Review by Wattle
True Grit by Charles Portis
Rating: 3/5
Synopsis: There is no knowing
what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by
one of his own workers. Tom Chaney shoots him down in the street for a horse,
$150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Ross's unusually mature and
single-minded fourteen-year-old daughter Mattie travels to claim his body, and
finds that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chaney. Then she hears of
Rooster - a man, she's told, who has grit - and convinces him to join her in a
quest into dark, dangerous Indian territory to hunt Chaney down and avenge her
father's murder.
Review: I must admit, I saw
this on my list of books to read and sighed. I hate westerns, and had the
misfortune (in my opinion) of seeing half of the most recent movie based on
True Grit. So it was with dread that I opted to read it
first, deciding to read in order of least want to read to most interesting.
How wrong was I?! The writing
sucked me in from the start, it wasn't stuffy and formal as I assumed it would
be. However, at times the dialogue felt a bit stilted; and the deeper into the
story I got, the more I realised that it had no real complexity. It is simply
about wanting revenge to (in Mattie's eyes) right a wrong.
Mattie is feisty and strong
willed. She felt older than her 14 years, no doubt because of the setting she
was in; the late 1800s, her father has been killed and she's the oldest child,
so needs to take care of his affairs. Which in her mind, means finding her
father's killer and watching him die. To do this she needs help, and sets out
to recruit the best and worst Marshal she can find – which leads her to the
drunken and often too quick to shoot Rooster Cogburn.
I liked Rooster (what you see
is what you get, and he's a bit of a brute – though showed great patience with
Mattie) and did not like LaBoeuf (an arrogant Texas Ranger who happens to be
after the same man).
It was a fine story, but the
ending to their adventure felt contrived - and I can't say I was a fan of the
ending proper either. I felt a little cheated that all we really got of Mattie
was her experience as a 14 year old, and then many years in the future, and
nothing in between. I suppose there was some character growth for her
throughout the story, given she had just lost her father and wanted justice;
but it was somewhat lost in the details of the story.
Not being from Arkansas (or
even America) I have absolutely no idea what the place is like, but I got the
feeling that back in the 1800s it was a bit dusty and a bit rundown, with lands
that criminals could easily disappear into? There was apparently quite a few of
them in the same place (which I suppose is fortunate for the Marshals tracking
people).
All in all, this was a quick
and easy read but didn’t have the complexity I was expecting and fell a little
short for me, but it was still a good read and got me out of my comfort zone!
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