| Title | : | That Old Cape Magic |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0739318926 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780739318928 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Audio CD |
| Number of Pages | : | 9 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2009 |
| Awards | : | Goodreads Choice Award Fiction (2009) |
Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that’s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He’d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they’d moved into an old house full of character; and they’d started a family. Check, check and check.
But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura’s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin’s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
From the Hardcover edition.
That Old Cape Magic Reviews
-
As in other Russo stories we have a middle-aged man struggling in the present and reflecting back on his upbringing, trying to figure out how he got this way. Not that’s he’s in a bad way. He’s 57, married 34 years, a college English professor in Connecticut who occasionally takes time away from professing to write film scripts in Hollywood. (His parents, both college English professors, view script-writing as akin to prostitution.)
With three English professors in the story I think we get enough of a taste of that world of oddities, petty politics and political correctness to call this an academic novel.
So, our main character is at a critical point in life. He’s had a good marriage, but it’s reached a point where he and his wife are separating and each taking a lover for a year. Can they ever patch it up and get back together – as they both seem to want to do?
The present-day action in the story centers around two weddings about a year apart. The first wedding is of the best friend of their daughter, followed by their own daughter’s wedding. As a child, the daughter had always been terrified that her parents would get divorced. So they waited for her to finish not only high school but college and she is still terrified that they are breaking up!
The main character has also had a double whammy of the death of both of his parents within a year or so.
His parents set the tone and the title for the book. They loved summering in beach cabins on Cape Cod -- dreamed of it all year long. Their biggest dream would have been to have held positions in Ivy League schools in New England instead of, as they love to say over and over again, 'second-rate colleges in the Mid-fucking-West.' They are both well-published enough to get job offers and to bounce around from school to school.
And it’s not just HIS parents. To some extent the whole story is how both sets of parents of husband and wife influenced their marriage – with good and bad examples, faithfulness and unfaithfulness. Although you do have to wonder about a 57-year-old guy who’s still trying to figure out “Did my parents love me?”
We have the usual Russo humor and good writing:
“Bartleby, who’d begun their marriage preferring not to argue and ended it preferring not to speak at all…”
His mother’s view of her students: “By contrast, she knew her students well enough to dislike them as individuals, for their intellectual laziness, their slovenly dress, their conventional instincts, their religious upbringing. They mostly disliked her too…”
Here's his mother’s nasty streak coming out to her son sitting at her dying bedside: “How … does having you sit there day after day make me any less alone?”
“Maybe money did talk, as people claimed, but all it said to them was goodbye.”
“Only very stupid people are happy.”
I’ll give this one a five. It’s my fifth Russo, and I thought it was not only good but appropriately trim – it did not have the repetitive bloat that some of his books seem to acquire. Having grown up near the area, I enjoyed the local color of “The Cape.”
[Revised, spoilers hidden 10/13/22. Edited 5/20/23]
Cape Cod cottages:
Top photo "Beach House in Truro Cape Cod" by Darius Aniunas on fineartamerica.com
Painting of Corn Hill by Edward Hopper, 1930. A great "then and now" website of Hopper's Cape Cod paintings is at completely-coastal.com
Third photo from media.masslive.com
Bottom photo from finiconcierge.com -
The title refers to a modification of the song “That Old Black Magic,” a tune sung with verve and hope by narrator Jack Griffin’s parents when they would cross the bridge into Cape Cod every summer for one month of relief from eleven months of misery. Each of the book’s eleven chapters connects to some aspect of Cape Cod in Jack’s life, from summer vacations there as a kid, to his honeymoon to the wedding of his daughter’s friend, and later his daughter’s wedding.
Place is important to the story beyond Cape Cod. Jack’s parents, both from upstate New York, aspired to live and teach in Ivy, or near-Ivy League institutions in the northeast, but their Ivy-League degrees are not sufficient to gain them Ivy-League careers and they are relegated to the “mid-fucking-west.” His wife’s parents, and thus her familial connections, are in Republican, suburban California. Living in Connecticut offers strains to her as well.
Along with Cape Cod as a central image, the relationship of Jack to his parents is a core concern, familiar turf for Russo. How much of any of us is truly our own? How much are we influenced, formed by our parents? How much of them can we set aside, escape, embrace and still be separate people? How much of what we want is really our own, and not a carry-forward of our parents dreams? In career, in marriage, in family? Jack struggles with trying to live his own life. His parents are always in his thoughts. He is even toting his father’s ashes about with him, planning to scatter them in the cape, struggling to actually do the deed.
Jack has been married to Joy for 34 years, and they have had their ups and downs. Once a Hollywood screenwriter of modest accomplishment, he returned east for a college teaching post. His dream or his parents? His dream or Joy’s, who had wanted him to move away from screenwriting to teaching? The pull of LA remains strong, work for him, family for her.
The central action of the story centers on the viability of Jack and Joy’s marriage. Personally, I felt it hitting a bit too close to home at times. Not so much in the specifics. My life has been very different from Jack’s, but we are the same age and have both gone through the deep emotional scarring that long-term relationships can entail. As a veteran of those wars, I recognize the verity of long, silent car rides, uncomfortable silences, changes in how one views one’s mate, old secrets exposed, private tears seen. I suppose it is a good thing that Russo made me squirm with this familiarity. That his writing hits home in so personal a way reinforces the fact that he knows of what he speaks.
There is significant craft at work here, as one would expect from a master writer of Russo's caliber. He parallels the pining of Jack’s partner Tommy for Jack’s wife, Joy, with that of young (ironically named) Sunny Kim, for his daughter Laura. He offers significant hooks to parental engagement, from the ashes Jack is toting, and never quite getting around to scattering, to the voice of his mother in his head. Water is used for its lachrymose and rebirth purposes. Is it stretching too far to wonder if Jack Griffin was named as he was in support of his dual nature, as part Hollywood guy and part academic? There are bits of humor here, and some are pretty funny, but I found that in the overall feel of the book, most of the humor did not do much for me. Maybe it was just my personal reaction, having been brought back to dark days. For folks who did not vibrate with such feelings it is probably a lot funnier.
This is no Empire Falls or Bridge of Sighs. While Russo offers a multi-generational view of a family here, the story is more individual and less social, less big-picture historical and more how the history of one family affects their descendants today, Richard Russo light. That works too.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s
GR and
FB pages
My reviews of other Russo novels
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Empire Falls
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Bridge of Sighst
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Chances Are -
A menudo los hijos se nos parecen, y así nos dan la primera satisfacción, que dice el inefable Serrat. Aunque esto no siempre funciona de la misma manera. Hay tics, gestos, actitudes, inclinaciones nuestras que descubiertas en nuestros hijos nos provocan una profunda tristeza.
Pero, ¿qué ocurre cuando es al contrario? ¿qué pasa cuando nos horroriza descubrir en nosotros esa herencia de nuestros padres, a los que por nada del mundo nos querríamos parecer? Este es el hilo conductor de este libro que transcurre por la carretera secundaria de la crisis de madurez del protagonista y en la que a un lado y a otro de la misma se nos despliegan esas historias simples en apariencia, tan comunes como las relaciones familiares, marido y mujer, padres e hijos... sueños, planes juveniles, objetivos que cambian con el tiempo, y no siempre al unísono con esa pareja con la que decidiste compartir la vida. Temas tratados aquí con una gran sensibilidad, con humor, e incluso con comicidad, y sin que falten las escenas de lagrimita.
Una novela encantadora. -
I read this for a face to face discussion with a small group of GR friends. The discussion was interesting, but to be honest the book was less so, and did not leave me thinking I should read Russo again.
The central character is Jack Griffin, a screen writer in his late 50s who has a job as a university lecturer. We meet him on a trip to Cape Cod for his daughter's friend's wedding, where he remembers the annual childhood holidays, when his unhappily married parents called temporary truces. Jack travels to the Cape a day earlier than his wife, an early sign that not everything in his marriage is as healthy as he thinks. he is also encumbered with his father's ashes, which he plans to scatter there.
It is difficult to escape the feeling that this family story was written with screen adaptation in mind, as there are plenty of comic set pieces in amid all of the introspection, and a somewhat implausible happy ending, which the less than likeable Jack does little to earn. -
I find Richard Russo's greatest strength to be the humanity he gives to his working-class, somewhat crude, and deeply flawed characters in the blue-collar New England and upstate New York towns he generally chronicles.
That said, this is a book centered on the highly cerebral problems of a middle-aged, middle-class academic going through a life crisis. So...yeah, not so much.
Russo's writing ability still shines through, but the characters just don't have that sympathetic spark that binds the reader to the character despite the character's (usually major) issues. Griffin, the main character, spends so much time pitying himself that there's no room for anyone else to feel sorry for him, and so I spent the entire novel feeling vaguely annoyed with him and flat out not liking many of the other characters.
Then there's my general lack of patience for that entire genre: the New England academic/writer experiencing a midlife crisis. It's awfully self-indulgent, and it's been done approximately four billion times before.
In sum, if you're looking for a Richard Russo book to read, please don't start off with this one. -
Há filhos que exigem pais perfeitos acusando-os das (inevitáveis) vicissitudes das suas vidas e até invejosos de outras famílias.
Filhos que se sentem vítimas das opções dos seus pais: divórcio, estilo de vida.
Os filhos crescem e casam na esperança de não seguir as pisadas dos seus pais, e, quando se tornam cinquentões com relações sentimentais terminadas, com pais envelhecidos, doentes ou mortos, tudo ameaça ruir.
O passado invade o presente: é a fase do questionar, repensar, e das grandes conversas entre filhos e pais no esforço de compreensão; não há pais perfeitos nem filhos perfeitos, mas deve haver aceitação pelo trajecto de ambos sem esquecer os filhos dos filhos.
Basicamente, é sobre este assunto que, num tom ora divertido ora sério, Richard Russo nos fala. Livro muito americano, mas com uma mensagem universal, encontramos nele personagens que poderíamos ser nós, os nossos amigos, os nossos primos, os nossos pais.
Quase no final do livro há uma conversa muito eloquente entre um coreano residente nos Estados Unidos e Griffin, personagem central, sobre o amor.
«Quem melhor do que Sam Kim poderia perguntar por que razão os Estados Unidos culpavam os mais recentes dos seus sonhadores pelas suas maleitas, fossem eles legais ou ilegais? Sunny estaria agora, pensou Griffin, a aperceber-se relutantemente de que tais sonhos corporizavam um paradoxo que, como o amor, eles eram simultaneamente reais e quiméricos.»
O casamento – uma instituição pública, no fim de contas – comporta questões mais abrangentes do que as suas próprias circunstâncias. -
This book has moments in which you can see that Richard Russo has vision and could write a masterpiece. This is not it. This is pretty much your predictable fluffy “marriage on the rocks, but we really love each other” novel. There is humor, conflict of the soul, and the proven conviction that there is no such thing as a family that is not dysfunctional on some level. It is also about the expectations we have of ourselves and those other have for us, and how those conflict and often disappoint. It seems also to be about the inability of people to know anyone else in anything more than a surface way, even those we think we know completely.
After a very slow start, I became engaged with Jack Griffin and his efforts to unravel the truth about himself, his parents, and his life. I particularly enjoyed his humorous scenes that serve to break up the heaviness of this kind of introspection and a couple of quirky characters that make you shake your head a bit. The Cape is Cape Cod and because of his parents’ view of the Cape when he was a child, I think it represents the impossible utopia that so many of us waste our lives trying to find while we pass up the very real happiness that is within our reach.
I have two other Russo’s on my shelf and I will still plan to read them. Considering that he was a Pulitzer winner, I am hopeful that all the good things I found in this novel will be developed and enhanced in the next two. -
This was a book read for a highly stimulating discussion with some GR friends (who've now become real-world friends), so below is more notes than a review.
Strengths:
1. The set-up - suddenly it was as if his dead parent, his living one, his old profession and his boyhood self were all clamouring for attention. - makes for both an interesting plot and a good character study of late middle age (Griffin is in his late 50s) crisis/disintegration of a seemingly settled life.
As Griffin realises:
Late middle age, he was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming.
Russo also effectively portrays Griffin's own lack of self-awareness as to how in reality he resembles and is repeating both his parents - although the Norman Batesque dialogue in the second half with his mother rather flogged the point. Russo does seem generally an author keen to make sure his reader's don't miss the point he is making.
2. Russo is also an astute observer of late middle-age life
He is, for example, very good on the minor irritations (her verbal misfires, his talking in movie script) terms of long-term relationships, as well as the shared jokes/catchphrases (eating lunch with Al ... Al who? ... Al Fresco).
Similarly on the very different memories of childhood anecdotes that Griffin and his mother have, for example of a key family holiday when he was 12.
Issues:
3. Race/ethnicity
This felt a very white book (even the appropriation of the title). Although perhaps that is unfair - in fact the ethnicity of characters didn't seem to be mentioned at all (sexuality was 'tackled' with a couple of comic book Scouse lesbians).
I say 'at all' but there is one dishonorable exception: Sunny Kim. Sunny was a dreadfully stereotyped Korean-American, a straight-A student but socially inept and pathetically grateful to be in the good-ol-U-S-of-A.
4. Setting
Cape Cod is key to the novel, but I felt the author relied on the reader's knowledge of the area rather than setting the scene - and in my case that knowledge is virtually zero.
When I read a sentence like this (where Russo seems to expect the names alone to be evocative):
To Griffin, now fifty-seven, roughly the same age his parents had been when he and Joy married, the Cape place names were still magical: Falmouth, Woods Hole, Barnstable, Dennis, Orleans, Harwich.
and think of Harwich harbour, I think of this Harwich Harbour:
rather than, as I suspect I am supposed to this Harwich Habor:
5. That second half
The novel started as a short-story - perhaps it should have stayed one, or at least a novella/short novel. From
http://knopfdoubleday.com/2009/07/21/...Griffin, my main character, begins the story on his way to a wedding with his father’s urn in the trunk of his car. I planned for him to scatter the ashes (his past), put his future in danger at the wedding (his present) and then pull back from disaster at the last moment. But then he pulled over to the side of the road in his convertible to take a phone call from his mother, at the end of which a seagull shits on him. At that moment, in part because Griffin blames her, he and I both had a sinking feeling. You can resolve thematic issues of past, present and future in a twenty page story, but if you allow a shitting seagull into it, you’ve suddenly moved on to something much larger.
I'm not convinced of the seagull (one of the novel's less effective devices). And in practice the book is split into two halves - the characters literally dance to “Wo..oh we’re halfway there” at the halfway stage. And in a way they effectively mirror Griffin's duality (similar to Russo's own) as an academic and (wannabe) novelist vs. his past as a LA scriptwriter of rather trashy productions.
Unfortunately the second half - the trashy movie script - then rather loses its way with a a farcical wedding scene.
6. Literary fiction or beach read
His parents spent sunny afternoons lying on the sand with their “guilty pleasures,” books they’d have been embarrassed to admit to their colleagues they’d even heard of. They were on vacation they’d claimed, not just from the Mid-flopping west but also from the literary canon they’d sworn to uphold.
Related to the point above - what does Russo want it to be (the cover screams beach read), and does it fall between two stools?
I saw one group of readers used this book to discuss the boundary between literary and popular fiction and other. And the litfic fans thought it wasn’t literary fiction, general readers though it was.
Of interest:
7. The 'coded' inscription
A nice device - except a classic example of Russo making sure the reader gets it.
First we have the puzzle, which the reader may well solve for himself. Then we have a neat semi-reveal when Sunny Kim proposes what to others seems an odd toast ('perhaps its Korean?') Left there it could have been an effective device, but Russo has the characters explain it later in great detail just in case.
But, while taken from a real restaurant in the Cape, I found myself searching for literary precedents.
The first mention I can find of the same inscription is in a letter from a reader in the Teesdale Mercury, October 19, 1870. In December the same year it was also featured in the 'The Editor's Drawer' in Harper's Bazaar:
Just at this particular season, when innocent festivity abounds, or ought to abound, in every household, the Drawer writes down for the general edification the following, which, many years ago, was written on the Avail of an old wav-side inn not ten thousand miles from Connecticut:
"Here's to Pands pen
Dasoci! al Hou? — Rinhar
M, Les, Smirt: Ha! (N. D. F.)
Unle, Tfri ; end, shi ! Pre,
I, Gnbe, J, U, Stand, K. Indan
Devils!!! Peako, Fn (one).""
In literary fiction, the inscription features in Lowry's debut novel Ultramarine in 1933.
And The Pickwick Papers record a similar incident.
The exultation and joy of the Pickwickians knew no bounds, when their patient assiduity, their washing and scraping, were crowned with success. The stone was uneven and broken, and the letters were straggling and irregular, but the following fragment of an inscription was clearly to be deciphered:
+
BILST
UM
PSHI
S.M.
ARK
Mr Pickwick's eyes sparkled with delight, as he sat and gloated over the treasure he had discovered. He had attained one of the greatest objects of his ambition. In a country known to abound in remains of the early ages; in a village in which there still existed some memorials of the olden time, he - he, the Chairman of the Pickwick Club - had discovered a strange and curious inscription of unquestionable antiquity, which had wholly escaped the observation of the many learned men who had preceded him. He could hardly trust the evidence of his senses.
[...]
It appears from the Transactions of the Club, then, that Mr Pickwick lectured upon the discovery at a General Club Meeting, cenvened on the night succeeding their return, and entered into a variety of ingenious and erudite speculations on the meaning of the inscription. It also appears that a skilful artist executed a faithful delineation of the curiosity, which was engraven on stone, and presented to the Royal Antiquarian Society, and other learned bodies - that heart-burnings and jealousies without number, were created by rival controversies which were penned upon the subject - and that Mr Pickwick himself wrote a Pamphlet, containing ninety-six pages of very small print, and twenty-seven different readings of the inscription. That three old gentlemen cut off their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for presuming to doubt the antiquity of the fragment - and that one enthusiastic individual cut himself off prematurely, in despair at being unable to fathom its meaning. That Mr Pickwick was elected an honorary member of seventeen native and foreign societies, for making the discovery; that none of the seventeen could make anything of it; but that all the seventeen agreed it was very extraordinary.
Mr Blotton, indeed - and the name will be doomed to the undying contempt of those who cultivate the mysterious and the sublime - Mr Blotton, we say, with the doubt and cavilling peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to state a view of the case, as degrading as ridiculous. Mr Blotton, with a mean desire to tarnish the lustre of Cobham in person, and on his return, sarcastically observed in an oration at the club, that he had seen the man from whom the stone was purchased; that the man presumed the stone to be ancient, but solemnly denied the antiquity of the inscription - inasmuch as he represented it to have been rudely carved by himself in an idle mood, and to display letters intended to bear neither more nor less than the simple construction of - "BILL STUMPS, HIS MARK;" and that Mr Stumps, being little in the habit of original composition, and more accustomed to be guided by the sound of words than by the strict rules of orthography, had omitted the concluding "L" of his christian name.
The Pickwick Club, as might have been expected from so enlightened an institution, received this statement with the contempt it deserved, expelled the presumptuous and ill-conditioned Blotton, and voted Mr Pickwick a pair of gold spectacles, in token of their confidence and approbation; in return for which, Mr Pickwick caused a protrait of himself to be painted, and hung up in the club room.
And neatly Russo himself wrote an introduction to the Pickwick Papers (Modern Library Classics, 2003 edition).
Overall - 2.5 stars, unfortunately let down by a rather silly second half. 5 to the discussion with the Goodreads gang but only 2 to the book. -
Russo said in an interview that he’d originally intended for this to be a short story. Then he wrote a scene where Jack Griffin, his main character, was on the side of the road talking to his shrew of a mother on the phone when a seagull flew by and dropped a calling card on his head. At that point any tidy resolutions to Griffin’s problems weren’t going to work – further development was going to be needed. But at 261 pages, we could have used more. To be honest, it felt a little thin. I say this at the same time I claim Russo as a personal favorite; I’m grateful for dollops of any size. Had this been my first of his books, I’d have nary a critical word. But fans know the heights he can scale.
Griffin is a 55-year-old academic, a former screenwriter, a husband, and a son, but doesn’t seem fully engaged in any of his roles. With parents like his, pulling away was understandable. They were academics themselves, Ivy-leaguers appointed beneath their station in the Mid-effing-west, with a haughty disdain for their intellectual inferiors which to them included pretty much everyone. At times they were laughably bad (one of the book’s great strengths). Griffin disengaged from them, but not as much as he wanted to believe. This was a major theme, even as they became ashes in urns. Troubles in his marriage were harder to figure. His wife was not the problem, though; that much we surmise.
Russo is usually so good at developing characters. This time, too, he gets into heads and tells revealing stories about Griffin and the gang, but … (you knew there’d be a but) at times he makes Griffin out to be borderline obtuse. If Griffin, in one instance, can write so knowingly about people, as he did in a very good story within the story about a boyhood friend at the Cape, how can he be, at other times, so heedless, turning even allies against him? Russo characters are often flawed, but rarely lacking in people smarts or self-awareness as Griffin seemed to be. Then again, maybe that was just part of the dark humor that ran throughout. Irony is another guess, what with the writer/professor falling short in the insight department, unable to read people.
Despite the brevity, many of the secondary characters were memorable. Griffin’s daughter, who was getting married in Act III of the book, was honest and kind—-more like her mother, Joy. Joy’s family stood out, too. Her knuckleheaded brothers, twin Marine MP’s, were a hoot. I was also interested in a character named Sunny Kim, a Korean immigrant and friend of Griffin’s daughter since childhood. He was smart, respectful, and repressed, but Russo went beyond stereotypes to give us a glimpse into a rich inner life, too. (Mr. Russo, since you’re likely to stop by soliciting feedback from reviewers like me, please consider a follow-up story focusing on Sunny. I have a similar suggestion involving Rub from Nobody’s Fool.)
When it’s all said and done, this is a very satisfying read. I might have a few quibbles about Griffin and his plight, but in the end it’s recognizably Russovian, which is always a good thing. -
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday Publishing
Pub. Date: Aug. 9, 2009
Stars: The novel deserves more stars. I explain in my review.
Mini-Review
I found this 2009 novel by Richard Russo in a used bookstore. I looked forward to reading it since Russo rarely disappoints. However, this time he did—at least for me (for today anyway. I'll get to that). The title is a spin on the song “That Old Black Magic,” referring to Cape Cod where our protagonist honeymooned and vacationed all his life.
Fans of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author know that his work always has a cast of characters who blunder and struggle through his pages. We do get this in “Magic.” The story revolves around a 60-year-old man who recently lost his parents. He appears to be having an age-related meltdown triggered by his loss and attending two weddings during the same month. At the weddings, he interacts with both his family and his in-laws, leaving him to wonder about his own marriage and his parents’ complicated one.
I needed to look at myself to understand why I did not appreciate this novel more than I did. As always, Russo’s writing is flawless, giving the reader insight into what makes his characters tick. As always, there is fun humor to be found in his characters. Embarrassingly, my issue in this tale is probably due to the book’s title and its cover, which shows beach chairs sitting in the sand. This led me to believe I was about to read a beach book. I was looking for something fluffy to read on a lake. Russo is many things but he is never fluffy. Why in the world did I think he would write a beach read? I will reread this one later to see if he will wow me again. I’m guessing it will.
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My previous (and only) Richard Russo book was his Pulitzer Prize winning Empire Falls – a book I picked up in a bookshop in Bermuda (the only bookshop in Bermuda?) after I had run-out of books to read.
From my review, I was impressed with the way that the book “conveys brilliantly a blue-collar American town, left behind by economic and social developments (a theme perhaps even more relevant today than when it was written more in 2001)” but less impressed by a key historical revelation which was key to the plot. That book (which went on to be filmed as a mini-series) was enough to convince me I was not in a rush to read Russo’s other works (albeit not averse to it).
A book club choice, from some IRL Goodreads friends, gave me the opportunity to read this book and to revisit Russo’s work – albeit in a far less celebrated work and one which gained mixed reviews both in the press and on Goodreads.
Overall, I found this a disappointing read – definitely with some good writing but those aspects I enjoyed taking very much a back seat to a number that made me inwardly (and in some cases verbally) groan.
However, the book did give rise to a fascinating discussion with a group of learned, well-informed and experienced readers and reviewers – and I have increased my rating as a result.
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My first issue with the book is the key characters it portrays: self-indulgent, privileged, whiny, snobbish East Coast born, liberals. The main character – Jack Griffin – would say much the same about his academic mother, but he himself (a mix of West Coast movie writer and East Coast minor-academic) is much worse. Russo is clearly writing an academic satire in Jack’s mother, but I am less clear if Jack himself is meant to be a satire (or the hero of the book) and the characterisation (as stupid and unpleasant) of the two Marine twins is clunky and nasty.
A strength of “Empire Falls” (as my review implied) was that it gave an insight into why parts of the US felt sufficiently left behind by the political and cultural establishment to vote for Trump (and by corollary in the UK for Brexit and more recently Johnson). Reading this book it was hard not to have sympathy with their voting.
My second is the sheer obviousness of the book. It’s one thing to have a book with a clear theme – in this case the difficulty of escaping from the shadow of your parents. Literary merit starts to be lost when this theme becomes rather obvious – a character literally carrying around the ashes of his parents and seemingly unable to dispose of them. It is close to abandoned altogether when (and perhaps a sign of the reader the book is aimed at) when another character comments on the symbolism of this, just in case we had missed it.
Similarly, the Cape parts of the novel: the idea that opportunities in life are either unobtainable or unsatisfying (as Cape houses are either too expensive or too poor) and the idea of a ideal place/time in which everything in normal life will somehow come good – were I thought simply repeated too often.
My third is that when the plot starts to intrude (and particularly in the second part of the book) the novel quickly turns into more of the farce that it started out (an early seagull incident foreshadowing a wedding accident and then later a fender-bender incident that closed the book and elicited my final verbalised groan).
It is perhaps ironical (although not I am sure intended) that the book itself collapses precisely when a wooden structure collapses.
There is no pretense that the book was written for anything other than a potential mini-series or film and if there is a redeeming feature of the novel it is the meta-fictional way that this is acknowledged through the book: Jack himself frequently compares what is happening to him to a script, a girlfriend on their parting asks him to write a movie of their affair and get a famous actress to play her, Jack even replays scenes as film scripts.
But overall this could not rescue for me what was at best an underwhelming read.
Perhaps showing even greater self-awareness a common theme of the book is of poor writing: Jack’s film script (which he hopes will relaunch his writing career – a career largely based on rewriting failed scripts) is he knows poor and leads to him being fired; his short story – an attempt to capture a boyhood friendship on one of his family’s Cape holidays – is criticised for not capturing what it is meant to convey and being dominated by his parent’s (despite their large absence from the story); Griffin, his mother and wife comment on the inadequacies of their students’ work. But simply having a poorly written book have meta-commentary on poor writing only draws attention to the flaws in the book.
At one stage we are told Griffin’s literary-academic parents on their Cape holidays had ““guilty pleasures” – books they’d have been embarrassed to admit to their colleagues they’d ever heard of”: this for me was more of a guilty burden - albeit one which gave rise to a very pleasurable evening of book chat and discussion. -
This is my first Russo book and I did enjoy it. Some have said it's about a man's midlife crisis, but I am not altogether sure that's what it's about at all. It's about a man and his wife, his parents and hers. It's about the influences and familial situations and relationships (real or imagined) that make us who we are.
It's about guilt, love, self effacing, self love or at least self acceptance. It's about what it really takes to look truthfully into that all knowing mirror and not turn away from the ugly realities that have become you. It's about facing those realities, coming to terms with them, and trying to become more honest and stronger because of it.
A good, quick read. I would read another novel by Russo. -
This is the first book by Richard Russo that I have read and I know he has had some great reviews on previous publications. This was just an OK book for me. It reminded me of a 21st Century Updike or Cheevers. There was almost as much drinking, cheating and dysfunction, but not as many interesting people. The academic snobbery hasn't changed with the century. Other than the male protagonist's wife , daughter and temporary girlfriend, I didn't like or relate to any of the characters in this book. Russo created three somewhat likable and interesting females, but the rest of the cast is aggravating and/or uninspiring. I won't miss being part of their world.
The writing is yeomanly, but no one sentence or paragraph makes you say "boy I wish that I had written that". Since this is a character study, there are no attempts at vivid descriptions of the landscape of Cape Cod or coastal Maine. I don't think that's Russo's shtick.
The plot wanders from Cape Cod to Southern California to Maine and back to the Cape where I guess we have a happy ending. But nothing about it is compelling, suspenseful, enlightening or even very entertaining.
A mediocre effort by a professional novelist. -
Rick Russo's new book contains some familiar, beloved elements for Russo-philes-- a devoted, exhausted wife; a smart, snarky daughter; an irritating mother who doesn't stop meddling, even after death--and at the center, a restless, loving soul, this time the professor Griffin, who wrestles with life's meaning, love, and legacy. But there's new ground here too, not least in the brevity and economy of the story. Plus, at times CAPE MAGIC is more laugh out loud funny than any Russo book in recent memory. Above all, I found the faint whiff of mortality hovering over these pages, which gave the tale a sense of gravity and sobriety even in the midst of its comic moments. Russo, of course, is my dear friend, and so I'm biased. But I think he's one of the best American novelists, ever, and CAPE MAGIC is one of his best. Russo departs today on a multi-city book tour, so catch him if you can.
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<Synopsis
Jack Griffin is described by his wife: ”you’re a congenitally unhappy man”. This is the inevitable outcome that follows from being the only child of selfish parents who had their own agendas and who carried their own bitterness towards fellow man, and life in general. Amidst his introspection and self rumination, Jack does little to endear himself.
The two pivotal moments (and the best of the writing) take place at weddings, and Russo creates the memorable “table 17” aka “The leftover table”.
This is a character driven book, and not all the characters are evenly drawn.
• Jack: Dull, unwitting, a follower of events, a procrastinator.
“He was inclined to locate happiness not in the present, but in some vague future “(70)
Jack is an unappealing (spoilt, entitled, withdrawn) character, and given that the book is a reflection on his life this cast a pall over my enjoyment of the book.
• Joy: A bit more of Joy wouldn’t have gone amiss. Why she married Jack, let alone stayed with him is a mystery. Marriages where one part of the partnership rejoices in home town, and the extended family, and the other partner eschews the domestic idyll, is always likely to be fraught with difficulties.
• Mary: Jack’s mother, is unpleasant, nasty; her view of the world summarised: “only very stupid people are happy” (195). An allowance has to be made for the timing of some her pronouncements, at end of life, and as she puts it- her “morphine narrative”. With husband William, theirs was a selfish marriage, and an insular one. Can you imagine a parent today (to an only child) expressing the view “Our lives were a glorious secret even from you" ?(20)
• Sunny Kim: The most intriguing character, and the one that left me wanting more. He is the wistful presence at both celebrations. The pain of unrequited love. Sunny Kim gently touches on politics, and immigration- a foretaste (this was published in 2009, at the very start of Obama’s first term in office) of underlying social friction in the USA.
"why does a rich country like ours blame people who have nothing for its problems?” (234)
"ask why America blamed its ills on most recent of dreamers" (237)
This is a sad book for the most part, and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It’s a book about frustrated ambition. It’s also a book that describes a life of mediocracy and under achievement.
Highlights
The underlying premise, that of marrying into a ready formed family, is a fascinating one, and a deeply thought provoking theme- if the reader has any direct experience of the potentially difficult dynamics that can become apparent then this book resonates. It was just a pity that I never connected with Russo’s writing style, and I felt that his examination of the difficulties in this extended family did not go deep enough
Lowlights
• The ending. The book was a slow burner, ‘whole life’, story. The final twenty pages rushed through a number of convenient tie-ups, and this was both unnecessary and wholly unconvincing (Jack especially).
• The non linear writing style. Stories that move back and forward in time, and between characters, often work well for me. The emerging character perspective read differently. Russo, though, takes this too far and the time shifts within chapters and paragraphs really only made the story of Jack’s life confusing.
• Racial and gender stereotyping. Immigrant families (South Korean) and same sex partnerships are briefly described in ways that just make the book dated.
• Poor supporting characters. Cameo appearances they may be, but the portrayals of Brian Fynch (Joys new beau), Harold, Bovine Claudia, and Dot (Harve’s second wife), are extraordinarily lightweight for a character driven novel.
Historical & Literary
• Indirectly, the shadow of F. Scott Fitzgerald is cast over Jack. He’d fallen in love with the whole Browning family The Cape Cod aspiration. The American Dream. Joy and Jack; from Cornell to Yale.
When Joy’s attraction to Tommy emerges, it reminded me of Nicole in Tender Is The Night and her own Tommy (Barban). Less a passion for an admirer, than realised disappointment in the man chosen as husband.
Questions/Quotations
• When is this novel set?
Author background & Reviews
Richard Russo won the Pulitzer prize in 2002 for Empire Falls . It would appear that That Old Cape Magic is very recognizably a Russo work; his own biography, replicated in his characters. In interviews Russo said that the book was originally conceived as a short story.
Recommend
No. Jack Griffin’s selfishness and surly resentment is not enough, of itself, to carry a book. I didn’t think it was well enough written (the time shifts too confusing at times) to justify a journey with such an uninspiring lead -
Hilarious! Slapstick! Russo?
Yes, so cleverly written. Loved it.
From the NYTimes Book Review (Roxanna Robinson):
"Family, family, family is the subject of “That Old Cape Magic.” The family is where the best — and the worst — things happen to us. Whether we embrace it or try to escape it, the family is at the center of our lives. Along with that voracious little worm of dissatisfaction, munching away."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/boo... -
Jack's journey of soul searching and finding his way was warmly told and delightfully entertaining.
Jack is afraid to fully engage in life. He keeps much of himself to himself, so much so that he pushes people away, especially those who love him.
In middle-age, he struggles to understand himself, his life, what's important and what he wants....not what others want for him. Who is Jack? The story is told with humor, warmth, family and life.
This is the first of Richard Russo's books that I've read and I'm looking forward to reading his others. -
First impressions:
What really comes to the fore in a sort of throwaway novel like this is just how good a writer Russo is. Even with a story that is not meant to be overly complex, and isn't weighed down with a large cast of characters, Russo is such a capable craftsman.
When I, as a person who (sadly) can't write, think of the writing process I think of sitting down, looking around the room, taking a deep breath, and starting to type.
Russo dashes this image completely.
I saw an interview with him once where he was in his office, and all over the wall behind him were white boards filled with a tight script, post-it notes lined up in row after row, and other similar types of organizational systems. Clearly Russo, at least in this particular instance, was not given to sitting down at the word processor and flying by the seat of his pants until the story finished itself.
His process of careful planning is very evident in this book.
Russo's deft maneuvering through disparate timelines is only eclipsed by someone like Faulkner, and I could see someone making an argument that Russo is even better at it because of the largely modernism free clarity of his narrative execution. His usage of overlapping revisits to the past never fail to clearly build tension and significance, as opposed to Faulkner's arguable increase of confusion and befuddlement.
Russo continues to reveal to me that he is an incredibly important American writer.
Final thoughts:
A good book, rewarding, thoughtful, and nostalgic. I enjoyed it very much. -
Oh boy! ohboy ohboy ohboy ohboy... Whenever I give a book five stars and don't write much of a review, you all know that it moved me so much that I don't know what to say.
I adore Richard Russo, but have never given any of his books five stars. Partway through the book, I never would have expected this to be the one to get the fifth star. But I stuck with it because I knew Russo wouldn't let me down, and by the end I was laughing and crying at the same time.
To truly appreciate what this book offers, I think you have to be a person "of a certain age" with a lot of life experience. I am in awe of Russo's deep understanding of complex relationships. And I'm perhaps even more in awe of his ability to convey that understanding in writing without ever becoming maudlin or trite.
I've just now finished the book, so a more complete review may follow. I figured I'd better write at least *something* now, before the book gets buried on my shelves and I forget that I didn't review it.
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August 17
After reading Chris's review, I'm editing to add that you really should not read the flap copy on the book jacket before reading this book! There are spoilers, doggone them! :( -
This was my first novel by Mr Russo and I did enjoy the oft told tale of a marriage that has soured over the years and the impact one's parents have on what you yourself become. It was a quick read and had a number of characters who were both likeable, but oftentimes seemed a bit whiny. I felt the end of the book was better than the beginning and particularly enjoyed the main character's talks with both his deceased mother and father which by the way, he carried (their ashes), around in the trunk of his car.
The story seemed at times to be a bit disjointed, but in a way was not that the way our characters were suppose to be? Perhaps, too, the ending was predetermined which often makes the reader come away with a point of satisfaction that ahha moment when one says to oneself, "I knew that was going to happen."
Would I read Mr Russo"s other novels? The answer to that would be "yes" as I saw a type of witty nature that I really think he might have developed better in his other novels. All in all, it was a pleasant read, more in the nature of a 2+ read, but I bumped it up because I am a sucker for a happy ending. This was one of those mindless fun type reads and after all a bit of fluff never hurts anyone really. -
What could be wrong with this book? The writing is very good, as one would expect from Richard Russo. The plot is barely there, but that isn’t an issue. The characters are vivid—and that’s the problem. Nearly to a man (or woman), the characters are unlikable, and they are so vividly drawn that the reader feels like they’re jumping off the page—unfortunately, because these are not characters with whom you’d ever want to interact in real life.
The protagonist is Jack, whose parents are so nasty, and so omnipresent, that perhaps it’s understandable that Jack himself is such a pain. His wife, Joy, seems set up to be the “good” character, but it’s hard to see how she and Jack managed to stay together for nearly 35 years, and when she dumps him while he’s dealing with the recent death of his father, she doesn’t exactly stake out the moral high ground.
There are moments of humor, and certainly there are some interesting observations about families and their continuing influences. But the book’s unrelenting negativity makes it a tough read, and by its end, I was just glad to be rid of its characters, once and for all. -
Das war mein erstes Buch von Richard Russo. Ich muss sagen, es hat mir sehr gut gefallen und hat mich nachdenklich zurück gelassen.
Einerseits kann man sicherlich sagen, dass Jack Griffin, der Hauptprotagonist, in einer Mid-Life-Crisis steckt, aber das wäre zu wenig. Durch diese Krise werden mehrere Fragen aufgeworfen. Inwieweit steigen wir in die Fußstapfen unserer Eltern? Inwieweit bestimmen unsere Erfahrungen mit unseren Eltern unser weiteres Leben? Wie wäre unser Leben verlaufen, wenn wir bestimmte Entscheidungen anders entschieden hätten? Inwieweit zwingen wir unseren Partnern unsere Sicht der Dinge auf und beeinflussen so Lebenswege/Entscheidungen? Gibt es perfekte Ehe? Und perfekte Familien, in denen sich alle verstehen?
Sehr interessante Fragen, die mich zum Nachdenken angeregt haben, da auch ich schon 54 bin und merke, dass ich in vielen Dingen immer mehr meinen Eltern ähnel. Sogar bei Dingen, die mir bei ihnen auf die Nerven gegangen sind... -
No one does human nastiness better than Richard Russo. Empire Falls was one of the best books I ever read. Terrific. That was small town nastiness. This one is Cape Cod nastiness. So there was a bit of deja vu.
These people were the kind of people that think God made Cape Cod just for them. The kind that get rid of the natural pine needle yards and plant green grass with just enough fertilizer and pesticide to poison their own groundwater. The kind that Trump voters complain about being elitist. In fact, they never say "the Midwest." They always say "the fucking Midwest." And I do mean always. And they never just mention a Midwestern state like Iowa. It is always "fucking Iowa."
There were some nasty jabs along the way that made me cringe. Is the point that we are all nasty? Am I nasty? He made me think about that. -
While I haven't read tons by Russo, I definitely will count on any of his books to engage me. He is able to make small moments so important. I marvel at how the thread unravels. This deals with a couple attending two different weddings. They have been married for over thirty years. But this is Russo, so you know there's way more going on here. Another great story from a gifted writer.
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3.5 stars
I've read a few books by Richard Russo, with
Empire Falls being my favorite. Since it is summer and around her (for us at least) summer is in part about Cape Cod, I decided to finally read Russo's That Old Cape Magic. My take away message from this book is "marriage is hard and not always happy".
Growing up, Griffin's parents would drive from the midwest to Cape Cod. They would ironically sing "That Old Cape Magic" (a spin on That Old Black Magic) every time they crossed over the Sagamore Bridge on their way to the Cape. The Cape holds a special place in the family's heart. They dream of buying a house there but can never quite afford it. Griffin's parents aren't affectionate at all with their son and seem to prepare spending time without him. They both professors and are constantly striving to teach at a better school. They are definitely more into their careers than they are into being parents.
As an adult, Griffin is a screenwriter and also teaches screenwriting classes at a college. He's married and has a daughter. Griffin tries to work that old Cape magic on his wife but it doesn't quite hit the mark. Griffin is also reworking a screenplay throughout the book that is based on one summer he spent down the Cape as a boy. His parents are now divorced and like to speak poorly about each other to Griffin.
I appreciated all of the Cape stuff as I love reading books set locally or in places that I'm familiar with. However, I didn't really like any of the characters so I wasn't as into the book as I'd hoped to be. This would be a great book to read on a trip to the Cape if you were looking for something that isn't so light & fluffy.
What to listen to while reading (or taking a break)
That Old Black Magic by Frank Sinatra
Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks
Riptide by Vance Joy
Summer Soft by Stevie Wonder
Bye Bye Love by The Cars
Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi -
There are two weddings used as bookends with a year in the protagonist's life in between. Jack Griffin, after 34 years of marriage, is dealing with the question of who he wants to be when he grows up. His life has sort of snuck up on him and he's not sure if he's happy with where he ends up.We get to spend lots of very well written angst-filled days with Jack.
Both of his parents have died within this past year, bringing up all kinds of memories. Let's just say Jack's parents weren't the warmest of parents. They are both academics, who've settled for jobs in the Midwest while they both believe they should be at an East coast Ivy League school. Jack has been given the task of spreading their ashes at a suitable place on the Cape. The parents divorced so two separate resting places are needed.
The title of the book is somewhat ironic as the yearly vacation Jack and his parents spent on the Cape were often less than magical. Every year as his parents crossed over the bridge that brought them to a cape Cod, they would sing "that old Cape Magic" to the tune of "that Old Black Magic." The family clung to the hope that. This year's vacation would be the magical one.
My favorite character by far was Jack's deceased mother, who frequently made snarky comments about whatever was going on in Jack's life. I didn't much care for her when she was alive, but dead she was funny.
Russo did not write a 'feel good ' story here. The characters and story are real. And real isn't always pretty. Jack sums up his current life thusly: Late middle age, he was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming.
Three stars because, while I understood the characters, I never really connected with any of them. How things might turn out was not all that urgent or important to me. I wanted to feel more. I need to feel more. -
A sweet and sardonic parable about how finding happiness in life is challenged by the continual collision of past and future with the present. Jack Griffin is happy in his marriage, his home in Connecticut, the transition of his career as a Hollywood scriptwriter to a college teaching post, and his thriving daughter. In the course of the novel, as we move backward and forward in time, all these foundations of his life are threatened. At the beginning, his return to Cape Cod to attend a wedding of his daughter's friend revives his conflicted memories of summer sojourns there during his youth. The Cape represents the dream of happiness his snobby, academic parents aspired to but never could afford. There is much satirical humor about academics as in Russo's "Straight Man". The dialogue and internal monologues of Griffin (including the internalized voice of his mother) are wonderful vehicles for our journey with an ordinary man with a good heart trying to find the right path through life with his own and his wife's dysfunctional families. To me, the novel was satisfying in the same way as Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter."
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This is 3.5 stars for me. I read it in one sitting and was thoroughly entertained, but not profoundly moved. It sort of felt like Russo phoned this one in, relying on the familiar themes of warped egos and political machinations inherent to the Academy, marital angst and the woes of the white upper-middle class- and they have many, in Russoland. I think Russo presented these themes far more authentically in "Straight Man."
But there were some laugh out loud moments that were so worth the price of admission! I wish we could have spent more time with Griffin and his mother, who just killed me.
And yes, I must second and third the warnings re: the book jacket. Fortunately I heeded the warnings and saved the inner flap to read after I'd turned the last page of the novel. The book synopsis was like a preview to an action film- why bother reading the book when the "preview" reveals the entire plot! -
Another reviewer said it best, it was "thin"--would have been a great short story, but the second half really seemed lacking in substance and details. (copied review) The book's two-part structure is simple and elegant: two weddings, a year apart, the first on Cape Cod, the second in Maine. Russo's focus in both parts is on Jack Griffin, a 57-year-old English professor who's having a "middle-age meltdown." Even while the wedding march plays for members of the younger generation, he's busy fumbling his own 34-year marriage. Griffin loves his wife, but "his dissatisfaction had become palpable." He's bored with teaching, and he hankers after the excitement of his Hollywood writing days. His bigger problem, though, is that he still harbors enough "pathological resentment" toward his parents for a therapists' convention. He's been carting his father's ashes around in the trunk of his car for nine months, waiting for just the right moment to let go of the mortal remains of the man who drove him crazy. And meanwhile, his 85-year-old mother keeps heckling him from her nursing home.
