The Painter Paperback – March 3, 2015

This is a ridiculous novel.I have to start by saying that I can't say enough good things about The Dog Stars. I've read it multiple times and recommend it to friends and strangers all of the time. The Dog Stars was a heartfelt, realistic, honest portrayal of a cruel world - seen through the eyes of a broken man who struggled with the callousness that he developed over time.This book - The Painter - is a mockery of honesty and reality. Instead, this novel is a male fantasy. An emotional man, a painter, a fisherman, a loner, full of anger and rage, who doesn't hesitate to act on his feelings, defend his family with violence and sleeps with women like he is drinking water - not to mention he gives one woman 4 orgasms in one night. (insert your funny joke about me, the reviewer here)Every women he sleeps with is beautiful beyond belief, many years younger and have breasts like perky grapefruits.Gimmie a break.Women are throwing themselves at the main character which is obviously a fantasy of Heller's (and every other man in the world).But that isn't enough - Jim (our hero) is a fighter, a brawler, a real man who doesn't take anything from anyone. He is willing and able to throw his career away to prove a point....b/c he is a man. A real man.The writing? Well, Heller goes on and on about each painting and is ridiculous. By the 3rd "painting scene" I'm skipping paragraphs....by the 4th I'm skipping pages.Heller does best in this novel when he writes dialogue. He does a good job of capturing a lot of unspoken words in his dialogue and I looked forward to every spoken exchange in the novel.Endless paragraphs about fishing and painting were boring, redundant and meaningless (not to mentioned contrived).I think that is probably what bugs me the most about this novel........it feels like it was written in a writer's workshop where a group of writers got together once a week for half a year and talked about their "novel that they didn't know where it was going."While Heller hooks you from the opening chapter - it still feels contrived. Made up. Fake. Not real. Not real in any way.At least with the Dog Stars there was a suspended reality of the post-apocalyptic world. Instead, with The Painter, it is "this real life" where this ridiculous painter lives and it is just not believable in any way and it was ridiculous.Yes, I finished the novel - but I already felt like I knew how it would end.........it would end just as you would expect .........Jim is the luckiest man alive and that isn't believable in any way.Why write a character who is so "miserable" and "tortured" and gets lucky with women, money, art, fishing, painting and murder?Just ridiculous.I don't recommend this book. Go read The Dog Stars. And if you've already read it......read it again.

And I was right. You know, there was a book here. The blind, red rage temper, the overwhelming grief, the escape to fishing and painting, all of that could have supported something important. Even the somewhat contrived horse beating could have been a springboard to something really good. But it just ends with a failed man in failed relationships, with stereotypical characters all around him. The final scene at the river where a totally ridiculous foster family story leads to a repentant character shift was just dreadful. Total let down. I don't understand why someone so good with words could be so bad with character development.

Struggled to decide if this was a romance novel gone wrong, a story of a struggling artist, a chronicle on how & where to fish or a satirical farce. If it was any of these, did not work for me. 1/4 of the book is a primer on fishing, the rest bounces off the walls, trying to hit something, failing. What a romp through the absurd this novel is. Much time spent in cold creeks with nasty lures and mucky wading boots. The author kind of made the painter into a weeble wobble, he kept being punched at yet came back for more and more . The plots kind of remind me of a tv show I watched a few times. "Justified", a show about bubba dudes and dudesses in Harlen County Kentucky, the characters are portrayed as intelligent dummies, much like this novel. The Painter offers shallow, silly women, dare I say "bimbo's". The "painter" himself is a hapless "psychopath" who romps through life with no self check ability. He supposedly never means any of the harm he manages to encounter, just happens, right. Not to ruin a plot twist/surprise, but at one point a bullet is fired into the night, from a hand gun, with no light, landing hundreds of yards away and claiming it's prey. Haha, right, "I shot an arrow in the sky". It's a quick read, especially when you can Evelyn Woods it through all the tedious fishing. Yes, I know, the fishing, and the painting, were meant to be symbolic, but, it is only symbolic if the reader cares, and, this one did not !

This past year I attended a reading by author and University of Idaho professor, Kim Barnes, who discussed the dearth of authors who are "Western". When one thinks about Western writing, one thinks of cowboys, oil barons, mountain men, etc. Instead of these cliched and overused characters, Westerners and the places they inhabit are complex, varied, and interesting. Peter Heller is to Western literature what someone like Walker Percy is to Southern literature. For someone like myself who grew up fishing and moving through small mountain communities, Heller is the literary painter who brings to life the beauty and pathos of Western life.The devil is in the details, and Heller gets it all just right: philosophy, beauty, danger, complex characters. The drama of The Painter is not as pronounced as Dog Stars, but the setting, the characters, and the overall tone of this book is, in my opinion, more pronounced and more beautiful than Dog Stars.I note that many of the negative reviews discussed not liking the protagonist. But I very much liked the complex nature of Jim, the protagonist. Jim, a first person narrator, says that he thinks of himself as a good person, who has trouble being good. And there you have it, the main characters have personalities, flaws, troubled histories, that all leads to a series of choices that have grave consequences. The unfolding of this novel expertly unravels these choices in a very beautiful way.

Very different in style and content to Heller's first novel The dog stars, I loved it.A somewhat complex and troubled guy, the main character is totally absorbing,a story not for the faint-hearted!

Took me a long time to venture into reading "The Painter". Listed "The Dog Stars" as one of my most special & personal journeys. Reviews were either very positive or very negative of this new book.I was caught in a web from the first page & loved the main character. No rational reason for this feeling. Just fell in love with the rhythm of painting & fishing. Neither topic are part of my world, but Heller made it feel real. Too loved the feeling of just existing in the now & not been able to explain the rhyme or reason. Another book that, like "The Dog Stars" I will reread.

Peter Heller's novels are similar in quality and feel to Cormac McCarthy's more recent work. They are suspenseful, surprising, insightful and very well written. The painter is a wonderful strong story of flawed and ultimately beautiful people. It will haunt you in the best way.

This was well written right from the beginning. As a Canadian, I have long puzzled the relationship between men and their firearms. Among good writing, and emotional angst, it gave me insight.

This is a better book than Dog Stars in my opinion. There is more depth, more vulnerability shown. It was an emotional book, there were moments that felt so authentic, like memories. The lack of steady cadence, the back and forth of the book: all felt like fishing, maybe that is what the process of art is like? Thank you Peter for such a great piece.