Larry's Party

Laurence John Weller, of Winnipeg Canada, is a man who creates and designs mazes; a construction, like life, that can be confusing, deceptive, a series of dead-ends but at its centre, its heart, there can be a feeling of well-being and achievement.
The novel begins with Larry inadvertently taking another person’s coat, which looks like his own, from a café he frequents. The ‘stolen’ jacket is however not only of better quality and more expensive than Larrys but the sleeves are a few inches too long. This sums up how Larry feels about his life; other people’s lives are richer and superior to his own and the life he is leading doesn’t fit or feel comfortable.
While on honeymoon in England, Larry and his new wife Dorrie visit show more Hampton Court Maze. Larry deliberately loses himself in the maze and in doing so finds and discovers a love for the unicursal puzzle.
Larry’s Party is a novel about a man attempting to find the path through life of least resistance. Like the mazes he designs and creates, Larry’s life, like most other peoples, has hedges that obscure the view of the paths around you, the future. There are paths that lead to dead-ends. There are new paths, well trodden old paths and the path that will lead to the centre, achieving one’s goal. Not everyone reaches the centre of the maze. Some people get lost but will eventually find the exit. Some simply give up and head straight for the exit while some people through fear, anxiety, laziness or dread, due to the lack of any Ariadneal thread to guide them, will tread well worn paths until the exit appears in front of them. Of course like life a maze only has one exit.
But, Larry knows the path that leads to the centre of the mazes he creates and because of this he “sometimes…sees his future laid out with terrifying clarity. An endless struggle to remember what he already knows.”
The subject matter of novel is a path well trodden: the telling of a man’s life from the seemingly limitless possibilities of youth and no inclining of mortality, marriage, children, divorce, nearing forty and beginning to question one’s life and realising that “getting old was to witness the steady decline of limitless possibility” and then through the invisible barriers of numerical ascendency toward middle and old age.
However, Carol Shields has written a superbly profound and unpretentious novel that will particularly resonate with those of a certain age. The author’s style is as strong, fluid and elaborate as the mazes that Larry Weller designs. Carol Shields has constructed a slice of literature that shows how people are also themselves like a maze. We strive to find something within us which we will attempt to find ourselves or other people will help us look for it.

Originally posted at http://womensprizeforfictionbookreview.wordpress.com/ show less

A long time ago I read 'The Stone Diaries' and was underwhelmed, but found this in a used book store and knew it was a Orange prize winner, so why not? Well, truth be told, it was nicely written but dull. Essentially about the formative years of an ordinary Canadian man, Larry Weller, who falls into a life as a designer of hedge mazes. His life story is told in multiple chapters which are vignettes, short stories almost in and of themselves, dated through out the years 1977 - 1997.

The structure was unique and the prose above average; poignant. Larry really is everyman; or an anti-hero. Reminded me very much of Updike's Rabbit Angstrom - right down to the details of the 70's life and the rabbity little wife.

But in the main, I had to show more rather push through this. It was hard to really make myself care. It was hard to make Larry transcend the ordinary. Dull. I suspect I had very similar feelings about 'The Stone Diaries." Empirically good, but missing some verve. And I can't really read the name Dorrie without picturing Ellen Degeneress' fish, though that is certainly besides the point. rather like this book. show less

I was introduced to Carol Shields when I read The Stone Diaries for the Pulitzer challenge. I fell completely in love with that book and wanted to read more of her work but hadn't made it a priority. Now that I'm reading all the Orange Prize winners I finally got the motivation I needed.

So far I've read the first three Orange Prize winners now, and Larry's Party is far and away the best. The writing is solid, but unlike the other two winners, there is a compelling plot that pulls you through. Much like The Stone Diaries, this story is not told in a traditional way. It's broken up into 15 chapters, each of which is about a specific time in Larry's life. They are chronological and the point of view remains the same - it seems to just show more serve the purpose of moving the plot along. For me it was successful.

This book had a really similar feel to the Rabbit novels by John Updike. As a huge fan of said Rabbit novels, that's certainly a compliment, and I would recommend this book to anyone who likes complete stories; that is, this book is not just a screenshot of Larry at a particular point in time. You follow him through his relationships, the raising of his child, the advancement of his career, and you learn how he changes as a person as these things in his life change. In fact, I can't think of a book with more solid character development. show less

Larry Weller is 26 and single when we meet him in the first chapter. We follow Larry through two marriages, fatherhood, and a career in horticulture in the next two decades. The chapters provide snapshots of Larry's life at various points on the continuum between 1977 and 1997, with each chapter focusing on a particular aspect of his life (love, family, work, friends, etc.).

The other two novels I've read by this author (The Stone Diaries and Unless) are about women's agency. I was curious to see what she would do with men. Larry isn't an alpha male. He's successful, yet he doesn't have a clear purpose for his life. Things work out for Larry, though. He finds a way to earn a living by doing what he loves – designing mazes. The women in show more Larry's life have stronger personalities, and they all upstage him whenever he's with them in the pages of his story.

When Larry met his second wife, Beth, she was working on a doctoral thesis on “women saints and the nature of feminine goodness.” Goodness is a theme of Shields's later novel, Unless. The central character in The Stone Diaries bears the name Goodwill. It might be interesting to trace this theme through Shields's body of work. show less

I picked this up after hearing Nancy Pearl mention that it was one of her comfort reads on NPR--a book she likes to read over and over. I can see why--I haven't read Carol Shields before, but this book about the life of Larry is very satisfying. Each chapter pops into a different time in Larry's life--starting from the time he is a young man until he reaches his late forties. What is fun about the book is that just as in real life you sometimes look back to find meaning so do the chapters in this book. For instance, in one of the early chapters you learn how Larry discovers his true obsession in life (garden mazes) while on his Honeymoon in England. But that one action comes up again and again and is revisited a number of times over the show more course of the book. Little things like this which are actually big moments in Larry's life get re-scrutinized through the later life of Larry. There is a reason why Larry likes mazes. show less

In "Larry's Party," Carol Shields gives us the intimate portrait of Larry Weller, Canadian landscape architect who goes through life as through a maze. In fact, mazes are such a perfect metaphor for this poor sap's perception of life, that our cagey author makes him a lover and professional designer of them.

We have chapters with particular aspects of Larry: "Larry's Love," "Larry's Work," "Larry's Folks," even "Larry's Penis" a chapter on his sexual experiences. As the book progresses, each chapter gives a kind of recap of past events - and while giving a somewhat curious idea to the reader (could these have been published before, as shorter pieces?), the real intent is to adopt a kind of parochial stance toward each of Larry's various show more facets. This is certainly the approach Larry seems to take. He's not particularly sophisticated or well-read; his emotions often hit him with surprise and he meets them with distrust. Ms. Shields drops hapless Larry into a coma that lasts three weeks; during this time he is cared for by strangers, and his son (from whose mother Larry is divorced) comes and speaks to him fervently, and reads the daily paper to him every day, cover-to-cover. This is the perfect comparison to make with our dim-ish hero: he lurches from one thing to the next in life, not knowing how people care for him.

The eponymous party is the last event of the book. Those attending take up a trendy conversation about what it means to be a man at the end of the millenium. Our author makes it clear: it means going through life relatively cluelessly, acting honorably toward men and women, understanding that as relations with women go, that we're in an experimental age, where roles are all in a state of flux. For which we should all be thankful.

Ms. Shields is very compassionate toward her characters and her readers. Her ear is one of her stronger suits - she knows how people speak and how they express how they feel. This is a sweet piece of work, and its ambition is to capture the essence of a rare species, the white North American male. She succeeds in taking her readers on an interesting emotional journey - that's something she always succeeds at. show less

Larry's Party is my first Carol Shields book - but it certainly won't be my last. Admittedly, I was dreading this story. I envisioned a testosterone fest - thinking the book was about a self-involved male character who was a womanizer, cheater and full of himself. I couldn't have been further from the truth. Larry Weller was likeable, fallible and beautifully rendered in the hands of the talented Carol Shields.

The book chronicles the life of Larry Weller - an ordinary man with an unusual job. Larry creates mazes, and as he gets older, his work becomes highly sought after. Along the way, Larry gets married (twice), divorced (twice), has a son, moves and has a near-fatal health event. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of Larry's life. show more Sometimes we learn about his first marriage; other times we learn about the relationship with his son. The final chapter culminates into Larry's Party - a dinner party where he is circled by loved ones and friends - and gets a chance to see his many blessings.

Overall, I enjoyed Larry's Party. If I had to make a complaint, it was the constant repeating of information. I wasn't sure if Shields was trying to make each chapter standalone, but the constant reintroduction of known facts about Larry's life got on my nerves. It's a small complaint, really, and certainly wouldn't prevent me from recommending Larry's Party to other readers.

I look forward to reading more by Carol Shields and am glad to have read this Orange Prize winner. It's the type of character-driven fiction I always enjoy. show less