Review: Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

Brokeback Mountain
by Annie Proulx
Published by Scribner
Paperback (purchased)
Adult, LGBT, romance, contemporary, western, classic

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.

Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that's what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many has seen the movie, I included. It's my favourite and even though I don't cry much during books and movies, Brokeback Mountain gets me every time. The original novella the movie was based is 55 pages. Short? Definitely. Still emotional, stunning story that tell everything about Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist? Without any doubts.

 

Ennis and Jack live in a world, 1963 when they meet all the way over 1983 that was the last time they met. They fell in love but couldn't - wouldn't allow themselves - to call it love even though it consumed them and they kept coming back to each other's arms. It started with one fateful summer in Brokeback Mountain and it lasted a lifetime.

 

There's so many love stories, of forbidden love and how there was time - still is - that not all kind of love is pure in the eyes of society. Brokeback Mountain is all about that but it goes so much deeper and strikes reader's heart because it feels so real. Ennis and Jack, they both have their flaws and they try to do what it expected from them but they can't deny what they feel for each other. The story is so emotional, heart-cripping and captivating, partly because it refuses to feel any shame. It's real, as real as story can get. It's short, yes, but sometimes you don't need lots of fancy words to tell a tale of two person who loved each other for one lifetime. Proulx is a strong voiced author and the language was just perfect to create an air for cowboys. Without a doubt, Proulx is talented writer and she did good with this one.

 

Brokeback Mountain is short but it's perfect the way it is. Worthy of everything the world has to give to it.

 

5 of 5 stars and everything else I can give.

 

Brokeback Mountain on Goodreads.