Evening (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Susan Minot
List Price:
Our Price: $0.01
You Save: $13.94 (100%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Susan MinotEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-01
ISBN: 0307387127
Number of pages: 264
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Evening (Vintage Contemporaries)
Book Review: When life had no explanation
Summary: 5 Stars
Having falling in love for a man she barely knew, the main character of Susan Minot's "Evening", Ann, wonders at some point "like so many things in life there was no explaining it". Chance seems to play a key role in this book. Events past reverberate in the present, when Ann is in her death bed.
The narrative unfolds in two different segments: past and present in a Proustian sort of intertwinement. Ann Lord is 65, mother of four grown-ups and with only a couple of day left to be lived. Her daughters and son are around listening to her illogical words as her minds dissolves. Between one sentence and other, she lets slip some past events in an evening that changed her life forever.
It was the day when her best friend was getting married, and Ann met Harris Arden, the stranger that enters her life with no explanation and steals her heart forever. He also seems to be in love with her, but he has a girlfriend who may get in the way. Tragic events would also mark that evening forever.
In the present narrative, we see Ann's children trying to cope with their sick mother and their personal problems. The proximity of death forces them to examine their lives and families.
Susan Minot's has a special interest in family dynamics and the past influencing the present as well. Her prose is elegant and the events come up without much anticipation. Past and present are very clear, and seem to be bound. The prose moves with assurance and not much explanation. It feels that the writer counts on her reader's intelligence to fill in the gaps and ellipses. "Evening" is a kind of novel that is aimed for readers who like serious narratives that ask them to chew and not only swallow.
Summary of Evening (Vintage Contemporaries)
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEARJuly 1954. An island off the coast of Maine. Ann Grant?a 25-year-old New York career girl?is a bridesmaid at her best friend's lavish wedding. Also present is a man named Harris Arden, whom Ann has never met . . .
After three marriages and five children, Ann Lord lies in an upstairs bedroom of a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What comes to her, eclipsing a stream of doctor's visits and friends stopping by and grown children overheard whispering from the next room, is a rush of memories from a weekend 40 years ago in Maine, when she fell in love with a passion that even now throws a shadow onto the rest of her life. In Evening, Susan Minot gives us a novel of spellbinding power on the nature of memory and love.
As Ann Lord lies on her deathbed, her daughter delivers a balsam pillow from the attic. At first the ailing woman is confused, but suddenly the scent reminds her of the "wild tumult" she experienced 40 years earlier:
Something stole into her as she walked in the dark, a dream she'd had long ago. The air was so black she was unable to see her arms, it was a warm summer night. Above her she could make out the dark line of the tops of spruce trees and a sky lit with stars. She felt the warm tar through the soles of her shoes. The boy beside her took her hand.In the porous world between conscious and unconscious the protagonist of Evening revisits the great passions of her life, along with its considerable disappointments. The boy in the dark remains the fixed point--not so much because he is the most important man in her life, but because of the untapped possibilities he represents. Meanwhile, friends and relations come to sit by Ann Lord's side as she veers between clarity and feverish recollection.
In her third novel, Susan Minot takes some new risks--her narrative spanning seven decades of memory and her style ranging from Stegneresque particularity to the exquisite abstraction Virginia Woolf perfected in To the Lighthouse. Equal parts memory and desire, fiction and poetry, Evening is a seductive story made more so by the measured pace of details emerging, one by one, like stars. --Cristina Del Sesto
Movie Tie-Ins Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Movie Tie-Ins Books
Primary Justiceby William Bernhardt
Ballantine Books; Published: 1995-01-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Sacrifice (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 5)by Karen Traviss
Del Rey / Ballantine; Published: 2007-05-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.17
Price in other shops:
Eye of the Beholderby Marc Behm
Ballantine Books; Published: 1999-12-07; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $39.68
Notting Hillby Richard Curtis
Hodder & Stoughton; Published: 1999-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $39.62
Crazy in Alabamaby Mark Childress
Ballantine Books; Published: 1999-09-07; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.50
Price in other shops:
Atonementby Ian McEwan
Anchor; Published: 2007-11-27; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.24
Price in other shops:
The Time Machineby H.G. Wells
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2010-06-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
Less than Zeroby Bret Easton Ellis
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1987-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
24 Declassified: Cat's Clawby John Whitman
HarperEntertainment; Published: 2006-12-26; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.81
Price in other shops:
Everything Is Illuminatedby Jonathan Safran Foer
Harper Perennial; Published: 2005-08-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Spiderweb: A Novelby Penelope Lively
Harper Perennial; Published: 2000-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.48
Price in other shops:
Memento Moriby Muriel Spark
New Directions; Published: 2000-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.75
Price in other shops:
Folly: A Novelby Susan Minot
Washington Square Press; Published: 1994-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.76
Price in other shops:
The Hearing Trumpetby Leonora Carrington
Exact Change; Published: 2004-02-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.47
Price in other shops:
What You See in the Darkby Manuel Munoz
Algonquin Books; Published: 2011-03-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.98
Price in other shops:
Lust and Other Storiesby Susan Minot
Vintage; Published: 2000-08-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.10
Price in other shops:
The Book of Daniel: A Novelby E.L. Doctorow
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2007-07-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.84
Price in other shops:
Raptureby Susan Minot
Vintage; Published: 2003-04-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.94
Price in other shops:
Monkeysby Susan Minot
Vintage; Published: 2000-08-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.39
Price in other shops:
EveningDANES,CLAIRE; Release date: 2007-09-25; Published: 2007-09-01; DVD
Best price: $1.50
Price in other shops: