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Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives.
BookshelfMonstrosity: A dramatic incident provokes adult siblings to explore their lives and relationships in these moving and lyrical novels. While more about family than race, both books include thought-provoking meditations on the complexity of racial relations in 21st century America.… (more)
I read, and loved Olive Kitteridge years ago. Also Abide with Me. Could not warm up to Lucy Barton, (My Name is Lucy Barton and Oh, William!). But the Burgess Boys! Oh, they felt so real to me. Their run-down Maine town, Shirley Falls, their grim, just get on with it attitude, and the way that, regardless of geographical separation they came together to support one of their own when the chips were really down. Elizabeth Strout really nails the dialogue, and describes the places.
Decided to read this now while waiting for Anything is Possible to become available. Thought it would be good to meet the Burgess brothers, since they figure in her latest book. And glad I did. ( )
Auch dieses Buch von Elizabeth Strout ist wieder einmal hervorragend geschrieben und beschreibt gelungen die einzelnen Mitglieder einer dysfunktionalen Familie. Allerdings hat es mir persönlich nicht ganz so gut gefallen wie die anderen Werke der Autorin. Aber das ist mehr persönliche Präferenz und mit Sicherheit nichts, was die Qualität des Buches betrifft. Deshalb auch vier Sterne. ( )
i am still mulling this one. while i liked it, there is something niggling at me about it, which i can't quite put my finger on. i found the story and the characters interesting, but it felt a bit fractured and, by the end, it's feels unresolved. i don't require tidy endings when i read, so that's not generally a problem for me. every now and then, though, i encounter a book that just feels unfinished. and i think that may be what's bothering gem about strout's novel.
i read this as part of my reading through the 2014 women's prize for fiction longlist nominees. this was book #7 for me, from the list. held up against some of the others i have already read...i am not sure i would shortlist this one.
but, since i am still sorting through my feelings about the book...maybe my opinion will change? ( )
Slow and steady is the best way to describe this story. A trio of adult siblings from Maine reconnect when one of their kids is charged with a hate crime. Susan never left home. Jim became a big lawyer in NYC. Bob is the quiet force that holds them together. I had a hard time getting into it, but once you understand the pace it hits its stride. The POV switch to a local Somali man didn't work as well because it was so jarring with the rest of the tone. I loved Bob's character growth throughout the story. It had me thinking about how we surround ourselves with the people we think we deserve. Glad I read this one before reading her newest in which Bob is a character. ( )
I came to this after the Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton books, in preparation for the release of Tell me Everything. Although this was written before the books I have previously read, there is the same calm authorial voice and solid characterisation. There is an opening chapter that frames the stories to come in the recent past, although we will now read them in the present tense. Jim, Bob and Susan Burgess are from Shirley Falls, a small town in Maine, although Jim and Bob both now live in New York, with Jim being a successful solicitor for defendants. Our story starts when Susan’s son, Zach, throws a frozen pig’s head into the local mosque in Shirley Falls as a “dumb joke”. About a quarter of the way into this book and I didn’t know which of the many stories started were going to be developed: • Sad and sorry Bob, with childhood trauma and his meeting with Margaret Estaver. • Angry Susan, who’s having trouble raising Zach as a divorced mother. • Currently successful Jim, who appears to be in control, just. • The Somalis, represented by Abdikarim’s story, who have come to Shirley Falls, as it appeared safer than the cities.
I needn’t have worried, they are all developed, illustrating one of the overarching themes of the book that “The facts didn’t matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.”
It’s wonderful how these stories of the Burgess boys and their wives will cascade down into occasional mentions in the later books, that deepen the stories overall. ( )
My mother and I talked a lot about the Burgess Family. "The Burgess kids," she called them.
Quotations
Back in New York, calling from my twenty-sixth-floor apartment one evening, watching through the window as dusk touched the city and lights emerged like fireflies in the fields of buildings spread out before me, I said, "Do you remember when Bob's mom sent him to a shrink? Kids talked about it on the playground. 'Bobby Burgess has to see a doctor for mentals.'" "Kids are awful," my mother said. "Honest to God."
We did this kind of thing, repeated the stuff we knew.
And so it began. Like a cat's cradle connecting my mother to me, and me to Shirley Falls, bits of gossip and news and memories about the Burgess kids supported us.
A short pause, and then Bob said, "Yeah," his voice dropping into an understanding so quick and entire–it was his strong point, Helen thought, his odd ability to fall feetfirst into the little pocket of someone else's world for those few seconds.
Traffic moved quickly and with a sense of community, as though all drivers were tenants in this fast forward-moving form.
For years Bob had lived with the shadow of his not-children appearing before him.
"Stay in the present," Elaine would say
Bob's ancient inner Bobness had returned.
"You know what Jimmy would say, don't you? He'd say there's no crying in baseball."
By the time the bail commissioner showed up, Bob's weariness seemed like a large wet coat he was wearing.
Zach came through the door, his face as white as paper.
"I thought, Jesus, if you can't speak the truth in a shrink's office, where can you?"
How could he describe what he felt? The unfurling of an ache so poignant it was almost erotic, this longing, the inner silent gasp as though in the face of something unutterably beautiful, the desire to put his head down on the big loose lap of this town, Shirley Falls.
He came to understand this had a danger altogether different from the dangers in the camp. Living in a world where constantly one turned and touched incomprehension–they did not comprehend, he did not comprehend–gave the air the lift of uncertainty and this seemed to wear away something in him, always he felt unsure of what he wanted, what he thought, even what he felt.
They were not from Maine, Susan remembered that, and they had seemed–filing into a pew each Christmas Sunday service–as exquisite as a flock of foreign birds.
The thick sugary pull of life had gone.
The Burgess boys rode up the turnpike as twilight arrived. It arrived gently, the sky remaining a soft blue as the trees along either side of the unfolding pavement darkened.
What was this thing that Jimmy had? The intangible, compelling part of Jimmy? It's that he showed no fear, Bob realized. He never had. And people hated fear. People hated fear more than anything.
You couldn't fake it. It showed in the glance of an eye, in the way you entered a room, walked up the steps to a bandstand.
Always on the exit ramp, Susan had once said of Jim.
"Work toward something. That's how it's done. You belong to society, you give to society."
A silence sat in the room that felt so momentarily present and pulsating Bob didn't dare disturb it by raising his glass.
The key to contentment was to never ask why; she had learned that long ago.
she learned–freshly, scorchingly–of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into some large and private club that she had not known existed. Women who miscarried. Society did not care much for them. It really didn't. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently. People outside the club said, "You'll have another one."
The snow sparkled, and the river sparkled, as though diamonds had been openhandedly flung throughout the air.
A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others.
Margaret Estaver's office looked like Margaret. Unorganized, and gentle, and welcoming.
But by October there were many days when the swell of rightness, loose-limbedness, and gentle gravity came to him.
So she lay awake at night and at times there was a curious peacefulness to this, the darkness warm as though the deep violet duvet held its color unseen, wrapping around Pam some soothing aspect of her youth, as her mind wandered over a life that felt puzzlingly long; she experienced a quiet surprise that so many lifetimes could be fit into one.
No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.
Memory. Open-palmed it passed before her scenes, and then would close, taking away the beginning, the end, the framework these scenes existed within.
And it was too late. No wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.
This tiny piece of knowledge was nothing more than a dust particle hanging in the air.
Shame, bone-deep, tightened his arms.
Helen, feeling this was contained in the face of her sister-in-law, thought the word Rube, and then felt very tired deep down inside herself. She did not want to think that, or be that way, and she thought it was awful such a word came to her, and no sooner did she think that than to her horror she thought the word Nigger, which had sometimes happened to her before, Nigger, nigger, as though her mind had Tourette's syndrome and these terrible things went uncontrollably through it.
His first instinct was to get up and close the door, and the very nature of the complaint made this woman dangerous. She could have been sitting there quietly holding an automatic machine gun in her lap; to be alone with her would be like handing her another magazine of bullets.
She said kindly, "I think there is no perfect way to live,"
Everyone on the train seemed innocent and dear to him, their eyes unfocused with morning reveries that were theirs alone, perhaps words spoken to them earlier, or words they dreamed of speaking; some read newspapers, many listened through earbuds to their own soundtrack, but most stared absently as Bob did–and he was moved by the singularity and mystery of each person he saw.
Her face had the naked look of someone whose glasses were removed
"What am I going to do, Bob? I have no family." "You have family," Bob said. "You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane."
Last words
When Bob fell asleep on Susan's couch he held in his hands - held on to it all night - his phone, set on vibrate, in case Jim needed him, but the phone remained unmoving and unblinking and it stayed that way as the first pale light crept unapologetically beneath the blinds.
Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives.
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Haunted by a freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possible could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a legal aid attorney who idolises Jim, has always taken it in his stride.
But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan - the sibling who stayed behind - urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has landed himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.
Haiku summary
Did Bob kill father? Did Zach act out a hate crime? And what about Jim?
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Decided to read this now while waiting for Anything is Possible to become available. Thought it would be good to meet the Burgess brothers, since they figure in her latest book. And glad I did. (