A Dangerous Age: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Ellen Gilchrist (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 2008

Ellen Gilchrist is one of America's most celebrated and respected authors, a classic writer in the tradition of Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Elizabeth Spencer. The author of more than twenty books, she was awarded the National Book Award for her short story collection Victory Over Japan. Now, with her first novel in more than a decade, she returns in top form.

A Dangerous Age tells the story of the women of the Hand family, three cousins in a Southern dynasty rich with history and tradition who are no strangers to either controversy or sadness. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, the novel is a celebration of the strength of these women, and of others like them. In her characteristically clear and direct prose, with its wry, no-nonsense approach to the world and the people who inhabit it, Gilchrist gives voice to women on a collision course with a distant war that, in truth, is never more than a breath away.

As the Washington Post has said, "To say that Ellen Gilchrist can write is to say that Placido Domingo can sing. All you need to do is listen."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the latest from Gilchrist—who won the National Book Award for the 1984 story collection Victory over Japan—the grand Raleigh, N.C., wedding between Winifred Winnie Hand Abadie and Charles Kane is canceled when Charles perishes in the World Trade Center attacks. Winnie becomes despondent, and well-intentioned cousin Louise Hand Healy, a producer of TV documentaries, goads her to move in with her in Washington, D.C. Another cousin, Olivia Hand, is deeply committed to her job as editor of a Tulsa, Okla., newspaper and is torn between two men she loves. Gilchrist shifts uneasily among the three women's perspectives, and between the first and third person. The political commitment underscoring the novel, particularly in Olivia's scathing antiwar editorials, is deeply felt, and a nice twist is introduced when, on September 12, Charles's twin cousins, Carl and Brian, join the Marines. Gilchrist never quite brings the three female leads into narrative harmony, but she makes the age's dangers palpable. (May)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Beloved southern fiction writer Gilchrist returns with her first novel since Sarah Conley (1997), and the legion of fans who appreciate her propensity for using recurrent characters will enjoy the reappearance of the extensive Hand family of North Carolina and Oklahoma. The focus is on three cousins, women, who face making greatly important career and personal—marital—choices against the ubiquitous, unavoidable backdrop of the Iraq War and the terrorist conditions prevalent in the post-9/11 world. Gilchrist brings these three characters into full individual realization while simultaneously  connecting them to the bigger pattern that is their shared family history and also to the even bigger national event that fractured lives. The novel’s opening event, a wedding, which was to gather all the Hands together, is canceled when the bridegroom perishes in the collapse of the World Trade Center only three months before the nuptials were scheduled to take place. The ripple effect of this family tragedy, and the continued impact of the war in Iraq, on the three cousins’ lives gives this novel a humanity easily embraced by the reader. Gilchrist’s trademark supple prose and droll sense of humor are on full display. --Brad Hooper

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; First Edition edition (May 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565125428
• ISBN-13: 978-1565125421
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a little heavy-handed, May 9, 2008

By 

Pricey "exlibrarian" (Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dangerous Age: A Novel (Hardcover)

I have been a big fan of Ellen Gilchrist for 25 years, I've read and enjoyed all her books but I found this one a big disappointment. To me, it seemed like a political polemic thinly disguised as a novel. We want to read about how the political climate affects the lives of the characters or how they feel about what's happening, not read page after page of their political views. Not much character development or plot, lots of proselytizing.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Novel That Is Saved By the Writing, August 14, 2008

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Dangerous Age: A Novel (Hardcover)

I discovered Ellen Gilchrist in 1984 on NPR, was fascinated with her accent and loved her commemtaries. I remember reading LAND OF DREAMY DREAMS, THE ANNUNCIATION and VICTORY OVER JAPAN and being taken by her writing, particularly her short stories. Then she dropped off the radio and I stopping reading her, a little like someone waking up one day and remembering that he used to eat at a favorite restaurant but no longer does, for no particular reason. Now Ms. Gilchrist has written a novel, her first in several years. I bought it after being drawn in by its first few pages that I have reread three times now and find them just as wonderful as upon first reading. The short novel begins with the plans for a society wedding of Winifred Hand Abadie and Charles Christian Kane to have taken place on December 21, 2001 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The
wedding party would be composed of friends and family in their thirties and from the upper middle class. Then Ms. Gilchrist writes in clear prose that appears effortless: "Except the wedding never took place because Charles Kane perished on September 11, 2001, along with three thousand other perfectly lovely, helpless human beings. He had been in the first tower of the World Trade Center, on the fifteenth floor, with two other young brokers, trying to set up a deal to build a new tennis club in Raleigh."

Like the restaurant we revisit-- to continue my trite metaphor-- Ms. Gilchrist isn't as good in this novel as I remembered, and I cannot explain exactly why. She writes about three women in the Hand family, Winifred, Louise and Olivia. The narrative jumps back and forth. I thought at first the story would be Louise's since it begins with her as first person narrator. Then the third person narrator takes over-- at least for a few pages-- with most of the book being about Olivia, who writes for a newspaper in Tulsa. Women in their thirties marry men in their twenties-- which should come as no surprise to Gilchrist fans-- usually after they have managed to get themselves with child without much effort on anyone's part. The men are gung-ho about the military. The day after Charles' funeral on 10 January 2002 ("it is extremely hard to have a funeral when you don't have anything to bury"), his identical twin cousins joined the Marines. Although Olivia's husband Bobby, is called up to active duty when his reserve unit is activated rather than volunteering, he still essentially believes in his leaders and is proud to be an American. The women can be just as patriotic if from a distance. Winifred signs a letter to Olivia as "Your flag-waver cousin, Winifred" but makes love to Brian on three-hundred-dollar "450-count percale sheets rinsed in lavender" on a nine-hundred-dollar mattress. Apparently she took seriously the President's exhortation to support our troops by going shopping. Olivia, on the other hand, acknowledges that "the South and Midwest always fought the wars, farm boys and high school athletes, poor boys and sons [unlike the volunteering twins of course] whose folks worked for a living, the sons and daughters of the beautiful small towns of America. That's who went to war and that's who shed the blood." One of the best parts about this uneven novel is Olivia's newspaper columns.

Ms. Gilchrist strews quotations from Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Albert Einstein et al. throughout this story and admonishes the reader, through the voice of Olivia, to have our children memorize poetry, an idea I couldn't agree with more. In the end though this novel is not greater than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, for whatever else may not work perfectly in this novel, Ms. Gilchrist's transparent prose does. It is as beautiful as that of any other contemporary American author's and a joy to read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Yuck., January 3, 2012

By 

Mae Johns "justme" (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dangerous Age: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book was incredibly scattered. The characters were not well developed and were very one dimensional. I gave up and threw the book away when the main character (I guess) wrote an editorial about how the soldiers who committed war crimes at Abu Grahib shouldn't be blamed for the atrocities. I'll never buy another Gilchrist book again.