Love and Glory

In the context of Robert B. Parker's career, this book represents the road not taken; or perhaps, emanates from an alternative universe where the author devotes himself to sober romantic love, and earnest coming of age stories. Such works don't sell well at our place in the spacio-temporal continuum. And so, after the experiment represented as "Love and Glory", it's easy to see why Parker opted to continue with the wise-cracking sensitive tough guy detective -- minimalist works that read like outlines of what novels used to be.

"Love and Glory" features a protagonist named Boone Adams, who as a freshman in college, falls in love with a fellow college student, Jennifer Grayle. By age 22, he has "lost" her, having been kicked out of show more college due to his bad grades and pranksterism. He descends into alcoholism, bottoming out in Los Angeles 10 years later. His love for Jennifer is all that sustains him, and he slowly makes his way back... cleaning himself up, and remaking himself into a man worthy of his lost love. And of course, finally, against the odds, he succeeds. In fact, he returns to school, and eventually earns his doctorate in English; and convinces Jennifer that she should divorce her husband (head of the Enlgish Dept.) to marry him.

Scattered throughout is prose of a kind that readers of Parker's Spenser series will find surprising:

From page 1, paragraph 1, of the 1st time he danced with Jennifer: "... The flowering of my soul was forever wed to a vision of possibility so gorgeous and unspeakable that even now it seems a trick of time and memory..." and " ... An implacable thrill of passion and purpose that has galvanised me like the touch of God's finger on Adam's inert hand ..." And years later, when he meets up with her again: "Her face was a little better than it had been when she was twenty-one. It knew more things. It was not... the face of a virgin, for instance. Nor was it, as much as it had been, the face of a child. It contained that same sense of charge, of kinesis, of distilled and radiant femaleness that it had contained when I first saw it, but it had become more elegant."

Of course the above summary and excerpts sound sappy, and don't do work justice, but while sentimental, the story "works" at an emotional level, for me at least. Most of the Amazon reviewers liked the book, although descriptions range from "a touching story of love, conviction, and redemption" to "tedious drivel." Those comments capture the range of reactions. Mine lies closer to the former than the latter. And the novel has special interest to me, in that I am familiar with the author's other, very very different work, as anything.

Here's an intelligent, off-site review that notes the intertextual similarities to "The Great Gatsby":
http://oceanangel27.blogspot.com/2008/05/love-and-glory-by-robert-b-parker.html show less

I see this as an alternate history to Spenser, almost. A man spends his teen and adult years formulating his own moral and ethical values to make himself into the kind of man suitable for his first love.

Not as good as the other series. Guy spends his whole life trying to be good enough for his teen crush.

First edition signed fine