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Loading... Het inzicht van Griffin (original 2009; edition 2010)by Richard Russo, Kees Mollema
Work InformationThat Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo (2009)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Slow,slow start about finding yourself and how one is affected by family. This book made me laugh and cry. Mid-life, relationships, parents, in-laws, weddings, love, death, "mutilated yews"...it's all there. In addition to being a good story, you'll come away thinking that maybe your family is normal enough after all and that seems quite an achievement. (I keep hearing the main character's mother's voice in my head....)
The same narrative adroitness that in other books give Russo’s interior monologues such humor does similar work here by drawing the reader into Griffin’s wounded psyche. But coming from a famously funny writer, you feel that Russo is holding himself back, humor-wise, and that makes the story feel a little off, like there’s something we’re missing about Griffin. In one of America's most mythic landscapes, Russo details one man's shaky first steps out of his past and into self-knowledge with good humor, generosity, and an open heart. If, as a reader, you give yourself over to the delights of artifice — to Russo's tight variations on a few themes; to the cyclical returns to season and place; and to the revelations offered up by a slim cast of characters — you'll love, as I did, this pared-down Russo. Russo has written six previous novels, among them the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Empire Falls,” and we’ve come to expect certain things: a complicated skein of plotlines, deep connection to place, and affection for the large cast of characters who blunder and struggle through his pages. “That Old Cape Magic” does not disappoint. Like the old jokes about sex and pizza, it’s possible there’s no such thing as a bad Richard Russo novel. His latest, That Old Cape Magic, is far from his strongest, and it continues some mildly troubling trends for him, but it has enough of his trademark strengths to recommend it. AwardsDistinctions
The lives of Jack and Joy Griffin always seem to come back to Cape Cod, where they honeymooned, as they experience the ups and downs of life, including the deaths of Jack's parents, the marriage of their daughter, and Jack and Joy's divorce. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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