Customer Reviews

Home Before Dark (Contemporary Classics (Washington Square Press))

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Home Before Dark is a beautifully written, moving book that stays with you long after you have finished reading it. It helps that Susan Cheever's subject, her father, was (and remains long after his death) one of the finest fiction writers in the history of American literature. What distinguishes John Cheever's stories, outside of his magical touch with words, is the passion and love he brings to illuminating his small corner of the world -- life in the New York suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s. Most writers who explore the suburbs do so with an arm's length superiority -- taking pains to distance themselves politically, emotionally, and intellectually from their characters. What makes Cheever's stories such a joy it that he loves the world he writes about -- even as he recognizes its banalities and limitations. In Cheever's hand, the commuter life becomes a sad, beautiful symphony of lost hopes and desires. The 5:45 train, the clinking of cocktail glasses, the smell of meat cooking on an outdoor grill are not just dull routines of modern life, but thrilling and exotic elements of that peculiarly American optimism and quest for success that flowered after World War II -- all the more alluring because the quest is so often doomed.
In the same way, Susan Cheever brings passion and honesty to the telling of her father's life. In her hands, John Cheever's own outwardly unremarkable search for the suburban dream life of wife, kids, dog and station wagon in Ossining, New York becomes a dark romantic quest of longing, passion, success and disappointment. She is thoroughly honest (sometimes brutally so) in detailing Cheever's alcoholism, philandering, phobias and parental shortcomings -- so it is all the more remarkable that the final portrait of Cheever that emerges is so rich and full of love.
This book is the perfect companion piece for Cheever's indispensible Collected Stories (with that famous red cover). Think of Home Before Dark as a sort of lexicon to John Cheever's world. I keep both books on a special bookshelf -- easily accessible -- containing the books I come back to again and again, like old friends.

As a memoir of a daughter's relationship with her father, this is very touching, but there is little here that sheds much light on John Cheever, the writer. Given the various levels of family dysfunction and unhappiness in Cheever's stories and novels, it is gratifying that his daughter found so much to love in her father. For a more abrasive, but still admiring view of the man, you might also enjoy reading Benjamin Cheever's novel, The Plagiarist.

This is a very interesting look at the demons of the father, from alcoholism to a confused sexuality that wreaked havoc on his family. John Cheever forged a career writing about his own issues, tales of disillusion and disintegration in suburbia, all to alcoholic excess and in search of meaning. Susan, his daughter, is an absolutely excellent writer and explains what he was like as she grew up, so it is not a straight biography but mixed with memoire. Some of it is shocking, such as the way John periodically left to be with men, only to come back to a wife he clearly loved enduringly. But there is also a lot of redemption, of striving to be better though the pain is ever present. Oddly, I have never liked his writing much, finding his personal problems more of a spectacle and indeed more absorbing to learn about. Susan, I think, is the true writing talent in the family - her style is clear and unflinchingly honest, almost exhibitionistic. Few expose themselves so evenhandedly. Indeed, her moments are unforgettably vivid: such as her sitting in the lap of a drunken guest writer, in a tweed jacket reeking of cigarette smoke, saying to herself that she would marry that kind of man; or watching her father, after a few hours of writing and overcoming a hangover, pruning his lawn with ritual energy.

Truly a beautiful, often tormented, book. Warmly recommended.

This memoir tells a great deal about the extended family of John Cheever. His is the less reputable wing of of a family which goes back to the early foundations of America. Susan Cheever writes with understanding and consideration of her father's troubled life. The shocking bankruptcy and abandonment of his father remained a basis for his great insecurity throughout his life. Susan Cheever reveals her father to be a man of great charm, and excellent ability to befriend and be helped by wealthy patrons, including those at Yaddo the Saratoga writing colony which for him was a second home. Susan Cheever also describes somewhat fitfully the mixed- up - marriage Cheever never let go of, one in which there seemed to have been infidelity on both sides- and which seemed to go downhill in the later years.
Susan Cheever writes with descriptive elegance about her father 's life. She does not however explain or even hint at the great mystery of how he managed to create his best work. And she does not really tell us what the work consists in, or how it best expressed what her father was.
I also felt the work lacking in another way. It does not really get inside Cheever and reveal to us the world the way he might have seen it. Nor does it trace the effect of his celebrity and alcoholism , of his wit and capacity for friendship on his children. Susan Cheever is silent about her father's effect upon her.
I found that is with all the basic admiration and sympathy that she expresses for her father, a certain coldness in the work- a coldness which was perhaps her father's also.
But again perhaps I found Cheever's story much less 'moving 'than I might have because I too am not a great fan of his stories.

This is a very well written memoir. I haven't read much of her father's work, but of course I knew of him before reading it. I liked that she showed his character with affection yet clarity.

Susan Cheever's obvious love for her father comes through, and certainly her view of him isn't as objective as a disinterested party would be, but his humanity and endearing qualities shine through, along with his weakness and frailties.

I enjoyed the way she interwove aspects of her life and his, and the construction of the book. I regretted seeing it end and wanted to know more about everyone. There is some obliqueness as another reviewer mentioned, this is definitely not a 'tell all' with a lot of dish.

I found Cheever to be insightful, open and yet delicate toward the more unflattering and painful aspects of their life. A good read.

I first became acquainted with this book in the late 1980s. The memory of it stayed with me, and I recently read it again. I think Susan Cheever has done an estimable job in shedding light on the human condition through her portrait of her father. Cheever movingly writes about her father's tendencies toward excess, complicated emotional drives, and the desire to create. What strikes me, having just finished the book, is how much Susan Cheever plays the role of non-judgmental observer in her father's life. The portrait of John Cheever that emerges is that of a human, frail powerhouse who remains, at his essence, unknowable. If that sounds like a contradiction, well, we're full of contradictions, aren't we?

This would have been a better book if Susan Cheever had more to write about. For example, she could have delved more into the business of his writing, how much money he made, or his friendships with other writers. A little bit of research wouldn't have hurt. This is a very slight book. Also, I could care to know less about Susan Cheever; i.e. how she had been the source of some of John's stories....

I bought this after reading The Journals of John Cheever (which is an incredible book.) What I was most struck by after reading Ms. Cheever's book, was that her father was a true writer, and she is not. Her book was boring, predictable, and shed no real new light on her father's personality. His journals are raw, real, and intimate. Her recollections are alienated and just plain boring. Sorry, but I was hoping for an interesting read, and this wasn't it.