A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition Paperback – Deluxe Edition, October 1, 2001

This is a perfect piece of writing.I read it years ago as a bound book, and now purchased it for a reread.

This is a wonderful book! It is a very moving, emotional, powerful, well-written book. I haven't read through the whole book yet but I am sure I love it. Also I suggest anyone who happens to have not seen the movie, watch it! But at least buy the book. It's one to read over and over again.Susan Eubanks

Great stories about great characters. Opens the world of logging around the turn of the century. A genuinely good read.

Norman Maclean published his first work, this collection of three stories, when he was 73. He was an English Professor at the University of Chicago, and its Press broke precedent, by publishing its first work of fiction. A fortuitous decision, as this best seller provided the Press the funds to issue other drier academic works of non-fiction. The movie A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford, issued in 1992, helped greatly to popularize this story. Nonetheless, not having seen the movie, I was leery of the book, with a gut feeling that this would be about the ultra-rich crowd who water at Jackson Hole, WY, or even further a field, say, chartering a private plane to some remote river in Siberia, so they can differentiate themselves from the masses by practices this arcane sport. And was I ever wrong - this is the REAL thing, fly-fishing as a natural art form, and a passion, as practiced by the natives of an equally obscure part of America: the Idaho-Montana border area.The story is largely autobiographical, set in the late `30's, and is about Maclean's family relationships, particularly with his brother, who we learn early in the story, was murdered in the prime of life. His father, a Presbyterian minister, of Scottish origins, taught both sons how to fly fish, and it remained a passion, and cement that could be relied upon to bind their relationship. Norman's brother was admittedly the better sportsman. Although I've never fished, this one story explains why it is an intelligent man's (or woman's) avocation, shattering the image of Tom Sawyer sitting under a tree, with a pole in the water, and a worm at the end of the string. For that reason alone, the story is worth the read (I'd also highly recommend Russell Chatham's series of short stories Dark Waters for the same reason). But what really sets this story apart is the beautifully crafted tale of these relationships, coupled with those relating to their absolute loser of a brother-in-law and the women who find self-actualization tending to his pathetic nature. There are also some ribald and humorous scenes in the story. A line in the story summarizes Maclean's outlook: "...at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books." And perhaps the central question of the story is: Can we really help anyone else?The other two stories don't match the title story in excellence, but still are both worthwhile reads. They are both set just after World War I, when Maclean was in his late teens, and worked in the logging camps and the Forest Service in the same Idaho-Montana border area. It is a portrait of the "rough and tumble" West, not long after the "frontier" had closed, and featured hard work, gambling, boozing, and, yes, ladies of the trade. Maclean's summer work with the Forest Service involved fire watches, and it was in this same area that the largest forest fire in American history occurred nine years earlier, and is described in Timothy Egan's excellent book The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America.Like Egan, and Wallace Stegner, Norman Maclean has written excellent, , poignant and authentic stories of the American West. A solid 5-star read.

"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us."In his requiem to a lost family idyll set beautifully in rural western Montana, Norman MacLean seeks to understand as much as he seeks to be understood. Rich with both vivid description of spectacular natural beauty and the sometimes heartbreaking tragedy of human failing, MacLean's brilliant prose inspires the reader to think deeply, to plumb the depths of his own soul, and to examine the ties that bind his closest relationships. Though there are actually three stories contained in A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, it is the title novella that makes our eyes water.One suspects it was catharsis that MacLean was after in penning at 74 this ode to the summers of his youth spent on the pristine trout rivers near Missoula, one of which was rudely and suddenly disrupted by his brother's murder. To his surpassing mastery of the English language, Maclean adds a gift for storytelling that includes a wickedly dry wit. And it is doubtless through his colossal talent as a writer infusing this marvelous story with emotion that he can move us profoundly in only 104 pages.For instance, he conveys a mystique, a sort of aura, in his lyrical descriptions of his brother Paul, as if Paul were part angler and part angel."Below him was the multitudinous river, and, where the rock had parted it around him, big-grained vapor rose. The mini-molecules of water left in the wake of his line made momentary loops of gossamer, disappearing so rapidly in the rising big-grained vapor that they had to be retained in memory to be visualized as loops. The spray emanating from him was fine-grained still and enclosed him in a halo of himself. The halo of himself was always there and always disappearing, as if he were candlelight flickering about three inches from himself. The images of himself and his line kept disappearing into the rising vapors of the river, which continually circled to the tops of the cliffs where, after becoming a wreath in the wind, they became rays of sun."We realize that MacLean deeply admired his brother. But ultimately, he could not help him. And he, like the boys' Presbyterian minister father, almost certainly remained troubled by that fact until his death. Yet MacLean eventually came to understand why. Through his exceptional storytelling and keen insight into the human condition, we begin to understand as well."So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed."Haunting.