Books › Larry's Party
Women's Prize for Fiction 1998
Larry's Party
First published 1997 · 526 pages
An elegant, tender, and witty exploration of an ordinary man's quiet search for self across the shifting decades of the late twentieth century.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like examining the cross-sections of an ordinary life through a lens of profound tenderness and sharp irony. The narrative unfolds at a steady, reflective pace, seamlessly flashing back and forward through the decades to capture the shifting moods of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. It is a deeply introspective experience, steeped in a quiet nostalgia and unerring poignancy as it traces the paradoxes of the male condition at the end of the twentieth century. The prose is elegant and perceptive, possessing a unique power to elevate trivial, everyday moments into momentous emotional milestones. This book will delight readers who crave character-driven literary fiction that maps the stubborn, quiet search for self amidst society's ever-changing expectations.
- Mood
- reflective
- nostalgic
- introspective
- quietly profound
- Tone
- ironic
- tender
- witty
- poignant
- perceptive
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the male condition · changing societal expectations · search for self · the profound in the mundane · passage of time
- The writing
- Elegant, seamless, and perceptive, elevating the trivial details of an ordinary life into momentous revelations.
- The arc
- Moves from the spontaneity and blind enchantment of early adulthood through the lean paradoxes of middle age, culminating in a quiet, stubborn realization of self.
- Who it's for
- Readers who appreciate quiet, character-driven literary fiction that explores the nuances of ordinary life and the evolving male experience over decades.
About the book
Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony and tenderness. Carol Shields gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997 that flash back and forward seamlessly. As Larry journeys toward the millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men, Shields' elegant prose makes the trivial into the momentous. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larry moves through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search of self. Larry's odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy and faultless wisdom.
Description from Open Library.
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