Snow Man - Softcover

Carolyn Chute burst on the literary scene in 1985 with the critically acclaimed and bestselling The Beans of Egypt, Maine. She followed this success with Letourneau's Used Auto Parts and the epic Merry Men. Her nonfiction work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, and elsewhere, and she has written about the militia movement in Maine, where she lives with her husband, Michael, and various furry creatures.

Chute's (Merry Men) latest novel is so alarming in theme, farfetched in plot, graceless and sloppy in prose and close to pornographic in tone that it's difficult to consider it an effort by a serious writer. Robert "Ruff" Drummond, a construction worker from Maine and a member of a right-wing militia, assassinates a U.S. senator in Boston. (This is okay, we learn, because the senator is a sleaze and, moreover, a tool of the big corporations that run America and crush the poor.) Badly wounded, Robert makes it to the palatial home of his intended next victim, Senator Jerry Creighton (who is in Washington)Aand collapses. The caretakers who discover Robert are so sympathetic to the idea of the have-nots rising up to kill the oppressors that they enlist the cooperation of the senator's daughter Kristy, who decides to shelter and nurse Robert rather than turn him over to the authorities. Kristy, an ultra-feminist Radcliffe grad and professor of women's studies, is at home because she's having a nervous breakdown. As soon as she lays eyes on Robert, she is smitten, and after she views "the shaking of his loose penis" and takes his temperature by means of a rectal thermometer, she is a bundle of erotic nerve endings waiting to be fulfilled. When Robert regains consciousness, he is adorableAin spite of his garish tattoos, which include a blue swastika. He chuckles, he tells jokes, he plays chess with Kristy and her mother, Connie, who is a similarly randy sort, and soon Robert is boffing both women. Reactions to this overheated tract may range from hilarity to disgust, as the narrative exudes outrage and resentment toward a government that ostensibly harasses people who own guns, refuses to legalize marijuana and exposes children to highfalutin theories of education. It is pulp fiction of the lowest order, manipulative and totally implausible. (Would Kristy and Connie spontaneously betray their "liberal" principles and protect Robert if he weren't such a hunk?) Chute's bombast hits high gear as her characters agree that because the government exploits poor people in menial jobs, the government must be swept away. In an author's note, Chute says that she's been working on a larger book for years, which will be "the true story" of the militia movement in the Northeast. One hopes it will have more sense and literary merit than this one. (May) FYI: Chute's publisher says that "she has been active in the militia movement for some time."
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