A review by conspystery
The Trackers by Charles Frazier

adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

 Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for providing me a digital copy of The Trackers in exchange for an honest review! I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read it; The Trackers is a thoughtful, artfully-written novel that I’m sure will stick with me.

The technical craft of this book is genuinely artisanal. Frazier’s prose is painstakingly detailed and vivid without ever crossing into overwhelming, which is perfect for this book’s various settings and historical context. The writing conveys the looming presence of the Great Depression over every event in the novel; the main character Val’s observations of great natural beauty, of which there are many, are colorful and majestic and even rustic at points but always underscored with wistful, restless longing for better times in language and syntax alike. History feels less like a distant recollection of the past and more like physical immersion into real life events in this novel, and it is sobering to read. The writing style of The Trackers paints its narrative, settings, themes, and characters-- literally, at times-- with authenticity and depth that gives the novel real weight.

Val, a painter, serves as the voice of The Trackers, and his perception of and relationships with the other characters of this book are its driving narrative force. The aforementioned outstandingly detailed writing style in this book matches Val’s painterly observant, introspective nature quite well: his narration, even when it dips into larger-scale political or philosophical pondering, never feels contrived, rather more like the genuine wandering of an insightful, perceptive mind. His jobs and drive to do them, which set up the plot of The Trackers, is interesting narratively and also historically, so following him as the lead character is interesting in turn. 

The rest of the main cast of the novel is similarly authentic-feeling; each person is distinct and complex, the relationships among them complicated but utterly real. Every character is more than they seem, and all their dialogues are distinctly-voiced and as engaging as any real conversation could hope to be. Mysterious last-century cowboy Faro is my favorite, but Eve and Long stand out in their own right as well. I particularly enjoyed Eve’s massive sway over the story and her agency in her actions; often, with plots like this book has, characters like Eve fall into sexist narrative tropes more than act as their own people, but I felt that Eve’s character was a driving force of this novel all on her own. Long’s obsession with bringing her back to Dawes is not free of narrative judgment, either; I much appreciated the discerning perspective Val, Faro, Eve, and the novel itself seemed to take on the story’s events, addressing the thematic implications of the narrative with sensible moral context. The actual plot of the novel is paced such that, despite pages of extensive, fascinating dialogues and conversations to root the audience in its setting, only baseline familiarity is established with the characters before it picks up in intensity, so that their deeper intentions and histories unfold as the narrative does-- and learning more about each of them to piece together full-fledged portraits of who they are is compelling and satisfying at once. 

The convergence of such intricate characters and artful writing in The Trackers is definitely the novel’s main draw; I will say that I struggled a bit to connect with the happenings of the plot as the book went on, but the characters and prose kept me interested, which in a literary work like this is standard enough but still much appreciated. In regards to the narrative, even if I couldn’t relate to its actual events-- I didn’t enjoy the faint romance aspects, for one-- I was enthralled by something else going on in each section. The richness of the settings of the book, from Dawes to Hooverville to Florida and onwards, is engaging. The mood and atmosphere the book creates, whether of tension or glory or bleakness, is always palpable. The history the book incorporates is genuinely fascinating. And the large-scale themes the book covers are all interesting facets of the human condition to consider. There is so much intricacy in The Trackers to engage with. 

Ultimately, I really enjoyed The Trackers. Its authenticity in characters and historical context is compelling, and the immersive, rich craft of its writing is phenomenal. This book makes a point to follow its themes through to the end, questioning where intention and action meet to make a person and how the past should or should not define someone-- how hidden truths reveal less about someone than the lived impact of their actions, and all the different forms that impact can take, as well as what it means to really know a person. The Trackers is an exploration of Depression-era humanity, but its themes are truly evergreen. 
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