Synopsis
An episodic novel that tells the story of Larry Weller, born in Winnipeg, Canada of English parents. In a series of vignettes, readers are introduced to the people in Larry's life, his career as a landscape designer and maze-maker, his troubled marriages, and the development of his personality. As the confused protagonist struggles to make sense of who he is, mazes come to take on a more symbolic role, and readers become enveloped within Larry Weller's psyche. A "New York Times" Notable Book for 1997.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-09-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 339 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 22.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
Edward R. F. Sheehan's vast novel opens on the eve of the Third Millennium. The charismatic "Slav Pope" has just died. The Conclave of Cardinals struggles to elect his successor. A foremost candidate is the imperious and elegant Augustine Cardinal Galsworthy, whose sixty-nine years have encompassed all of the epic changes in the Church during the last half of the twentieth century. How did Cardinal Galsworthy attain this moment of lustrous eminence? Should he or should he not be Pope? Through the Cardinals eyes and voice, Edward Sheehan immerses us in Galsworthy's life - from a lonely and awkward childhood of the English minor nobility to his astonishing rise as a celebrated ecclesiastic and intimate of the vividly portrayed pontiffs who reigned during a convulsive epoch of the Church. Erudite, sensual, and enigmatic, Cardinal Galsworthy seems worldly and spiritual both at once. A reluctant priest, he progresses through his remarkable life as though on a pilgrimage from tormenting doubt toward deep faith. His wish for glory is surpassed only by his gallant labors among the destitute of the Congo, Central America, and Somalia.
THE STONE DIARIES marked a new phase in a literary career already ablaze with achievement. "Carol Shields," raved the Detroit Free Press, "is a novelist of uncommon depth, grace, and generosity...among the top few women writing fiction today." The San Diego Tribune called The Stone Diaries "a universal study of what makes women tick." Now Carol Shields has done the same for men.
Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony, and tenderness. LARRY'S PARTY gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997, which flash back and forward seamlessly. As Larry journeys toward the millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men, Shields's elegant prose makes the trivial into the momentous. We follow this young floral designer through two marriages and divorces, his interactions with parents, friends, and a son. And all the while, we witness his deepening passion for garden mazes--so like life, with their teasing treachery and promise of reward. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larrry survives the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties, and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search for self.
In LARRY'S PARTY, as in her other work, Carol Shields "deals in profound issues of human experience, drawing them from everyday existence with vulnerable honesty and a good dose of painkilling humor" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Larry's odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy, and faultless wisdom.
Industry Reviews
"[I]n an engaging and intelligent novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Canadian writer Carol Shields self-consciously sets herself the task of writing not only from the male perspective but about the male perspective. Carefully crafted and stylistically superb, 'Larry's Party' is a bold, endearingly earnest attempt to limn the experience of a person with a penis....Shields deserves our appreciation...for her ambitious, empathic attempt to infiltrate the inner sanctum of the modern male psyche."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - Autumn Stephens (08/24/1997)
"Above all, what you hear as you read 'Larry's Party' is Carol Shields's gratitude for the story she has to tell. It's a gratitude the reader shares completely."
New York Times Book Review - Verlyn Klinkenborg (09/07/1997)
"Shields wants to be funny, but she seems to have literary ambition, too. She wants to tell us something not just about Larry, and men like Larry, but about men in general--and nothing kills a joke like sermonizing....[I]t's hard not to wish that she'd come up with something a little less flimsy."
Boston Book Review - Nicholas Nesson (11/19/1997)
"A meticulous coming-of-(middle)-age novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Shields, who seems to have mastered the art of understatement without falling into the bottomless pit of obscurity....Very fine and real..."
Starr
"Carol Shields is a natural novelist, with a gift for story, character and dialogue. But in 'Larry's Party' she concentrates on form and, sadly, she rather loses her way."
Weeks
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