That Old Cape Magic

A Novel

By: Richard Russo

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Following Bridge of Sighs - a national best seller hailed by The Boston Globe as “an astounding achievement” and “a masterpiece” - Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises of youth.

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 30 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.

©2009 Richard Russo (P)2009 Random House

thumbs down

Although I have read Russo twice before ("Empire Falls" and "Bridge of Sighs") I found this novel basically boring and wondering why I should care about the protagonist or his problems (I get it... his parents could not love him... let's move on). I do recognize how brilliantly the author can construct a sentence and was many times blown away by his prose, but I would not recommend this novel.

Nothing to write home to Mother about

I had to listen to this whole thing for a bookclub and frequently wanted to ask, "Are we there yet?". It was labored and self-conscious with a bizarre seasoning of slap-stick. Huh??

I stuck with it till the end...

This book was horrible. Sorry to be so blunt, but really wish someone warned me. The man character is a man in his 50's...I never figured out what he was so unhappy about. The whole story goes on and on and on about his unhappy childhood and his dissatisfaction with his life. Yet no major trauma or infliction is revealed.

Meh

This works fine as an audiobook, but the story was a downer and it was hard to feel connected to the characters.

This Book was just plain AWFUL!

I don't care how technical you want to get, but I listened to this till the end and it was bad from start to finish