteller: "… and sometimes that is what forgiveness is anyway – a deep sigh." I loved that this book, first and foremost, is about the love between four grown male friends and the fractures and fights that would threaten to tear them apart if they weren’t so damn dedicated to one another. I want to read anything and everything else that Nickolas Butler puts his name to.