Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

Brokeback Mountain
by Annie Proulx
Narrator: Campbell Scott
Length: 1 hour 4 minutes
Published by Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication Date November 15, 2005
Source: Library
Genres: Western
Goodreads

Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many, Brokeback Mountain is her masterpiece.

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheep herder 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, 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.

This is one of the rare occasions where the movie was better than the book.  The problem with Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx is that there is so much to this story. A novella just couldn’t contain the plot satisfactorily. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist’s relationship was well-defined and while it mostly felt like a booty call to me I do think they genuinely cared for one another.

I liked that Ennis’s wife put two and two together showing for the first time that Ennis and Jack were not invincible. They had a dirty little secret. Brokeback Mountain conveyed that everyone deserves to be loved no matter who the person and for that I appreciated the novella Annie Proulx has written.