Rating: 
Summary: An absolute knockout; harrowing and superbly written both
Review: I can add little to what has already been contributed by the majority here except for my own enthusiasm for what was, for me, the best novel I've read in well over a year. I found the plot and conflicts riveting, the characters beautifully drawn and involving and the setting and atmosphere, first and foremost, almost overwhelming, the stuff of nightmares, which is offset by the sheer beauty of the writing.Towards the novel's end, Gautreaux describes the sound of a distant train whistle as that of the cry of "a white ibis caught in an alligator's jaws," a phrase that could well apply to THE CLEARING. A week on, I've yet to be able to stop thinking about it and have added it to a shelf of alltime favorites.
Rating: 
Summary: a powerful story
Review: I enjoyed this moving story of two brothers and their effort to build something decent, despite the fact that they lived in difficult times and within difficult environs. I've never been to the swamps of Louisiana, but I felt like I had been after reading this fine book. The bugs, snakes, and best yet, the people who inhabit such places came to life within this book. I was quite caught up in the brothers' story, and their struggle against what only could be called evil.
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Summary: Reading Club Fodder
Review: I first saw this book on a display of books for reading clubs. It certainly is a good one for discussion groups. It has such issues as: WWI veteran with post traumatic stress disorder, love of brothers, capitalism, deforestation for profit, race relations, organized crime and police corruption. I am sure any group can add to that list of themes and subthemes. Somehow in all of that was a plot.
There is something dark and haunting about this book. In 1923, the wealthy younger brother comes to a depressing swamp in Louisiana to operate a sawmill where his brother (veteran with ptsd) happens to be the sheriff. The brother is there to reap the profits from clear-cutting the cypress forest and bring his older brother back into the family fold. Against this backdrop is a running feud with the mafia.
There is a constant motif of death and injury in this horribly depressing locale, yet somehow the book and characters keep plodding. I think that is the root of the haunting nature of the book. The reader is forced to think - why are they still there and still doing what they are doing?
Teh two brothers are good characters as is another sheriff. The other characters are not nearly so well developed and seem to be cut-outs whose only function is to serve the brothers' plots.
I can not say the plot is a great one. Nor are the characters ones that a reader can warm to or root for. However, taken all together, this is a dark and well-written book worth the effort. It started slowly, but picked up to an ending that one would not have anticipated at the outset. I expect this will be a book that stays with the reader long after completion.
Rating:
Summary: An Expertly Plotted and Genuinely Engrossing Story
Review: If you're looking to fell a cypress tree five feet in diameter, or if you need to incapacitate a man using a shovel, or if you need to pull half of a nightclub into a river using a steamboat, you'll find clear, step-by-step instructions in Tim Gautreaux's second novel, THE CLEARING. Although he certainly doesn't condone such actions, Gautreaux describes them so evocatively and in such detail that you almost suspect he is writing from firsthand experience. He has obviously researched the hell out of this novel, yet, to his credit, those long hours of study never show through in these passages. Instead, these darkly riveting descriptions attest to his storyteller's eye for process, historical verisimilitude, and specific setting. It is also to Gautreaux's credit that these acts of brutality against nature and against humans all have grave costs. The violence he describes in THE CLEARING, albeit gruesome, is never gratuitous, but always instructive, and the alternation between action and consequence propels the plot in a flurry of suspense. The story concerns Randolph Aldridge, a Pennsylvania Yankee who comes to the Nimbus lumber mill in remote Poachum, Louisiana, with dual purposes: to make the mill profitable again and to persuade his runaway brother, Byron, to return to the family in Pittsburgh. The former is easy, since the swampland surrounding Nimbus is rich with virgin cypress wood, but the latter is difficult unto impossible. A veteran of World War I, Byron acts as the mill's constable, breaking up bar fights and scaring off alligators. But his propensity for quick, authoritative violence is unsettling. He has absorbed the horrors of the battlefield and the brutality of the lawless logging camp, and the moral burden has made him remote and hardhearted: "Byron's life was a motionless thing. Most people drifted and reshaped like clouds throughout their lives, pushed along by poverty or wealth, disaster or luck. Byron was a self-contained vessel of sorrow that needed to be broken open." The novel persistently addresses the peculiar morality of violence through the actions of both Aldridge brothers. When a brawl erupts in the mill saloon, Byron stops it by shooting a man dead, claiming that by doing so he had saved the lives of the others who would have been killed. "You know, the angel of death is still an angel," he tells Randolph coldly. Or, as the parish marshal, a wiry, white-haired octogenarian named Merville, remarks, "It's a sin to kill, but what if I don't kill one, and that one kills two or three? Did I kill that two or three?" As the Aldridge brothers escalate a bloody feud with a Sicilian mobster named Buzetti, the question of whether or not violence is justified if it prevents further violence echoes throughout the novel like a rifle report. Gautreaux knowingly shades the dilemma with hard intricacies, suggesting that violence takes a psychological as well as a physical toll on all those involved. Without pushing an ecological or an anti-violence agenda, Gautreaux clearly equates the killing of human beings with the clearing of the cypress forest, and he recognizes the murky morality of each act. In THE CLEARING, many men are killed so that others may lead productive lives, both for the mill and for society in general. Likewise, the trees they cut and ship are, despite the barren landscape they leave behind, an economic necessity, eventually used to build homes, barns, churches, and businesses across the country and to provide comfort and shelter. Ultimately, the uncomfortable implications of this code haunt the novel: "We all guilty, and everybody got a death sentence," observes Merville. Gautreaux describes the felling of men and trees with unflinching precision, but more importantly, he demonstrates by example how to write an expertly plotted, genuinely engrossing, and acutely affecting story about the ways in which violence strips the human heart. --- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner
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Summary: brothers battle geography, memory and evil in bayou epic
Review: In Tim Gautreaux' spellbinding novel, "The Clearing," Randolph Aldridge sets out to locate and reclaim his shell-shocked and spiritually lost older brother, Byron. Randolph's odyssey takes him not only to the most remote, primitive and violent region of Louisiana bayou virgin forest, but to the extremities of human nature as well. Randolph, the lumber mill manager, confronts an untouched geographic environment and must also face his worst fears: the primitive qualities of the human heart, an unalloyed fear of death, and his own capacity to comprehend vengeance and to exact it. In its exploration of the consequences of war, of good people's need to be just in the face of withering evil and of the human heart's capacity to love, "The Gathering" is nothing less than brilliant.
In search of meaning and purpose, Randolph and Byron are equally lost souls. As the younger brother, Randolph struggles with his place in the family, and he chafes at his subterranean disappointment with his life. His acceptance of his father's demand that he discover the whereabouts of his older brother and be the means of his brother's redemption presents an opportunity to not only discover the definition of manhood, but to become one on his own terms. Randolph's actions, which ultimately involve his own liberation, create a genuine interdependence with Byron.
It is Byron's existential despair that gives the novel its power. Ruined by the degradations of World War I, Byron has consciously sought to efface himself from his family and the nation which precipitated his emotional ruin. After reluctantly recounting but one horrific episode of his experiences in the trenches, Byron "stared down...and his face seemed like something carved by wind out of the side of a mountain." As a representative of the "Lost Generation," it is not surprising that Byron has chosen to enforce law and order on a population that, in Gautreaux' capable hands, appears incapable of civilized behavior. As a lawman, Byron's justice is swift, calculated and brutal. He offers no apologies but is fully aware of the human toll his work exacts.
As events spiral out of control in the "The Clearing," Gautreaux requires his readers to consider whether good men can overcome the antagonistic influences of geography, post-trauma distress and humans' ability to inflict pain, suffering and disgrace on each other. The novel's deterministic fatalism contrasts sharply with the brothers' understated heroism, and it is this tension between light and dark, degradation and realization that makes the novel a riveting read.
We face the "jaundiced anger" of battle-scarred World War I veterans and realize it is only the most delicate of lines which makes one man an amoral, vicious killer and another a despairing, driven lawman. Descriptions of the Louisiana cypress bayou are so meticulous and forbidding that we sweat sympathetically and our hearts palpitate in fear of primordial insects, snakes and alligators. Even those of us committed to non-violence may experience a diminution of belief as Randolph and Byron use whatever means necessary to prevail.
At once a powerful narrative and metaphorical allegory, Tim Gautreaux' "The Clearing" reminds us that our best writers squeeze our national character and wring out its essence. Whether his characters are debased or admirable, Gautreaux distills something vital from each. Through his exploration of family, justice and memory, he has given us a true picture of ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Storyteller's Latest Work
Review: My favorite sentence: "The mill manager rose to wakefulness the way a Louisiana coffin pushes up out of the mud after a week-long rain." Mr. Gautreaux's cypress swamp and his characters ring true to me. His acknowledgements mention "several old men, now dead, who didn't know I was listening." I think he was listening very carefully, and am grateful for his reconstruction of this post-World War I backwoods sawmill. If truth is stranger than fiction, then this fiction is strange enough to be true. Gautreaux knows his characters thoroughly, even the bit players. Pay attention as you read. Little things happen constantly that, coupled with chance, eventually have enormous consequences. I recommend pausing at the end of each chapter to review what just happened. (It's enjoyable, easy reading, but i found myself being pulled along by the story's momentum faster than i could appreciate the subtleties.) At one point i wondered, now if Carl Hiaasen had a villain in this situation. . . Tim Gautreaux's world can be violent, and justice is not guaranteed. I have come to think of Tim Gautreaux's stories as somewhat unique among contemporary writing in having a moral or ethical dimension. I don't feel that he's preaching to me, but after reading one of his stories (including this novel), i often conclude that what kept a particular character from disaster was an inner moral compass, which let him make the better choice in a difficult place, without knowing why. Being a prude doesn't cut it; you have to shrug off imperfections in the other guy and yourself. But when life gets serious, you have to take a stand. As you'll see if you decide to read The Clearing, there are at least three social themes in the story. One or more may be of personal interest to you; if so there's enough detail in Gautreaux's characterizations to engage you. Alternatively, there's a rocking good story to carry you over the deeper issues, if you're reading mainly for entertainment. This may be a book you'll want to read twice.
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Summary: Two Brothers Reunite in an Eerie Time and Place
Review: Steeped in the history of the Louisiana bayou and so rich in imagery that it reads like an epic poem made over for PBS, this book far surpasses every blurb on its back cover. It succeeds on many levels: as a historical romance set in a thousand-year old stand of virgin cypress; as a thriller that pits a lone country lawman against a band of Chicago thugs; as the coming-of-age story of one brother and the home-from-the-war story of another; and as a family drama that reunites these two brothers, along with their remarkably different wives and their tyrannical father. The tale is told with artistry and great skill. A bygone time is brought fully back to life. All the while, lurking throughout, towering over, embracing and pervading it all--even where there might be a clearing--is the swamp. Here you have the best book I've read so far this year.
Rating:
Summary: Good Story
Review: The author tries very hard to be clever and in the begining this is a distraction. He is terse and his harbitten style underscores the rough Louisianna setting. However, at first, EVERYBODY says clever stuff all the time, but then the story started to take over and the author had the sense to minimize the cleverness and let the story tell itself. Everybody still says clever stuff but this is an interesting story and slowly the secondary characters are also drawn into it and the book becomes a decent read.
The author's style and character development reminded me of Pete Dexter especially in Paris Trout and the Paperboy, but unlike Dexter's novels where the reader is constantly cringing at what might happen, The Clearing, is an honest attempt at story telling during a time and era when there were really legends.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent Plot doesn't make up for Weak Characters
Review: The Clearing looks like a very busy book on the surface; it has many characters, many different subplots and enough violence and death to last you a lifetime. But on closer examination, The Clearing isn't much more than surface gloss. The book never really achieves what it strives to get at, and is nothing like the books it has been compared too (like the more richer, better layered and better peopled Cold Mountain and All The Pretty Horses). Maybe that's because the book is much longer than is should be. I had to drudge my way through the first two hundred pages. And just as I was about to give up, I finally found myself entertained by a plot twist that transformed the entire narrative and somewhat redeemed the novel. Randolph is sent to a Louisiana clearing by his father not only to manage the wood mill, but also to look after his brother Byron who came back from the war a changed man. Randolph tries to change things the moment he arrives at the mill, until he realizes that he can't change the deep-rooted way of life the countryside folks have adopted. Things change for him when his wife comes to Nimbus to help him manage things. When Randolph does the grave mistake of killing a man with ties to the Italian mob, things start going awry for him, his family and the mill workers. This isn't a book about plot, it is a book of happenings, giving the whole thing an episodic feel that is strangely out of place in narrative ficiton. Each chapter seems to introduce a new plot point which is resolved by the end of this very chapter. Although this changes somewhat in the last third of the book, there doesn't seem to be an underlying current that links the different plot points. But the thing that really disappointed me was the way in which the author decided to give us too little about the characters. Because Gautreaux never really tells us what these men (and women) are all about, they end up feeling one and the same. There are no real character traits that differentiate one man from the next, rendering every single character into paper-thin men. The Clearing received a lot of hype when it was first released, and it's unfortunate to realize that it was just that. Hype. I really had to force myself to finish this one, which is a rare thing for me. This one isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
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Summary: Civilization's short sojourn in the Louisiana Bayou
Review: The mill clearing at Nimbus is buried in the swamps of Louisiana, knee deep in snakes and alligators. The damp permeates everything, coating man and beast alike with a second skin. After purchasing Nimbus Mill, Noah Aldridge sends his younger son, Randolph, to make contact with the older brother, Byron, who hasn't been the same since he returned from World War II. Traveling the country in search of ever more innocuous jobs, Byron 's only impulse is to withdraw from the world into the wilderness, taking whatever menial jobs appeal to him. For Byron's purposes, the mill is perfect, the clearing surreal, like a step into the primitive past, where the men's brutal, backbreaking days are followed by raucous nights of drunken reveling at the only saloon. After days of unremitting labor, drunken brawls are as commonplace as the hangovers the morning after. Mill life is harsh and dangerous; this is a place where death comes sudden and easily. Byron acts as the local constable and has quickly gotten a reputation for being unpredictable and moody. When not breaking up fights, Byron spends his hours listening to maudlin songs on an old Victoria. He has married a local woman, and derives some comfort from his wife and his music, the black nights filled with sad melodies. Randolph arrives at the mill, ready to settle in as the new manager. The eerie, intense surroundings of the mill are a far cry from the elite lifestyle the men enjoyed as youths in Pennsylvania, but Randolph is determined to reconnect with his beloved older brother, willing to work alongside him for as long as it takes, rebuilding the cherished relationship. Before long, Randolph learns the details of an ongoing feud with the local Sicilian bootlegger and his assorted relatives, all of them involved in the illegal enterprises. Stepping into the middle of a fray one night,to save his brother the trouble, Randolph is forced to shoot his opponent, a cousin of the Sicilian. The bad blood between the bootleggers and the Aldridge brothers is palpable, a reckoning hovering on the horizon. [Danger]trembles in the moist air after the Sicilians, adept at stealth and intimidation, send an assassin under the cover of night to exact revenge. Their swift assault and retreat is stunningly brutal, irrevocable. Gauteaux's writing is superior, filled with the primal energy of desperate men in extreme conditions. The characters come to life on the pages, sound stifled by the dampness that weights the air. Each new day begins with an effort, a gasp for breath. Workers slog through mud and rain from one place to another, surrounded by timber, snakes and gators. This is the land that time forgot, a place where men struggle to survive, then fall victim to their own vices. Redemption belongs in another world, not at the mill. This Gothic tableau sits patiently, time passes slowly, the swamp ready to swallow any signs of civilization and return to its primeval existence.
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