Captivating ... Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental, Buckeye is a reminder of the deep pleasure of following a cast of characters over their entire lives ... Ryan’s wide-angle approach complements his evocative yet tranquil style ... The author clearly loves these people, and he makes the safe bet that you will, too ... Indelible characters.
I loved Buckeye ... Masterfully detailed ... I felt less like a reader and more like an observer, an embedded one who hoped for the best but feared the worst for the denizens of Bonhomie ... I didn't want to leave the pages...and neither will you.
This luminous and tender novel follows, for most of its stately length, the interwoven lives of two married couples in the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio ... It is no surprise that Ryan cut his teeth writing short fiction: Buckeye is elevated throughout by the precision with which he captures the tiny, haunting glories of everyday suburban life ... For all its quotidian charm, a deep melancholy prevents Buckeye from ever tipping into saccharine nostalgia. I’d probably not go quite so far as to bring Faulkner into it – this is accessible, amicable and more-or-less conventional literary fiction – but nonetheless, Ryan writes his wounded souls with the same exactitude as his dusty vinyl diner booths
By page 9, I was already so caught up in the world Ryan creates, Buckeye could have been misprinted upside down and sideways and I still wouldn't have been able to put it down ... Wry and contemplative rather than melodramatic ... Ryan...ambitiously aims here to write an American epic and he has the chops to do so ... What Ryan captures in Buckeye is both the sweep of history and the mostly mundane particularity of everyday life ... If there's a flaw to find in this overwhelming novel it may be that the characters are a bit too uniformly eloquent and self-aware. But, really, why complain about too many epiphanies when they're expressed as beautifully as this?
Ambitious and engrossing ... The scope is broad but the attention is forensic ... Becky is the novel’s heart, a force for compassion and connection ... Ryan shifts the vast abstractions of history into the intimate, fractured consciousness of its witnesses ... It’s an affair plot, but not at all melodramatic ... Ryan is exquisite at showing how...pasts resurface ... A tightly-wound plot ... A family saga, a ghost story, an affair novel and a social history rolled into one. Above all, it is an investigation into how ordinary lives absorb the shocks of a violent century ... It never slackens: the novel is both ambitious in scope and startlingly nimble.
Affecting and nuanced ... The narrative deftly blends in surprising twists and insights as it follows seemingly ordinary people living seemingly typical lives, resulting in a tale that comes across as absolutely authentic and deeply satisfying.
Brings equal joy and pathos ... draws the reader into its time and place and simply beguiles. This chronicle of leaving and loss, loving and forgiving, burns slowly and hopefully until the end.
he novel’s only flaw is a deliberate pace that may leave many readers wishing it had proceeded more swiftly to its undeniably moving final scenes. An earnest and empathetic family drama.
