“who in the world despairs more exquisitely than the young, it’s something the old tend to forget”
Jacket Copy: Peter and Rebecca Harris: midforties denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca’s much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three year old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career- the entire world he has so carefully constructed. Like his legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we; live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives.
Similar to: Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”; John Green; Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama; Philip Roth’s American Pastoral; James Joyce
Highlights:
--this book is about seeming minutiae. The little split second decisions we make all day long, that, while often appearing rather inconsequential, indeed do have effects that change the course of things. The novel traces the cause and effect patterns of several of these “small” decisions to their, inevitable and at the same time unpredictable, ends.
--this book suggests that what we generally consider beautiful and aesthetically pleasing is often missing that factor of true beauty: the ugliness within that makes the beautiful parts stand out by contrast. It posits that its not the virtues of people that ultimately attract us to them, but rather their vices, their flaws, their inconsistencies.
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