Bill Warrington's Last Chance [Hardcover]

James King (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 5, 2010

Read James King's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community.

A magnificent debut about a man's odyssey toward family redemption- with his granddaughter along for the ride

Bill Warrington realizes he has Alzheimer's and his lucid days are numbered. Determined to repair a lifetime of damage to his estranged adult children, Bill takes off with his fifteen-year-old granddaughter April on a cross-country drive, bound for San Francisco, where she dreams of becoming a rock star. As the unlikely pair heads west, Bill leaves clues intended to force his three children-including April's frantic mother-to overcome their mutual distrust and long-held grievances to work together to find them.

In this dazzling road trip novel, James King masterfully explores themes of aging, sibling rivalry, family dysfunction, and coming of age, against a backdrop of the American heartland. Unflinching, funny, and poignant, Bill Warrington's Last Chance speaks to that universal longing for familial reconciliation, love, and forgiveness.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This nicely tuned road trip novel from 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award–winner King begins in Ohio, where April Shea is a pigheaded 14-year-old girl who experiments with pot and constantly squabbles with her single mother, Marcy. Together, Marcy and April care for Marcy's 79-year-old father, Bill, a Korean War vet and retired salesman now suffering from Alzheimer's. Bill has his heart set on bringing his family together for a reunion, but with this looking ever unlikely—his two sons are perpetually out of the picture—Bill and April take off for California, where April plans on joining a band and Bill imagines he can force a reunion. Along the way, April fends off the lecherous creeps, Bill slips increasingly into his mental twilight, and Bill's children rise above their family dysfunction and band together. The spirited interplay between the gruff but wounded Bill and the perhaps too precocious April provides the most sensitive scenes in this enjoyable first novel. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

King’s debut spotlights one dysfunctional family whose patriarch seeks to heal old wounds. Bill Warrington’s wife died of cancer years ago, but he’s managed pretty well by himself until recently. Now that he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Bill decides it’s time to bring his estranged children together while he still can. Mike, the eldest, believes he saw Bill give his mother an overdose of pain pills before she died, and has distanced himself from his father for years. Nick is still drifting aimlessly since his own wife died three years earlier. He leaves interaction with their father to their sister, Marcy, a bitter divorcée struggling to raise her 14-year-old daughter, April, who can’t wait to escape her mother’s domination. Bill hatches a plan to “kidnap” April for a summer road trip (with her at the wheel), and drops clues along the way in hopes the siblings will unite in the effort to find them. Part road odyssey, part coming-of-age tale, King’s novel achieves the exact right balance of humor, redemption, and reconciliation. --Deborah Donovan

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Viking; 1 edition (August 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067002161X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670021611
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #934,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James King lives in Connecticut with his wife and their two children. "Bill Warrington's Last Chance" is his first novel.

Visit: http://www.jamesking-writer.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent July 8, 2010

By E. M. Bristol VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The book is somewhat deceptively described as a "road trip novel," the actual trip doesn't begin until 100 pages in. However, that turned out not to matter. Veteran and father of three adult children, Bill Warrington is beginning to develop Alzheimer's. Because his granddaughter April wants to visit San Francisco (in order to become a famous singer), and his three children aren't close to each other (or him), he arranges a trip with her without telling her mom. However, he provides clues to their destination for his three children which can only be pieced together by collaboration.

This book fulfilled all my criteria for a great read: flawed but likeable characters, well-paced, showing rather than telling, and the author answered the question some neglect mainly: Why should the reader care about these characters? What's the point of sticking it out until the end with them?

i read so many books, particularly first novels, in which the author seems to be working overtime to convince me of his/her cleverness, precocity and ability to use Very Big Words where a simple one would do fine instead. It's not that I don't enjoy "flowery" language or unique metaphors, just not to the point where it becomes prententious. As a writer myself, I know that "just telling a story" and making it look seamless is a lot harder than it looks, and I applaud Mr. King for bringing it off here.

(Note to Hollywood: Stop doing remakes of eighties movies and Saturday Night Live sketches and consider optioning this instead. Please.)

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Family Saga August 6, 2010

By C. Baker VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Bill Warrington is an aging curmudgeon who has estranged his three children over the years, especially after losing his beloved wife to cancer when the kids were young. She was the ballast that kept the darker sides of Bill's personality in check, and without that he drifted into alcoholism and as his children became adults they mostly abandoned him, with the exception of his daughter Marcy. The children also mostly abandoned each other and have very emotionally distant relationships with each other.

Marcy has her own foibles to deal with as she struggles to raise her headstrong 15 year old daughter April as a single mother. April feels oppressed by her mother's overbearing control over her life and the two are in constant battle. April finds a kind of solace in her aging grandfather who is losing his memory and is in the early stages of Alzheimer's that appears to quickly progress during the novel.

Nick, the middle child, recently lost his wife as well. While of the three children he is the most emotionally steady, he is also a bit naďve as he struggles to overcome his grief and move on with this life. Mike, the oldest, is the most despicable character of the three. He is a serial philanderer and user of women, despite having a successful career and a beautiful wife and children.

In an attempt to bring his three children together, Bill sets off with April on a road trip from Ohio to California. As April and her grandfather travel across the west we see April confronted with very adult, and sometimes dangerous situations that she must cope with on her own because of the declining mentally abilities of her grandfather. As the strange bond between the two grows, we see April literally growing up as Bill slips further into mental fogginess and she essentially becomes his caretaker on the road. This relationship is a fascinating juxtaposition of the aging and dying Bill with his coming of age granddaughter.

Meanwhile, Bill has set a plan in place to reunite his children in their search from him and April.

This is a well written and entertaining novel. Throughout the author lets us into the fractured lives of this unusual family. The author does and excellent job with characterization, showing the good and the bad of each family member in ways that builds some empathy from the reader (with the possible exception of Mike). And the story does an excellent job of portraying the single mother and teenage daughter relationship in a way that neither is entirely right or wrong in their grievances against the other.

Overall, this is an excellent novel about a fractured family that Bill has one last chance to make whole.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Only a couple of things kept this from a 5-star for me August 17, 2010

By Holly K TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Bill Warrington has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and chooses not to share that information with his three estranged, adult children. Bill does not have a good relationship with any of them nor with any of his grandchildren. His wife died when the kids were in their pre-teen through teenage years and he dealt with his grief by drinking. He largely leaves them alone as they grow up, other than to provide food and shelter. When he does make the effort to interact with them, it doesn't go well since he is a gruff, ex-Marine who says whatever he thinks without regard to the feelings of the recipient. Each of his children have different reactions to their developmental years, but none came out unscathed and there is a lot of resentment toward Bill and toward each other. Bill's idea is to "kidnap" one of his grandchildren (with her own rebellion issues), taking the 15-year-old across the country and leaving clues that force his kids to work together in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The Alzheimer's advances more quickly that Bill hoped and the road trip has some very scary moments as Bill moves in and out of lucidity.

This is James King's first published novel and it doesn't read that way. He manages to take the fairly unsympathetic character of Bill and writes about him in such a way that one minute you want to slap him for his insensitivity and then next to hug him close and comfort the hurting man he is. The same is true for Bill's daughter, Marcy. Sometimes irritating, sometimes heart wrenching, the people that populate this novel come alive through the writer's pen.

I really only have two complaints - there is a graphic scene in a convenience store involving his granddaughter (April) that will cause part of the reading population to be offended. While I understand the need for the tension created by the scene, I didn't care for it and actually thought about the believability of the scene. The clerk would have been on the security camera that is trained on the cash register so his actions took me out of the story while I thought through the practicality of it actually happening the way it did. Also, the clues that are sprinkled throughout the novel regarding Bill and April's location just didn't quite jell for me. It appeared they were going to be a big part of the storyline and then they just faded out. Not a major problem, more of a missed opportunity.

Even with a couple of drawbacks, in my opinion this is definitely a fine novel and I can understand how it won the ABNA award and the right to be published. Glad to see someone "discovered" who has this kind of writing talent.