Customer Reviews

All Our Yesterdays

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Surprise! Surprise! This Robert B. Parker novel is not only not about Spenser and Hawk foiling the bad guys by playing the game just a little close (or even just over) to the line of legal behavior. It isn't even about a private detective. Parker's All Our Yesterdays (as in Macbeth's "have lighted fools their way to dusty death." is a generational saga reminiscent of Jeffrey Archer--and at least as good. The setting is still the Boston of Spenser, Hawk, and Susan, but not the trendy, yuppie Boston they frequent. Instead we are in Charlestown, the lace-curtain Irish district, and following the lives of three Boston cops. The first, Conn Sheridan, was a sixteen year old sniper during the Easter Rebellion in Dublin. Later, after breaking out of a British jail just before his hanging, he immigrated to Boston where he joined the police. Conn was involved with the young wife of an American industrialist, a Boston Brahmin, in Dublin. Conn's son, Gus, inherits his father's secrets and rises to power in Boston Homicide, while connections to the underworld enable him to send his son, Chris, to Harvard Law. Eventually Chris, who is unknowingly involved with the granddaughter of his grandfather's lover, is appointed special investigator to stop a gang war and catch a serial killer of teenaged girls. Gus, however, already knows about the killer--his father caught him and let him go years before. After everything comes apart, Chris goes to Dublin to find his roots and understand the story his father has finally told him. The book is Chris telling the story in flashbacks to Grace as they try to reconcile their life together. It is a well-told story, with love, hate, war, revolution, cops and robbers, and some interesting twists and turns. It is much more complex than Spenser and Hawk shooting down the bad guys while Susan worries and supports. All Our Yesterdays is a good read.

OK, here's the deal. Robert B Parker wants to write something different, and he's just cranked out about 6 Spenser novels in a row. So, he sits down and writes this, All Our Yesterdays, a very good thriller, but often trashed novel. Why? Its easy... Robert B Parker is a simpistic writer, often taking for granted that you have read all the earlier novels,and you want no background material and no filler. Well, this isnt a Spenser novel, so background material is needed, you just met these guys. That for one agrivates Spenser fans, they like there novels to start on page one and never drag, but you do need a little background here. Heres the catcher, Robert B Parker also hates background material and explanitory writing. So he writes a vast, sprawling novel existing on three generations, with as little writing as possible.He does it in about 460 pages, (about the lengh of 2 Spenser novels). Does it work? Yes, its a gritty, fun yarn that is fast pased and slightly dark at times. Its also a little sterotypical towards the Irish, but Robert B Parker is Irish, so let that be. Its a welcome change of pace, more filling than most of his Spenser novels. Not a steak dinner filling, but more filling than say a Snickers.

All our Yesterdays was not a bad twisted intrigue, although a bit corny (I still couldn't put it down). But I am always disappointed when I pick up a Parker that doesn't include my favorite old characters! I can imagine that the writer wants to stretch out, but his fans (I couldn't even loan this one out...only Spenser my friends said!) are happiest with the characters that we fell in love with: Spenser, Hawk, Susan, and Pearl! By the way, Small Vices was brilliant.

This novel by Robert B. Parker is very different than his Spenser, Jesse Stone, and Sunny Randall novels. Those tend to be shorter, wittier, high-action mysteries, while this one focuses more on characters and relationships. For me, the plot and the characters were interesting enough to keep me reading, and by the second half, I was completely hooked and found myself unable to put the book down. I did find the dialog pretty forced and unnatural at times, and the characters' personalities and histories felt a bit cookie-cutter, but I enjoyed it in spite of these criticisms.

I'm not going to go into a blow by blow description of this Brilliant Novel. Simply put, who am I to comment on writing of this quality. I have long felt that Robert Parker is if not the most underrated writer of the 20th Century then certainly one of the ones at the head of the list. And the quality of writing and thinking encountered in this novel clearly represents some of the best of his impressive body of work! What other writer alive today could sum up an entire year (or more) of a character's life with a chapter consisting of only one or two pages? And get away with it!

Sadly, I fear that many who read this guy fail utterly to grasp the depth of his writing, the breadth of his wisdom, the grasp of his mind. Like a great actor who makes the mistake of playing the same sort of character one too many times, Parker let himself be sucked into the detective genre to the extent that many of those reading him got into the bad habit of speed reading their way through his books with only a chuckle here and there at the many witty moments that were the hallmark of the dialog between his well drawn characters.

Big mistake!

Robert Parker was a man of incredible depth, with an understanding of the human condition that many of today's novelists so sadly lack. The kind of guy Steinbeck would have loved, and Hemmingway would have feared. Reading him I am often put in mind of Raymond Carver one of the greatest short story writers of all time. Like Carver, Parker misses nothing as life unfolds before him and his command of seemingly unimportant detail brings his sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books alive in a way seldom encountered today.

When I heard Robert Parker had died I felt a huge empty hole instantly develop within my life. In some very real sense I felt I'd lost a friend though I never met him. Lost many friends, actually, as Spenser, Susan, Hawk, and all his other memorable characters died with him. He was that good! And better!

I will forever wish I'd shared my admiration for his work with him before he died...

Being a big fan of Spenser, I bought this in hardback without looking at the dustcover. Imagine my suprise when I started reading about Ireland's IRA. If the book had started and ended with Conn, Parker could have had a really good book. He just over-extended himself with 3 generations. I finished it, but I didn't enjoy the book once it left Ireland. I kept expecting it to improve-after all, it was a Parker novel. Not one I would recommend to anyone. I didn't even keep my copy, but sold it to a resale shop. I would have sworn someone else had written it and just put Robert B. Parker's name on it. Not on quality-par with Spenser novels or with Perchance to Dream or Poodle Springs

Being a long time fan of the Spenser novels, I was going into the book with a prejudice against liking it. After I sorted out the initial characters I was hooked. I did not want the book to end. Anyone familiar with the Spenser novels will be right at home with the writing style and flow of the book. I especially liked the way he blended the past storytelling with the current day dialoge. A very nice read.

I am a Parker fan and had a hard time getting into this book. It took me several days to read the first hundred pages but after that I read the rest of the book in two days. This is a nice departure from the Spenser novels, with none of the characters seeming like the Spenser characters, so it has a flavor all its own.

In his dedecation Parker says this story is about fathers and sons and while this is true it is about so much more. This novel has so many layers to it and will make an impact on you for days after you finish it.

I usually like Parker's books,and particularly when he deviates from his Spenser books. So, I really was expecting to enjoy All Our Yesterdays, probably Parker's most significant departure from his 'norm" However, much to my disappointment, I found this book to be have erratic pacing, slow to develop, and not very believable or interesting characters. As such, I wound up skimming through large passages and then, ultimately, giving up on it. There are just too many books and not enough time to waste time reading All Our Yesterdays.

What a sneaky great book.

For me it started a bit slow (2 chapters) but, thereafter it started to jump off the pages.

Parker is now one of my favorites.