American Rust

Author: Philipp Meyer

Rating: ⭐ 5/5

Date Read: 2014/08/25

Pages: 384

What happens to small Pennsylvania steel town after the steel mill shuts down? How do the people who once had a good life, with security and benefits, cope? American Rust deals with this: the American Dream, and its failure. What’s interesting is that the characters in this book don’t pine for the life that left them behind. Instead, they become resigned, they hope for nothing more. Take this quote, for example.

“He had slept through life, let the currents take him. He had let the currents take him faster and faster and he had not noticed.”

The main conflict in American Rust comes from a murder; that alone is enough to suck you in and keep you turning the pages. There’s more to it then that, though. Through a grisly (but somehow unsurprising) event in a small town, author Philipp Meyer explores blue collar America, and the (limited) ways out. There’s football, and there’s college, but neither are guarantees. Take, for example, Lee, a character who leaves for Yale. At one point in the book, she feels “an incredible isolation, a suspicion she’d always had, she didn’t belong anywhere, she was going to outlive everyone she knew. She was going to be alone, the same as her mother. ”

Which resonated with me, because I get it. I don’t belong, either, in my small town, filled with the people who have settled for life the way it has been handed to them. But I also find it hard to fit in with the people who have hometowns worth going back to, populated with pleasant, educated people who are just like them. I can try to be one of them, and most of the time I fake it pretty well. But I have to try too hard. Eventually, people see right through me, down to the rural little girl who didn’t dream much bigger than living closer to the ocean.

The most liked quote from this book on Goodreads is the following “You ought to be able to grow up in a place and not have to get the hell out of it when you turn eighteen.” Anyone who finds themselves nodding their head in agreement will connect deeply with this book. And anyone who doesn’t should also read it, just to see how lucky they are.