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Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates
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Cold Spring Harbor (edition 1986)

by Richard Yates

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246942,532 (3.81)8
Member:Himalmitra
Title:Cold Spring Harbor
Authors:Richard Yates
Info:New York, N.Y. : Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, (1986)
Collections:Your library
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Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates

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English (6)  Dutch (2)  Italian (1)  All languages (9)
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Do not read this expecting to be uplifted - it is a well written account of sad suffocating lives. ( )
  velvetink | Mar 31, 2013 |
One word can summarize this book. Disappointment. No, not in the writing or in the book itself, but disappointment by the male protagonists. Father and son, Charles and Evan Shepard, both fail to live out a dream of being a war hero. Charles arrived in France three days after the Great War ended and Evan doesn't pass the army physical after Pearl Harbor. These big disappointments early in the book pave the way for the drab realities of life in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, New York.

Yates sets the right tone in the vapid dialogue that characterizes the dailiness of ordinary lives. The despondency is palpable throughout the book in the quiet desperation of people trampled down by the vagaries of lost opportunities and downright bad luck. Richard Yates can make eavesdropping on the most pitiful of situations a captivating endeavor. ( )
1 vote Donna828 | Oct 19, 2011 |
Incredibly depressive, to me same feeling as "Revolutionary Road". These people are so trapped, can't break free. ( )
  hvg14 | Aug 18, 2010 |
Although not long (178 pages), this book has kept me thinking about each of the characters and their future long since I finished reading. Yes, it has similar themes to Revolutionary Road, but there's something about the way Mr Yates writes... he perfectly captures the annoying traits of your mother-in-law, awkward adolescence and the way you still can't figure out where you're going even when you're an adult. Everything is beautifully and succinctly put. A fantastic read. ( )
  birdsam0307 | Mar 3, 2010 |
I love books and stories by Richard Yates. They are full of dashed hopes but are beautifully written. The first sentence of chapter 11 is quite typical. `Rachel came carefully downstairs one morning, in a dressing gown that wasn't quite clean'. However hard people try, they are stained or tarnished. ( )
  jon1lambert | Feb 14, 2009 |
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385295960, Paperback)

In this classic novel Richard Yates, hailed as a preeminent chronicler of the American condition and author of the acclaimed Revolutionary Road, weaves a masterful, unflinching tale of two families brought together by chance, desperation, and desire.

Evan Shepard was born with good looks, bad luck, and a love for the open ro But it was on one such drive, with his father from rural Long Island into lower Manhattan, that Evan’s life would be changed forever. When their car breaks down on a Greenwich Village street, Evan’s father presses a random doorbell, looking for a telephone. Within hours, two families—sharing equally complex and addled histories—will come together. There will be flirtation. There will be a marriage. There will be a child, a new home… But as Evan moves further into the uncharted land of manhood, as the women and men around him come into focus, he faces roads not taken and a journey not made—in Richard Yates’ haunting exploration of human restlessness, family secrets, and a future shaped by them both.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:46:00 -0500)

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All the sorrows of Evan Shepard's loutish adolescence were redeemed at seventeen, in 1935, when he fell in love with automobiles. In the small suburban town of Cold Spring Harbor, Evan Shephard and his young bride Rachel yearn to escape the mistakes of their parents. But as they discover, families exert a hold as tight as fate, and every way out only ends up back home.… (more)

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