The 1998 winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction was Larry's Party by Carol Shields.
Larry Weller is born in 1950, gets married in 1980 and it's on his honeymoon in England that he discovers his love for hedge mazes. The book follows his marriages and divorces, fatherhood, professional development, and his constant struggle to figure out what the current fads are in life and how he fits into society. Each chapter is a separate time period in Larry's life and Shields cuts forwards and backwards in time, focusing on a theme. This is a book about the mundane, the boring, the routine of life. It's not a book packed with action.
The Good: It's sort of funny at times. I did laugh at some of the observations.
The Bad: Why did Shields write about the life of a sort of vanilla white man? Why not tackle the story of one of Larry's wives or even his mother, who was the most fascinating of the characters in the book.
I don't know. I'm glad I read this book, but I don't feel like I need to send people out to read it.
3/5 stars
Lines of note:
There are a few words that are missing even from Larry's new under-the-counter dictionary. His sister, Midget, for instance, is divorced from her husband, but she's living with him again. What's the word for her status now? And for her husband? And for what passes between them?
What can he call the feeling he has for his son, Ryan? That mixture of guilt and longing, that ballooning ever-protective, multi-limbed force that's too big to cram into the category of love. (page 93-94)
I love it when authors talk about the limitations of language. There are some things that there just aren't words to describe and how do we go about still being able to talk about those things.
Their name is Halfhead, Wilford and Stacey Halfhead, and Larry's been wondering, ever since he signed the documents, what it's like to live with a name like Halfhead. Would you have to pump yourself up with fresh resolve every time you introduced yourself? (page 257)
I don't know why this made me laugh so much. Maybe because Wilford is such a terrible name, too? (My apologies to anyone named Wilford or Halfhead.)
"Well," she said, shrugging, "thank heavens, I say, for small talk. Small talk's better than big talk. Big scary talk. Aestetics, societal values. And people stabbing you to death by mentioning authors you've never heard of. Quoting from Kierkegaard. I mean!" (page 290-291)
Right? I am always puzzled when people dismiss small talk. I mean, should we all jump into existential discussions as soon as we sit down for a work lunch?
This sounds mildly entertaining, but I'll take your advice and not read it (yes, why write a book about a vanilla white man?) I can tell the writing is good though. On the subject of small talk- my dad HATED small talk, probably because he was really bad at it. So he was one of those people who would jump right into an existential discussion over lunch, much to everyone else's discomfort.
ReplyDeleteI get very annoyed when people skip small talk. It's there to lubricate social situations - WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GO ALONG WITH IT? No, I don't care about the Packers or the Bucks or the Badgers, but guess what? I go along with it because I don't want to talk about the state of the world or my own personal philosophy about the meaning of life while we're debating whether or not to get an appetizer.
DeleteI suspect I would have been a bit impatient with your father, Jenny. I'm sorry.
I remember reading Stone Diaries by Carol Shields and enjoying the novel. I like your question: "I mean, should we all jump into existential discussions as soon as we sit down for a work lunch?" That's the crux of it. Chit chat makes the world run more smoothly.
ReplyDeleteStone Diaries was the book she published immediately before Larry's Party and was a Pulitzer Prize winner. She definitely was a highly-awarded novelist.
DeleteI usually really enjoy books about people's lives like this, but not if it's THAT vanilla LOL! And hell yes there is a time and place for small talk - almost always at the start of every convo LOL.
ReplyDeleteI also usually like books about the logistics of how other people live their lives. It's one of the reasons I love blogs so much. But I really just didn't understand the focus on this character. Maybe it was a form of satire that went over my head? I don't know. The writing was great, but Larry was just sort of blah.
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