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    Martin Marten: A Novel
    Martin Marten: A Novel
    Martin Marten: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Martin Marten: A Novel

    Written by Brian Doyle

    Narrated by Travis Baldree

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Dave is fourteen years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood (or as he prefers to call it, like the Multnomah tribal peoples once did, Wy'east). Dave will soon enter high school, with adulthood and a future not far off-a future away from his mother, father, his precocious younger sister, and the wilderness where he's lived all his life.

    And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms on Wy'east that summer. Martin, a pine marten (of the mustelid family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well.

    As Dave and Martin set off on their own adventures, their lives, paths, and trails will cross, weave, and blend. Why not come with them as they set forth into the forest and crags of Oregon's soaring mountain wilderness in search of life, family, friends, enemies, wonder, mystery, and good things to eat?

    Martin Marten is a braided coming-of-age tale like no other, told in Brian Doyle's joyous, rollicking style.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 30, 2017
    ISBN9781541489158
    Martin Marten: A Novel
    Author

    Brian Doyle

    BRIAN DOYLE (1956-2017) was the longtime editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He was the author of six collections of essays, two nonfiction books, two collections of “proems,” the short story collection Bin Laden’s Bald Spot, the novella Cat’s Foot, and the novels Mink River, The Plover, and Martin Marten. He is also the editor of several anthologies, including Ho`olaule`a, a collection of writing about the Pacific islands. Doyle’s books have seven times been finalists for the Oregon Book Award, and his essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, The American Scholar, The Sun, The Georgia Review, and in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times, The Times of London, and The Age (in Australia). His essays have also been reprinted in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Among various honors for his work is a Catholic Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the John Burroughs Award for Nature Essays, Foreword Reviews' Novel of the Year award in 2011, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008 (previous recipients include Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O’Connor, and Mary Oliver).

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    Reviews for Martin Marten

    4.5/5

    55 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      So kind and eloquent!
      A delight that revels in beauty and nature.
    • 4/5
      While this is not normally something I would've chosen on my own, I'm glad I read (listened to) it. It was the book choice for this month at my local library. It's a very whimsical story. It was fun and sweet. If you like words and lists, you'll love the way this book is written.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful fresh story! Brian Doyle has a keen eye for nature and relationships. A pleasure!
    • 5/5
      Doyle is an Oregon author, and the book is set here, on Mt. Hood, or as Doyle refers to the mountain, Wy'East. The book centers on two beings, a teenage boy, named Dave, and a young Marten named, (wait for it) Martin. A bit theme of the book is the similarity between humans and other animals, and the idea that animals could also have complex emotional lives.If you are like me, and have wondered, from time to time, what it would be like to be an animal, or maybe a tree, this is a book for you. It's probably not a book for everyone, my daughter was dismayed to see that it doesn't have quotation marks, and is pretty gently plotted. A neighbor was unhappy at the violence in the book (nature, after all, being red in tooth and claw.). Another deficit in the book (IMO) is that everyone in the book is very good-hearted. People make mistakes, but there is not much in the way of mean-ness or selfishness here. Which is charming, but maybe not realistic?However, the book has much to recommend it; lovely nature writing; wonderful quirky character, and a sweet philosophical narrative voice. Here is a piece of that voice, discussing a Marten who was tangential to this story:"He will, for example, be hit by lightning and assumed to be dead but then rise up spitting and utterly alive as if by magic. He will briefly find himself atop a running horse, which is a remarkable story all by itself. He will be a rare and perhaps unique case of a Marten who learns to kill and eat porcupines after watching a fisher accomplish that potentially punturous and eminently painful task. He will father more kits than we could easily count if they were somehow piled wriggling in front of us in a seething mewling pile. He will die finally in an act of stunning courage in defense of his enduring love, a story which by itself you could write three books about, and by heavens what a terrific movie it would make. And he is only one of a million, no a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, than we could tell each other in a hundred years..... The fact is that the more stories we share about living beings, the more attentive we are to living beings, and perhaps the less willing we are to slaughter them and allow them to be slaughtered. That could be."
    • 5/5
      Martin Marten is ostensibly about the first two years of the life of a marten named Martin who lives in the forest on the slopes of Mt. Hood in Oregon (Doyle uses the Native American name for the mountain, Wy'east). Martin is actually just one of a myriad of characters whose lives are described in this book: we also follow Dave, a teenage boy, his parents, his precocious sister Maria, the giant elk Louis, a trapper named Mr. Douglas and his charming horse Edwin, the local store owner Miss Moss, a stray dog who decides to move in with a substitute teacher, a fox, a guy who likes riding his bike really fast all the time, and several other characters. But what the book is really about is the beautiful abundance and interconnectedness of nature, and how the world is jam-packed with stories if we just stop to pay attention. There's not really any plot. Good things happen and bad things happen, but ultimately everyone is kind and loving and nature is generous. Doyle writes with humor and empathy and a deep, deep appreciation of the variety and bounty of creation. I love Doyle's writing: he's full of kaleidoscopic lists.This book is good for the soul. It's soothing and full of happiness and love.
    • 5/5
      Brian Doyle evokes the life of a marten just as deftly and convincingly as he does that of his teenaged protagonist, skirting the boundaries of anthropomorphism so perfectly that you’ll believe you know how a marten might feel. Maybe you (an adult reader) might learn how a teenager feels too, though the book is really written for teens—perhaps they’re trying, like Dave, to understand adulthood.Martin Marten is a coming of age story, but so much more. The ages of the forest weave into the age of a boy; the timescapes and landscapes of man weave into those of the wild. Facts and figures and fun and fear and happiness all blend, and it’s not fantasy, but a kind of super-reality, that invites the reader to know how the world’s senses flow.The author humanizes animals and humans in this novel, fitting us all together and giving us a place that’s convincingly called home—a place in a small community, with animals and nature close by, and friends and strangers sharing and twining their lives. It’s a wonderful book.Disclosure: I read Mink River and I was eager to read more of Brian Doyle. I love his writing.
    • 4/5
      There is a great deal to recommend this book. In fact, I feel this particular author has it within to eventually come up with a Great American Novel. His best is really that good. However, there is a bit of roughness around the edges with this one -- in my opinion -- that suggests his publisher may have pushed him to get something ready for print before he was ready to do so. So, what do we have here. The title of the book suggests this is about a woodland animal, and, indeed, there is much about the book, especially in the beginning, that reminds me pleasantly of the direct non-human perspective of Garth Stein's The Art of Racing on the Rain. But even then, the book immediately shares its billing with a young boy in a small, rustic Oregon town, who has his own life to live beyond that of a marten named Martin. His life touches in a very entertaining way with his family, including a very exceptional younger sister. The family, in turn, weaves in and out with many varied members of this little community, a community both diverse and richly appealing. For those acquainted with the TV show, Northern Exposures, and the Port William community of Wendell Berry, this is not quite as quirky (or sometimes ill-intended) as the Cicely, Alaska crowd could get, but is often much more humorous than the kind folks of Port William. In any event, this is not a children's book. In the end, it is a celebration of people interacting with each other and with the wilderness around them in a most touching and fun way.
    • 5/5
      A delightful literary read about nature, including people and animals. In this, my second Brian Doyle book, he also writes in intelligent run-on sentences but it wasn't as noticable as in The Plover. Fun story full of memorable characters. Martin is a marten, one of the fastest mammals. Dave is a teenager, a runner. Moon is his friend. There's a smidge of magic in the story, a drizzle of fantasy, but don't worry, it's almost believable and is minimal. The book parallels a slice of time in the lives of the characters and Dave and his family and in the life of Martin and his family. Dave and Martin come to know each of each other, curiously drawn. Even martens can tell when a human animal is kind. Doyles writing is mesmerizing. I always look up words when I read him. The setting is Mt. Hood in Oregon, tiny hamlet of people and nature. The reader will learn much about certain animals.
    • 5/5
      Stunning, lyrical, realistic story following the lives of two youngsters living on Mt. Hood, Oregon. Though Martin is a pine marten and Dave is a human, they grow up in the same environment and learn from their families and neighbors how to be a part of their community. Doyle writes eloquently from both points of view. The community of characters both wild and human are fascinating, full of quirks and wisdom. I love how Doyle makes them all equal in the community. Delightful woodcut illustrations interspersed throughout add a peaceful lull. I cannot say enough about this novel. It is my book of the year for 2015.
    • 4/5
      This is a Brain Doyle novel engaging characters, including the title animal character; soaring language; love and redemption. All set in the Pacific Northwest. Read this one, read his previous novels, and read his essays.
    • 4/5
      I’m very conflicted about how I feel about this book. On one hand, I loved its beauty and its connection with humans, animals, trees and nature. It struck me emotionally so many times. I laughed and I cried. I felt each of the characters were known to me, both human and animal, and I wished many times that I could be part of their circle. Dave, Maria, Martin the Marten, Miss Moss, Mr. Douglas, Edwin the Horse, Unable Lady, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson – all characters that I hated to say goodbye to at the end of the book. Sections of this book struck me to the core. There are little stories throughout the book that are true treasures. Suspense, love, loss, grief, growing up, heartbreak – all contained in this book.However, I have to say that I did find parts of this book offensive. I do believe that this author and I share a love for animals or he couldn’t have written so movingly about the affinity one species has with the other. But the book also contained rationalizations for the trapping of animals for their fur, such as when a trapper kills a fox, he saves the many animals that the fox would have killed. The animals are depicted as killers among themselves so why would it be any different for us to kill them. As for eating animals, the book states that humans are omnivorous mammals and that we have no choice in what we eat. There’s talk about how we must kill animals with respect and reverence for the life we’re taking. There’s even the statement that since vegetables are alive sentient beings, vegetarians kill them for food. All of this goes deeply against my personal beliefs.It’s my hope that the parts of the book that deal with the death of the animals and depict beautiful creatures being strangled by wire traps will do its own work in readers’ hearts and minds. I do believe that it may very well have been the author’s intent to make those scenes especially vivid for just that purpose. After all, one of the main characters in the book is a marten and it’s his struggle for survival that’s one of the main components of the book. This is the first book I’ve read by this author and possibly others who have read more of his work would have better insight into his reasons for telling his story in this manner. But it’s a bit unclear to me what his intention is as the fur trapper was a very good man in every other way and seemed very confident in his right to kill animals for their fur. Only one young boy showed any objection to the trapping, calling it murder, but everyone else was very accepting of it. I can see this as a book that will open up much discussion and debate.Though there were those sections that really got my hackles up, I still liked this book very much. That’s how beautiful and poetical it is. It will strike a chord with you on one page and then disturb you on the next. I truly did not want this book to end and wanted to stay awhile longer in the little hamlet of Zigzag. Several times throughout the book the author says “but that’s a story for another book” and I hope he means it. I was given the opportunity to read this book by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.