| Title | : | A Big Storm Knocked It Over |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0063046431 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780063046436 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published September 1, 1993 |
A Big Storm Knocked It Over Reviews
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I don't refer to authors by their first names. If you see me doing it on here, I can tell you: I either know them personally, or they have become so embedded in my psyche, I feel like I know them.
Larry McMurtry is one of them; E.B. White is another (he went by Andy).
Now there's a new one: Laurie Colwin.
I think it says something about all three of these particular authors, that I refer to them by their first names. Not one of them wrote from any distance, or with any arrogance. They were known for writing from the gut, writing truthfully, and writing without pretense.
Don't get me wrong; I find it a respectful practice to refer to people, initially, by their last names and a title (I love that this is a common practice in the American South), or at least until you know them better, but some people just become familiar to you more quickly than others.
A reviewer from the Kansas City Star, in the early 1990s, wrote, “Probably nobody writing in the United States offers more delight than Laurie Colwin does” and I can't think of a better way to sum up her work, in a single sentence.
When Laurie died in October of 1992, this novel was completed, but not yet published, and who would have imagined that she would have died, at 48, before it was in print? (And who would have imagined her death would have provoked fresh tears in a reader, 30 years later?)
But, what joy, to discover that her last novel was full of so much optimism. Her last fictional offering was about a new marriage between two thirtysomethings, two people who never suspected they'd fall in love, marry, and produce a child, right before the age of 40.
This novel is about new beginnings, old temptations, and second chances.
Weddings were definitely about destiny, for better or worse. -
Laurie Colwin's books tend to be like Sofia Coppola movies: heavy on atmosphere, thin on action. People decry her work for its lack of a linear, fast-pulsing plot. But this is exactly the reason I love it. "A Big Storm" isn't about a chain of events; it's a cross-section of place, time, circumstance. It's about mood and reflection and the small, ordinary joys and heartbreaks that end up defining our lives. As both a reader and a writer, this, to me, *is* plot. I think it was L.M. Montgomery who said that births, deaths, marriages and the like are the most interesting things in the world. I heartily agree, as I suspect that Colwin would have. Then too, she writes with an extraordinary sense of beauty, even when events and relationships turn painful, that infuses the entire book. There's none of the graphic ugliness, horrifying tragedy or grim outlook that today's authors don't seem able to resist. The real tragedy is that Colwin died so young and deprived us of decades more of her astounding work.
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There are, to me, few authors as enormously comforting as Laurie Colwin. I miss subway stops, linger while making coffee, wish for more minutes in the day. She may not be everyone's cup of tea, but she's certainly mine.
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Laurie Colwin is a favorite of mine, and I return to her books again and again. They are not particularly plotted...people live their lives, and Colwin narrates the precise and idiosyncratic details of them. Maybe I just find the depiction of a particular subclass of wealthy-enough New Yorkers gives me a kind of nostalgia-for-something-I-never-had. But I love Colwin's writing, and this is my favorite of her books: a simple story about a woman who has a baby. I read it at least once a year.
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What a wonderful book. This book is about life, family, love, friendship, marriage and growing old. Jane Louise is just so funny. I laughed out loud several times. Jane Louise's friend Edie is a friend anyone would love to know. Both characters are a hoot. A must read. So sorry this lovely and talented author has passed away but I will continue to re-read her books. They are that great.
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When I start a Laurie Colwin book, it's mostly for the comfort I know it will bring, and the joy of reading her writing. As I read on, going through her stories in which the characters live mostly quiet pleasant lives, the tension and despair mostly internal, I eventually catch a glimpse of myself. And these are usually bits of myself that I'd known were there, in general, but hadn't really considered on their own. At some point, Jane Louise's neurotic overthinking gets exasperating, but I realize it's a feeling a handful of my loved ones must have felt about me at some point. For other people, the act of living is simple, but for Jane Louise (and me, haha), it's excruciating. Anyone who has always suspected they don't belong anywhere, who constantly has to be told everything will be okay (even if it already is), will find a mirror in this book.
Following the chaos of July, immediately followed by a storm that left nearly 3 weeks of monsoon rain in its wake, finally felt okay enough to read. Go figure - it was Laurie Colwin I turned to. -
A brutally boring and excruciatingly tedious read. Nothing happens in this collection of drivel. It’s a cross between bad chick-lit and just plain crappy fiction.
The neurotic heroine, Jane Louise (her name just grates on the nerves), the new reigning TSTL poster-girl, is filled with fake angst, surrounded by fake people and loves creating fake problems where there aren’t any. She’s constantly asking her emotionally stunted husband if he loves her and why he married her and perhaps he should’ve married someone else. It’s endless. You get all this additional garbage about her being Jewish and he’s not so maybe he got gypped somehow in the relationship. Her best friend is in love with a black guy from France who is so self-deprecating it’s nauseating even though I think it was intended to be “funny”. The whole race issue is thrown around here too.
Jane Louise and Teddy get married, work and have a baby and that’s it. She works herself into a tizzy over just about anything from her bizarre friends at work to whether or not she’s going to have a healthy baby but it’s to the point of stupidity. She enjoys nothing because she’s so mired down in her pseudo-angst. She’s alienated herself from her family as has her husband because they’re oddballs. And there’s this creepy perv guy named Sven she works with who’s always making lewd comments even when she’s pregnant and it’s just gross. You might think this is a novel about depression but it’s not, it’s just a terribly put together story.
This is the kind of meaningless crapola you either wish you had stopped reading after the first irritating 20 pages or that you could get the time wasted reading it back. Stay away from this nasty fare unless you need something to put yourself to sleep at night. -
Laurie Colwin's writing reminds me of Anne Tyler...not much happens in the book but there is a whole lot of ordinary living and i can't get enough! The big storm of the first year of marriage and baby making sweeps Jane Louise's New York career girl world away. Her oddity coworkers at a small book publishers add to the color in this story. Jane Louise worries and blooms as a newlywed to a man from an old waspy background complete with house in the country. Following along with Jane Louise and Teddy!(her husband) makes for cozy reading packed with wit and wry observations. Pay attention to what Laurie Colwin notices in relationships. She kindly and sharply displays the human yearning within us all. Thankyou Julie G for recommending this wonderful author.
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The thing about Laurie Colwin's work is this: she writes great characters in interesting settings, she puts them in relationships that intrigue me, but generally she's not much for plot. Usually I have no patience for stories that are short on story, but in Colwin's case, somehow things work for me. She's been compared to Austen, which is a bit of a stretch -- Jane loved a good story arc, after all; I'd also compare her to Anne Tyler and in a smaller way, to Elinor Lipman.
A Big Storm Knocked it Over is a story about Jane Louise Parker, a woman in her late thirties who marries for the first time just before the novel opens. She's a book designer for a small publisher; she's got a variety of coworkers who horrify, fascinate, attract and repel her by turns. There's a best friend who is a baker and cake decorator, a troubled relationship with her mother and her step-father and sister. And Teddy, her new husband, who loves her and who -- like many of us -- suffers from depression now and then. Jane Louise is a bundle of nerves: that's the story.
Where's the plot, you're asking. Answer: there really isn't one. This is a novel about the first year of the marriage, where Jane Louise struggles for footing. What does it mean to be married, to love somebody, to trust them to keep loving you? If she ever manages to get pregnant, can they possibly raise happy kids, having had so little happiness in their own childhoods? Or maybe it was the crucible of childhood (and not a very hot crucible, in her case) that made them the people they are, capable of love in the first place? Is it okay that she loves her friend Edie and Edie's partner Mokie better than she loves any of her blood relatives?
There's a lot of back and forth about the small town in the country where her husband grew up, a place she loves and fears, and the contemplation about what it would mean for her, a Jewish girl from the city, to claim such a place for her own.
Now, reading over what I just wrote I know that had I not read this novel already, I would not be terribly interested in picking it up. But I did, and I read it (twice now) and here's my conclusion: I like the main character enough to overlook the lack of a plot. I like her so much that I could imagine sitting with her on the porch and getting her whole life story -- basically what the novel provides -- and wanting more. -
Though I don’t like winter much, I do like this chapter from A Big Storm Knocked it Over, by Laurie Colwin. I like it very much, and could well imagine a Christmas like this. So here is the last idyllic scene of winter, as Jane Louise and her husband Teddy decide to do away with the stress and strife of holidays spent with family, and run away to Vermont for Christmas with Jane Louise’s best friends, Edie and Mokie:
In the end they bundled into Edie and Mokie’s old car and drove to Vermont, four very tall adults in a not terrible large space. Mokie and Teddy sat in the front, and since the seats were pushed back to accommodate their legs, Edie and Jane Louise squashed into the corners of the car and stretched their legs out crossways. Jane Louise passed around a thermos of coffee. In the trunk were four pairs of ice skates, and tied to the top of the car were Teddy’s cross-country skis.
They stayed at an inn kept by an old Swiss couple. The four of them were the only guests. The hostess had kept fires going in their rooms and put hot-water bottles into their beds. It was freezing cold.
After they gulped down a few excellent sandwiches, they crawled into bed. Jane Louise woke in the night to see that it was snowing. The fire in the room had died down. At dawn she woke up again to find herself inside a greeting card from another century. Outside the snow fell straight down in large, flat flakes. The room was wallpapered with a print of cabbage roses. The Persian rug was faded. One of the inn cats was asleep on a blue chair. It was Christmas Eve and she was far away from her family.
They went to breakfast…They wore silk underwear, leggings, T-shirts, turtlenecks, heavy sweaters, and three pairs of socks. They ate dozens of muffins, piles of toast, and cups and cups of coffee with hot milk...
Read more here:
http://suannelaqueurwrites.com/litera... -
I am certain I read this before. In the I saw it in the library and realized I really wanted to have something delightful to read. I read everything Laurie Colwin wrote when I was in my twenties and early thirties. These were books with smart, funny, sometimes neurotic characters with big hearts, good friends, quirks I wouldn't have minded having. They also had dialogue that was funny, sardonic, spot on biting and they weren't afraid to end on moments of deliciousness. Life DOES have them. Sometimes, novelists seem to think they'll be seen as mere fluff if their books end on such moments. I needed that kind of uplift right now. Virus that won't quit. Exhaustion from coughing all night.
This one begins where Jane Austen typically ends, with a wedding. And we move on to a marriage that has moments of anxiety or uncertainty but is steeped in kindness and passion. It sounds like I should have made a "romance" shelf. But I don't think this book would fit. It's heroine, Jane Louise, is too sharp tongued and convinced things will go wrong. Her husband, Teddy, and best friend, Edie, keep her ground Jane Louise, but Teddy has some depressive tendencies and Edie had a family that is pretty unhealthy. Colwin's books are beach books I'd never hide from anyone. In fact, I'd recommend them, to the most serious of readers, because, well, these characters are serious characters, and if they are bit privileged, they aren't rich, and they aren't all white. The men (although not all) are lovable and the women make me remember what it was to be newly in love.
Here's an example of the generosity of Colwin's characters:
Jane Louise is at an editorial meeting. "If she looked around this table, what an amazing amount of information she had about these people, some of whom she barely knew. Bob Lodge, senior editor (known to Dita as Blodge), was having a lunchtime affair with a dopey young woman who looked like his ex-wife when young. Little Sprout had a terrible crush on Mike Church, head of the sales department, and so on.
At meetings and on crowded buses, Jane Louise always had the same thought: Each of these people was born with a personality and a family history and a set of unique feelings that they were truly entitled, for better or words, to express whenever they felt like it."
What I realize as I type this is that without the context of Jane Louise's rants against some of these people, this seems treacly. But it illustrates her deep wish to be empathic...even though it's a struggle to arrive there.
Jane Louise is eating with this rather enormous and crass writer Hugh Oswald Murphy. "His enormous head sat between two immense shoulders You felt that had he beed stripped of flesh, two medium-size women could have played gin rummy in his rib cage." That's actually the best example of the odd and wonderful notes Colwin strikes. I miss her writing. -
Did not finish.
I bought this book as a light vacation read, but even with those low expectations, this book disappointed. The characters are written unevenly and, subsequently, their actions were very confusing. I was never quite sure what was going on, or why people were acting the way they were. We get redundant inner monologues from our narrator and main character (frustratingly named Jane Louise -- not just Jane, not J.L., but Jane Louise), but then we see her behaving in ways that seem totally random and are not explained at all. For example, her behavior toward her skeevy co-worker, Sven, who routinely sexually harrasses her, indicates that she loathes (and maybe even fears) him. Yet, she enjoys when she sends her a postcard while she's on a weeklong vacation at a private home in the Hamptons, "as was their tradition." ?!?!?!
Similarly, we are privy to Jane Louise's constant worrying about babies: wanting them, having them, nurturing them, worrying about them, etc. But when she finally gets pregnant, we skip entire trimesters between scenes, as if the pregnancy is suddenly inconsequential. Also, Jane Louise routinely frets about the "darkness" that follows her husband around, indicating that he's suffering from severe depression and that he could "fall into the shadows" at any moment without warning, but his behavior never seems out of the ordinary in the least.
The plot is non-existent. I was waiting for a twist or climax or issue that never, ever came (I finished about 3/4 of the book before giving up.) The dialogue is really confusing; characters slip into early 1990's NYC slang and inside jokes that are never explained to the reader. I actually assumed Colwin was British, because her dialogue felt like a foreign language, at times.
Finally, Colwin's references to one character's Blackness are, at best, dated and, at worst, offensive. Either way, they made me physically cringe. She tries to cushion her offensive language by having the character, Mokie, himself say it (he refers to himself as a "darkie," mentions his future child as "mulatto," and talks about how his in-laws don't want him to their house because they fear he'll stain the furniture), but that's not enough to make it okay. Mokie uses derogatory language about his skin color every single time he appears in the novel, and seems to only exist so that Colwin could be racist in a "safe" way.
Here's the thing: Colwin died suddenly in 1992 and this book was originally published in 1993. I'm assuming this novel was an unfinished draft that her editors finalized without her. At least, I'm hoping that's what happened, because otherwise the inconsistent writing and lack of plot are harder to justify.
But even as it is, this book isn't worth reading. There are just too many better beach reads out there. -
I’ve read two and a half of Colwin’s books (short story collection, cookbook, and this novel) and I’m struck by what a gift she has for observation and the undercurrents of intimacy. Her dialog is incredible; she’s clever and wry in a way that leaps off the page, and it feels like she’s sitting there next to you just shooting the shit. Whether it’s a short story or the intro to a recipe, she’s just so funny — the master of those little throwaway observations that you simply *must* read out loud to whoever is sitting next to you.
A Big Storm Knocked It Over is replete with such wit, and it covers a lot of ground thematically: difficult families and family-making with friends, class and wealth, marriage and motherhood and work and the soap opera of the workplace and all the enormous nothings that make up a life.
And that’s a key here—it is the quintessential ‘nothing happens’ novel. It’s hardly even a novel; really, it’s more a series of connected vignettes. It’s certainly enjoyable but does feel a bit unfinished/unpolished—if I had to guess, I’d say that Colwin didn’t have a chance to edit it before she died. But the core relationship, between Jane Louise and her best friend Edie, feels so entirely lived in and real, it warmed my heart. I, too, have a dear friend with whom I exchange banter and salty musings all day and it’s familiar in an almost heartbreaking way to read a relationship like that rendered so on the page. ‘I’m sure we’ll speak several hundred more times today,’ and ‘thanks for hating my family for me’ — such is the fabric of some of the most important connections in (my) life. -
I don't know. There was a lot I liked about this novel. I liked the settings--mainly an upscale publishing house in NYC and a country house in Massachusetts. The characters were vivid, and I definitely related to some of them in some ways. The book overall was smart and often funny. But it seems to me this book was a couple drafts away from really being finished. The characters were all somehow remote, as if they were all talk and no real inner life (kind of a "telling but not showing" problem, I think), and the whole thing just didn't flow very well. It was still pretty rough around the edges. A few reviewers here have suggested that maybe the manuscript wasn't entirely finished before Colwin died unexpectedly, and although I haven't read her other fiction and therefore have no basis for comparison, this seems plausible to me. It makes a sad situation even sadder that what could've been a really great novel got stopped in its tracks.
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heaven. couldn’t have loved it more. cozy world, comic tone, nothing happens except the day to day. total warm bath of a book.
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My most favorite book in which nothing really happens, but I'm over the moon about the writing. Laurie Colwin is my all-time favorite writer.
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I am a sucker for Colwin, and like so many, wish she had lived longer and written more. I like her gentle sense of humor and realistic take on modern relationships.
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Lovely storytelling about life in a NYC setting. I didn’t particularly see a theme in this book; friendship, anxiety, motherhood and desire seem to pop up more frequently but I wouldn’t pinpoint one as the main event. I think I missed a point to it and therefore it didn’t strike something in me worthy of more stars. However, it is a lavish story about the flow of life and how it can take you expected places, but how its mundane-ness can be beautiful in its own right.
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This is a story about life. Nothing awful happens to the characters. There isn't any huge drama. It's just a story about people & their relationships: their friendships, their parents, their work, their colleagues, their lives. It was surprisingly interesting even though not much happens.
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A lovely, sweet, moving read. Now I understand why Colwin is so loved.
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Another Colwin tale of love and marriage, plus the strong friendships among the couples. Despite the title, and an enormous storm midway through the novel, this is not about loss but about love. And there's a delicious set piece of skaters on a frozen pond under the stars on Christmas Eve.
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What a delight! 4.5
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3.5🌟
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The right book at the right time, by the late great Laurie Colwin. Wonderful characters in a well described setting. I especially loved the Christmas in Vermont chapter. Thank you to my friend for recommending this one.
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I had not heard about Laurie Colwin but saw her mentioned in a recent New Yorker review about another author and was intrigued from what was written about her style of writing. Chose her last novel before her untimely death as my first foray into her prose and writing. Impeccable gift for conveying the nuances of personalities and the interplay of their lives, while providing juicy and well contoured backstory and context. The thoughts of the protagonist- the constant doubt and overwhelming anxiety, questioning why she is, where is she in her life, and why this and that happening— the “imposter syndrome” so many women in this social strata experience (including me). All of the intelligent and sassy dialogue and the undulating pace of the novel was so familiar and comforting; it kept me mesmerized throughout the entire read.
I so enjoyed this book, and feel so sad Laurie’s life and talent cut short. After I finished reading this I started to re-read it, to dive in again to how she set the stage for entry of her characters (which felt like voice over narration in a play) and started to flesh out the emotional state of the protagonist, etc. I feel truly like I just opened a gift finishing this novel. I can’t wait to read her short stories in The Lone Pilgrim, my next Laurie Colwin adventure. -
Jane Louise is on the older side to get married and have a baby. We meet Jane in the period of time between marriage and becoming a mother, then we spend a bit of time with her at the end of the book after she has become a mother. She thinks the experience of marriage is weird and takes getting used to. Her husband served in Vietnam and when he was a child his parents had an acrimonious divorce. She is Jewish and not very rooted; he is New England Old Money, deeply embedded in a small town outside of New York where other New England old money families have summer cottages like his parents'. Jane Louise has a best friend named Edie who decorates cakes and has a Black business partner and eventually husband and father-of-her-child named Mokie. People are mildly racist toward Mokie and Edie's family doesn't really accept him. Jane Louise has a job designing books, where she used to be friends with a co-worker named Dita, and where her boss Sven constantly lets her know how horny he is for her.
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This book is by one of my favorite authors, Laurie Colwin. Her stories are always about good people doing their best to deal with their lives. Her books address issues that concern most adults at some time of another but done with a light touch. Unfortunately, Colwin died in her forties, so the number of her books is limited. Highly recommended.
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Laurie Colwin is a terrific writer and I love this book. She coined one of the funniest terms I have heard which is "the refined slob." I wish we were looking forward to receiving her latest book.
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One of my top ten books of all time. I love her writing -- the style, the quality, the spare elegance is genius. I re-read all of Ms Colwin's published work every few years. To me, this book is perfect.
