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(3.63) | 4 | Robert Boswell, author of the highly acclaimed Crooked Hearts, has now written a thoughtful, funny, and penetrating portrait of a modern American family that explores the breaches and bonds between husbands and wives, parents and children, and introduces one of the most antic teenagers since Holden Caulfield. Dulcie is Southern California fifteen, rebellious and charming, willful and guileless - she can't stand her mother and thinks her father is a hick. She despises.
School, likes to get high, and enjoys making other people squirm in response to her pranks. Angela (Dulcie's mother) is approaching forty and feels her life spinning out of control. Her husband is having an affair and her daughter disappears at odd hours of the night. Exhausted with worry over just about everything, Angela decides to enlist the help of her ex-husband in dealing with Dulcie. Stephen, quiet and introspective, is still in love with Angela, but he has.
Managed, slowly, to move on without her. When she calls to announce that she is driving Dulcie to the small Iowa farm - where the family began and after five years fell apart - Stephen becomes obsessed by what Angela's reaction will be to the house, which he has kept exactly the same since she left. Gently, imperceptibly, Boswell leads us into a maze of family dynamics where the reader is entranced and frequently surprised - and experiences flashes of recognition at.
Every turn.… (more) |
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Would they ever look so happy again. The handsome groom and his bride. As they stepped into that long black limousine, for their mystery ride. - Bruce Springsteen  | |
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To T.L. and for Toni, Jade, and Noah | |
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Angela and Stephen Landis followed the winding creek to one end of the property, tramped across the shallow water, and walked back on the other side, meandering through a narrow grove of trees. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (1)
▾Book descriptions Robert Boswell, author of the highly acclaimed Crooked Hearts, has now written a thoughtful, funny, and penetrating portrait of a modern American family that explores the breaches and bonds between husbands and wives, parents and children, and introduces one of the most antic teenagers since Holden Caulfield. Dulcie is Southern California fifteen, rebellious and charming, willful and guileless - she can't stand her mother and thinks her father is a hick. She despises.
School, likes to get high, and enjoys making other people squirm in response to her pranks. Angela (Dulcie's mother) is approaching forty and feels her life spinning out of control. Her husband is having an affair and her daughter disappears at odd hours of the night. Exhausted with worry over just about everything, Angela decides to enlist the help of her ex-husband in dealing with Dulcie. Stephen, quiet and introspective, is still in love with Angela, but he has.
Managed, slowly, to move on without her. When she calls to announce that she is driving Dulcie to the small Iowa farm - where the family began and after five years fell apart - Stephen becomes obsessed by what Angela's reaction will be to the house, which he has kept exactly the same since she left. Gently, imperceptibly, Boswell leads us into a maze of family dynamics where the reader is entranced and frequently surprised - and experiences flashes of recognition at.
Every turn. ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description |
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Robert Boswell's 1992 novel “Mystery Ride” is not read much today — try finding it in a bookstore — but in the 1990s it was a bestseller. The title may have been a bit deceptive. One wonders how many people bought it assuming it to be a murder mystery, perhaps taking place during a drive across the country. There's plenty of travel in Boswell's story, yet the ride of the title takes place mostly on an Iowa farm.
Very much in love when they buy the farm in 1971, Angela and Stephen Landis each envision a different kind of future. She sees the farm as just a youthful fling, a charming place to live during their extended honeymoon. He actually wants to become a farmer. And so she divorces the man she still loves and moves west with their young daughter, hoping he will follow her. He doesn't.
The story skips forward a number of years when their daughter, Dulcie, has become a troubled teenager whom Angela can no longer manage. She decides to take the girl back to the farm for the summer to see if Stephen can control her. Meanwhile she has remarried to a dashing but unfaithful man named Quinn, while a woman named Leah and her own teenage daughter, Roxanne, have just moved into the farmhouse with Stephen.
In other hands this plot could easily turn into a comedy, but Boswell has other, better ideas. Readers, like the characters themselves, have no idea where this ride might take them. (