 Best Sellers Recently Viewed | | |  | |  | | | That Old Cape Magic | | | | | | | |
List Price:
| $25.95 | |
Our Price:
| $1.04 | |
You Save:
| $24.91 (96%)
| | *Shipping: | $4.49 | |
*Shipping:
| |
| | | SKU:
1002815623 | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1-2 business days | | Only 5 left in stock, order soon! | | |
|
| | Features | First EditionSigned by Author
| |
| | Description | 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 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. | |
| | Product Details | | Author: | Richard Russo | | Hardcover: | 272 pages | | Publisher: | Knopf | | Publication Date: | August 04, 2009 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0375414967 | | Product Length: | 6.61 inches | | Product Width: | 1.02 inches | | Product Height: | 9.55 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.19 pounds | | Package Length: | 9.3 inches | | Package Width: | 6.5 inches | | Package Height: | 1.1 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.1 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 176 reviews |
| |
| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 176 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
124 of 138 found the following review helpful:
 One man struggles to cope Aug 14, 2009
By D. Kuski
Richard Russo made his mark in the literary world with his books Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs. His newest novel, That Old Cape Magic, is about a middle-aged man that is having a difficult time coping with reality. Yet, while Jack Griffin is having trouble letting go of the past, the present is filled with slapstick-type comedy that Mr. Russo delivers with impeccable timing. And this, gives the reader a future filled with searches into their own life, lighten with comedy. It really was an enjoyment to read.
Well, let's get a little more in depth, shall we? As I mentioned prior, Jack Griffin, is the focal point of the story. He is a well-respected professor going through a mid-life crisis. At 55, he just lost his dad and will soon lose his daughter (she is getting married) this forces Jack to rethink his life. Most of the book is flashbacks from Jack's life. Jack's childhood was filled with despair. His parents were highly trained and brilliant professors, but their attitudes forced them to work demeaning jobs, well below their status.
As such, they also had a difficult time coping with reality. Always believing "the grass was greener on the other side" This leads to the title of the book. During the family's summer vacations, they would sing Frank Sinatra's song, That Old Black Magic, but since they vacationed in Cape Cod, they changed it to, That Old Cape Magic. This is key. The story begins with Jack driving over the same bridge his family crossed during those trips, singing that old tune, preparing to scatter his father's ashes on his way to his daughter's best friends' wedding.
The book's timeline is just about a year, and that year is packed full of wonderfully described locals, off-beat humor, soul searching, two weddings, incredible dialog, well-developed characters, and a plotline that delves the reader into their own search for answers. The book is good. Real good. But I could only give it 4-stars because it just doesn't quite live up to some of Russo's earlier works. Much like Jack and Joy Griffin, you can look at it two ways. Jack would say, this book deserves to be judged on its own merit. Joy would say, the author has raised the bar with his previous works and while good, That Old Cape Magic, falls just under that bar.
115 of 130 found the following review helpful:
 Hmm . . . another meaningful bridge Aug 06, 2009
By Dogberry
"dogberrysheir"
Since reading Straight Man, I have eagerly anticipated the release of each new Richard Russo novel, and That Old Cape Magic was no exception. The danger in anticipation, of course, is that the real thing just might not live up to your expectations. Following Bridge of Sighs and Empire Falls is no easy task, either. Can you guess where this humble review is headed? Yep, I was a bit disappointed in TOCM. Not overly so, and it's still a fine book and a very good story, and Russo still does his amazing job of capturing the essence of fascinating, but somehow still believable characters. His delicate mixing of humor and tragedy is still strong. His ability to get the reader into the scene is amazing, and he writes the marital argument better than anyone, I think. This book was missing some of the more comedic foils in Russo's other books, but he's still drawn together an impressive cast. So what's wrong with the book? Maybe it's just a bit short. Maybe there was more story to tell. That was the feeling I came away with. If you are already a Russo fan, by all means, pick it up and read it; it's better than 99% of the other novels on the shelf. If you are new to Russo, however, save this one for later. Go back to Nobody's Fool or The Risk Pool or the Pulitzer Prize winning Empire Falls. Solid three stars for now, but I reserve the right to come back and bump it a bit after I've reflected for a while.
30 of 35 found the following review helpful:
 Looking For That "Happy" Place Aug 27, 2009
By Nancy Martin
I would like to think of Russo as being one of my favorite authors but don't feel qualified to make that statement since this is only the third book I've read by him....Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs being the other two. But I will say that I've loved all three and look forward to going back and reading some of his earlier works. So when writing this review, I'm not sure if his writing style has changed or if he has, in fact, gotten better. All I know is that I think he's a great storyteller and That Old Cape Magic keeps proving that point over and over with each page you turn.
I've been so looking forward to August '09 because there were four books coming out that I've been eager to read....South of Broad by Pat Conroy, Rules of Vengeance by Christopher Reich, The White Queen by Philippa Gregory and That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo. I thought I'd start out with the Russo book and right off the bat I've hit a home run. I loved it!!!!!
There are many authors out there who write stories with very little dialogue and, most times, they are not my favorite books simply because the author's storytelling capabilities aren't good enough to pull this off. In Russo's book, I didn't care if the characters said one word to each other because the story he was telling was just so interesting that I failed to notice the lack of discourse.
And this is an author who definitely loves his bridges. As I've already mentioned, I've only read three of Russo's books but each one prominently mentions a bridge. In Empire Falls, it was the Iron Bridge that separated the mansion of the Whiting's from the rest of blue collar Empire Falls. The Bridge of Sighs is an actual bridge located in Venice and it's the last thing a prisoner walks over before being imprisoned in that famous city. Is Russo trying to tell us something? Do his characters cross over into their own prison of sorts as a penance when crossing these bridges? In this book, the bridge of note is the Sagamore Bridge. It represents two weeks of happiness to Jack Griffin's family as it leads to Cape Cod....their ultimate vacation place and their reprieve from the Mid f'n West as his parents liked to call it.
Russo has so many subplots in this book, one of which is the story of a childhood summer on Cape Cod where young Jack meets young Peter Browning and has the most idyllic two weeks of his life as Peter's family is everything Jack wishes his was and Peter is the friend he always wanted. Four decades later, as a would-be novelist, it is this story (Summer of the Brownings) that Jack is destined to tell and it's something he's had in the works for years but he can never seem to finish it. It makes me wonder if this story (That Old Cape Magic) is also something that Russo has been dying to tell for years and perhaps he too has been sitting on it for a long time.
This is only one of the stories Russo tells. He goes through Jack's life with his academically snobbish parents, Jack's marriage to someone he makes unhappy, Jack's desire to be rid of his parents' influence and, most importantly, his desire for a place to scatter their ashes. This book is chock full of everything an avid reader is looking for. I can't say enough about it.
On a personal note, I really related to the main character in this book being so close in age and experiencing two weeks of bliss each year while on summer vacations with my own family. In my case, it wasn't the Cape, it was Riverhead out near the Hamptons. Taking that car ride from Brooklyn, New York and traveling on Montauk Highway until we finally passed "The Big White Duck" which was, in a sense, our Sagamore Bridge, is something I vividly remember. From that point on, my three brothers and I knew everything was going to be happy. My mother liked my Dad more during those two weeks of the year and even thought her four kids weren't too much of a burden.
Russo talks about happiness perhaps being "a place". This gave me some food for thought because I clearly could relate to that place (Riverhead) bringing me more happiness as a young child than anything I had ever known. Are we all searching for that happy place? Surely Jack was in That Old Cape Magic. You'll have to read the book to see if Jack finds his "place of happiness".
15 of 16 found the following review helpful:
Salty and mature Aug 25, 2009
By switterbug
Jack Griffin is an irresolute 50-something guy driving around with a lot of dead weight, both figuratively and literally. As the novel opens, he is placing the ashes of his dead father (9 months in the urn now) in the wheel well of his car, (they have been in the trunk) intending to scatter them in Cape Cod. He is meeting his wife and daughter there for the wedding of his daughter's best friend. During this time, the lacunae of memory begin to break free and combat with the credo and convictions of his consciousness and close orbit. The bittersweet reminiscence of family vacations on the Cape with his parents and the tart taste of the "Truro Accord" he made with his wife on their honeymoon over three decades ago provide the propellant fuel for this story of late middle-age angst and awakening.
Russo navigates the banks of this novel with a constrained and firm hand on the tiller, with not too much wind in the sails and with a decidedly inner-directed course. And he seamlessly flows from the sober and contemplative to an uproarious physical comedy, placing him in the same league as Bellow, Roth, and Irving, with a laconic protagonist possessing tragically comic (or comically tragic) inner demons. Griffin's inability to complete a short story that he started years ago, for example, opens a chasm to a dark abyss that plagues him up and down Route 6 through the Cape, through the story. A rehearsal dinner for another wedding is headed for an imbroglio when a wheelchair ramp does the unexpected.
Russo triumphs when he concentrates on Griffin, a thoroughly three-dimensional character whose perceptions and failings and desires are authentic and prismatic. It is Griffin's character that illuminates his parents' and underscores the pathos of his wife, Joy. When other characters are seen through Griffin's emotional turbulence, they are interesting and affecting. However, when given their own free rein, they tend to flatten, lose their luminescence. A few characters even come across as red herrings. You need to come to your own conclusions about this canvas of characters--I don't want to ruin anyone's reading pleasure by diagramming every character or their worthiness to the story and its themes. These complaints of mine do prevent me from considering this novel flawless, but the story nonetheless has a resounding quality, with writing as smooth as sea glass and as craggy as the Cape coastline.
I grew up not terribly far from the Cape, and Russo brought back the magic of my own family vacations--crossing the Sagamore Bridge; eating oysters in Wellfleet; the cathedral spires in Truro; the moss, grey, blue of the ocean; and running up and down the sand dunes in Ptown--the dunes speckled with bleached green grass under a pale, hot sun.
As an addendum, I recommend this novel for the over-40 or 45. It is seasoned with the many nuanced issues more connected to the late-middle passages of life.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Read it for the moments... Nov 03, 2009
By JBurritt
"Saltydog83"
This is not Bridge of Sighs, but it's definitely a worthwhile read. It lacks the laugh-out-loud moments from Straight Man and the painful moments and detail from Empire Falls, but what do you expect from a short story turned 272 page novel (it probably should have been a short story included in Best Short Stories of 2009, but who am I to say)? At one point while reading this book I set it down, went downstairs, and apologized to my wife for something stupid and trivial I had done earlier in the day. When a book prompts a reaction like that, something rings true. And the end... Those more cynical than I might call it ridiculous, obvious, etc., but I was very pleased.
Now on to either John Irving's new book, which will likely disappoint, or Philip Roth's, which couldn't... right?
See all 176 customer reviews on Amazon.com
| |
* Estimated shipping rate for US 48 states. Final rate calculated at checkout. | |
| |  | |  |
|
You may also like ... start hide footer |
