Wickford Point

A thumping good read. I felt like I was reading a combination of "The Great Gatsby" and Downton Abbey and Anthony Trollope.
I hadn't read John Marquand before, hadn't even heard of him; now, I want everything he's written. I bought this book from the dollar cart at a used-books shop, probably based on its cover and maybe after reading the opening lines and bits from pages farther in.
I couldn't have gotten luckier.
There are irritatingly self-centered characters and eccentric stately characters and an honest open-eyed narrator who knows that it would be best if all these lackadaisical young adults, including him, left Wickford Point to establish lives of their own. Some do - for a while - but they end up being drawn back to Wickford Point show more - there's nothing they can do about it, it seems.
Good humor, good writing, good story, and thought-provoking slices of life. What more could you want from a novel?
I lucked into a gem. show less

John P. Marquand has written a quintessential novel of manners about an old New England family in decline. Descended from poet John Brill, part of a literary circle that included Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne, the Brills live at the ancestral home of Wickford Point along with Cousin Jim Calder who was orphaned as a youth. Although different from the Brills, Calder is steeped in the history of the place and forever altered by the personages who reared him and the ghosts from the past. Calder along with five generations of Brills were Harvard men and the family believes that their name is sufficient to get them through life. But Calder is different and has avoided most of the family dysfunction. Since he is the only one who is truly show more responsible he finds he is often called upon to rescue individuals in the family. This is especially true of his younger cousin Bella, a beautiful woman who learns to manipulate men to get what she wants. She has grown up closely dependent on Calder and their emotional bond appears doomed when she enters an ill-advised marriage with his best friend. The crisis that ensues tests Calder’s loyalty to the only family he has even known.
The book is a social satire about American society in the early twentieth century, replete with wry humor and irony. With hints of Austen, Marquand writes smartly about the changing social scene during the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression. The story is told through the viewpoint of Calder, a writer moving on the fringes of the New England literati who is finding growing success as an author.
The book is instructional as a guide for writers. Wickford Point looms large, “the heavy lassitude of too many trees and of too much summer combined with a drowsy sound of enervated birds and a muddy murky odor from the river.” Marquand moves smoothly from past to present, joining memories with conversation, revealing a place with fully wrought characters.
Although a period piece set firmly between the world wars, Wickford Point is a minor classic that still illuminates readers of today. show less

This is the second of Marquand's novels I've read; while it does not rise to anything approaching the level of The Late George Apley, I still enjoyed it well enough. There is a bit too much repetition and simultaneously too much and not enough world-building, somehow, and most of the characters are fairly annoying. But there is some good humor and some amusing New England set pieces in here, too.

Interesting view of a long-gone era. IT was a bit obscure to my mind.

Time-Life Books