 |
Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Brian Morton Edition: Paperback Format: Bargain Price Published: 2007-10-01 ISBN: N/A Number of pages: 336 Publisher: Harvest Books
Book Reviews of Starting Out in the EveningBook Review: Very Insightful Summary: 5 Stars
Brian Morton's books are always about personal relationships. He seems to be very good at expressing human feelings at different stages of life. His books speak from life experience and as I read them it brings back memories of how I have felt as I have grown older. I have enjoyed his other books, but this is my favorite book of his.
Summary of Starting Out in the EveningLeonard Schiller is a novelist in his seventies, a second-string but respectable talent who produced only a small handful of books. Heather Wolfe is an attractive graduate student in her twenties. She read Schiller?s novels when she was growing up and they changed her life. When the ambitious Heather decides to write her master?s thesis about Schiller?s work and sets out to meet him?convinced she can bring Schiller back into the literary world?s spotlight?the unexpected consequences of their meeting alter everything in Schiller?s ordered life. What follows is a quasi-romantic friendship and intellectual engagement that investigates the meaning of art, fame, and personal connection. "Nothing less than a triumph" (The New York Times Book Review), Starting Out in the Evening is Brian Morton?s most widely acclaimed novel to date.
Brian Morton's Starting Out in the Evening is a study in the danger of expectations. Heather Wolfe, a pretty, brash graduate student, is confident that her thesis on the novelist Leonard Schiller will put her on the literary fast track. Yet her first meeting with her idol produces something of a shock: "He came toward her smiling. Old, fat, bald, leaning awkwardly on a cane. The man of her dreams." Can this elderly author and "man of routines" really be the looming figure whose early fictions changed her life? The more she comes to know Schiller, the more he confounds her: his willingness to toil in obscurity falls far short of Heather's romanticized ideal. She can't even quite decide "if he was a hero or if he had wasted his life." Schiller, however, views his own life quite differently. At first he's seduced by Heather's flattering attentions, and succumbs to at least a frisson of desire for love and fame. Yet ultimately this thoughtful, dignified man wants only to finish what he has begun. He has "no illusions about the scale of his achievement, but he had tried, through art, to bring a little more beauty, a little more tolerance, a little more coherence into the world." With wise and compassionate prose, Morton examines the intersection of these two lives, intertwining their story with a third one--that of Ariel, Schiller's unhappy 40-year-old daughter. Along the way, the author quietly raises a number of questions about the utility of art, its power to inflect our dreams, and, finally, what makes a life well lived. It is to Morton's credit that he doesn't presume to answer such questions. Yet the skill with which he asks them makes Starting Out in the Evening an elegiac and deeply affecting novel. --Marianne Painter
|
 |
Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humorby Michael J. Rosen Harper Paperbacks; Published: 2000-02-02; Paperback; BookBest price: $0.01Price in other shops: $15.95
The Gifts of the Bodyby Rebecca Brown Harper Perennial; Published: 1995-08-04; Paperback; BookBest price: $2.57Price in other shops: $12.00
Love and Liesby Kimberla Lawson Roby William Morrow; Published: 2007-01-30; Hardcover; BookBest price: $4.96Price in other shops: $23.95
Blues Dancing: A Novelby Diane Mckinney-Whetstone HarperTorch; Published: 2005-03-29; Mass Market Paperback; BookBest price: $8.00
Red, White & Liberal: How Left Is Right & Right Is Wrongby Alan Colmes William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2004-10-12; Paperback; BookBest price: $0.01Price in other shops: $14.95
Hunger Point: A Novelby Jillian Medoff Harpercollins; Published: 1997-02; Hardcover; BookBest price: $2.00Price in other shops: $24.00
The Price of Bloodby Chuck Logan Harpercollins; Published: 1997-01; Hardcover; BookBest price: $25.99
Blue Hour: Poemsby Carolyn Forche Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-03; Paperback; BookBest price: $7.93Price in other shops: $13.99
Blue Suburbia: Almost a Memoirby Laurie Albanese Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-03-16; Paperback; BookBest price: $0.01Price in other shops: $12.99
The Kindness of Strangers: A Novelby Katrina Kittle William Morrow; Published: 2006-01-31; Hardcover; BookBest price: $3.64Price in other shops: $24.95
|
The Norton Introduction to Literature (Shorter Edition)by Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2005-11-07; Paperback; BookBest price: $25.00
Restless: A Novelby William Boyd Bloomsbury USA; Published: 2007-05-29; Paperback; BookBest price: $4.79Price in other shops: $14.95
The Finkler Question (Man Booker Prize)by Howard Jacobson Bloomsbury USA; Published: 2010-10-12; Paperback; BookBest price: $4.35Price in other shops: $15.00
Breakable Youby Brian Morton Mariner Books; Published: 2007-10-01; Paperback; BookBest price: $0.01Price in other shops: $14.00
Songs for the Missing: A Novelby Stewart O'Nan Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-08-25; Paperback; BookBest price: $5.39Price in other shops: $15.00
Deep Down True: A Novelby Juliette Fay Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2011-01-25; Paperback; BookBest price: $1.99Price in other shops: $15.00
Velva Jean Learns to Drive: A Novelby Jennifer Niven Plume; Published: 2009-07-28; Paperback; BookBest price: $2.12Price in other shops: $15.00
Breakable Youby Brian Morton Harcourt; Published: 2006-09-05; Hardcover; BookBest price: $2.86Price in other shops: $25.00
A Window Across the Riverby Brian Morton Mariner Books; Published: 2004-09-07; Paperback; BookBest price: $0.01Price in other shops: $21.95
Starting Out in the EveningLION'S GATE ENTERTAINMENT; Release date: 2008-04-22; DVDBest price: $1.80Price in other shops: $14.98
|