Fiddler's Green: Or A Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss [Hardcover]

Van Reid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 2004

Devoted fans of the endearing characters in Van Reid’s nineteenth-century Maine are in for a fabulous summer treat with Fiddler’s Green—an old-fashioned mulligatawny of high and low comedy, unabashed romance, adventure, and eerie mystery. Escape to a seemingly simpler world and visit Maine in 1897, where Reid’s evocative, expansive writing delivers the fifth escapade in the saga of the Moosepath League and a host of supporting characters whom readers have come to love.

Opening with a long-awaited wedding, this delightful yarn features a society ball, a kidnapping, and a mystical rural netherworld where a bitter family feud comes close to causing the death of the preternaturally cool Mr. Sundry Moss. With its signature mix of romantic yearning, knockabout comedy, and touching drama, Fiddler’s Green is sure to please fans and newcomers alike as they keep company with the honorable “Gentlemen of the Club.” Fiddler’s Green is a worthy successor to its wonderfully reviewed predecessor, Mrs. Roberto: “It would be a crime and a sin, and just plain un-neighborly, to miss this novel” (Kirkus Reviews, starred).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The fifth (and ostensibly final) installment in Reid's charming series about rural Maine's Moosepath League tracks familiar faces through an epic wedding, a society ball and a bizarre backwoods feud that gets one Moosepathian in hot water. The primary protagonist is wise "gentleman's gentleman" Sundry Moss, who observes the joyous 1897 nuptials of Moosepath chairman Tobias Walton and willowy Phileda McCannon, which are very nearly ruined by the inexplicable appearance of a keg marked "rum" that's filled with turpentine. Moss tests the romantic waters with the fetching Priscilla Morningside at a Portland ball shortly after the wedding, but their fledgling courtship is interrupted when Moss becomes part of a plan to help young Melanie Ring, previously camped out in a coal cellar with her alcoholic father and disguised as a boy, move with her father to Brownville. As the journey progresses, Melanie is spirited away by the peculiar Charles Normall, and Moss is also engaged by the man to scour the local pond for the body of a young drowning victim. Reid recaptures the optimistic, homey, quirky tone of his earlier books in the wedding and ball sections, and the later murder mystery adds a touch of darkness, while a parallel story involving an optimistic sailor searching for the titular, possibly mythical paradise offers a compelling counterplot. This will undoubtedly please Reid's numerous fans.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Three of the remarkable gentlemen of the Moosepath League, Portland, Maine, 1897, take a backseat to the premier two, Toby Walton and his valet and friend, Sundry Moss. It is Toby's wedding to the glorious Phileda that takes up the first third of this latest installment in Reid's popular series; these two then go off to honeymoon and to adopt a nephew. Sundry (we learn he does indeed have a twin named Various), smitten himself with a graceful lass burdened with a controlling mother, instead takes up adventures involving the permanent extrication of a small child from her drunken father and the settling of a bizarre feud. Through it all marches the folklore sailor Robin Oig, oar in hand, looking for Fiddler's Green, "a form of Paradise." Reid's language is so pristine, his manners so elegant, his characters so eccentric that the three men in a boat--or Bertie Wooster--would feel right at home. An absolutely guiltless pleasure. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking; 1st edition (July 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670033200
• ISBN-13: 978-0670033201
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I can't believe, October 31, 2004

By 

Timothy J Walburg (Wyoming, MI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fiddler's Green: Or A Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss (Hardcover)

nobody has written a review of this book yet! Here it is, Halloween, and still no personal review. If you are reading this it means you have some interest in possibly owning this book. Let me put your doubts to rest... buy it, you won't regret it. This is a kind, compassionate, humorous, and literate story that could be read by your saintly aunt. I've enjoyed the adventures of the Moosepath league since their debut and they just keep getting better. Thank you Mr. Reid!

P.S. I'm not saintly and I'm an uncle so don't be put off by comparisons.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Has The Bottom Fallen Out Of The Moosepath League?, August 26, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fiddler's Green: Or A Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss (Hardcover)

While this book is just as good as any of the others in Van Reid's clever series, it seems as though the bottom has fallen out of the series and that people just aren't clamoring for these books any more. Some bookstores aren't even carrying this latest volume, and that's a shame. Maybe it's time for a boxed set. If Van Reid had any thought of continuing for a sixth volume, the lack of attention to FIDDLERS GREEN might be giving him second or third thoughts. One the public has had enough of a series, there's a law of diminishing returns. Even the best series (like Maxo De La Roche's JALNA or the Charlie Chan movies) peter off in the face of public indifference.

It's s shame too, because this story is one of Reid's better ones. Even if Chairman Toby and Sundry Moss were not in it at all, and indeed they contribute to the hilarity in big ways, such as Toby's long-awaited wedding, it would still be a page turner due to the mystery of Robin Oig, the sailor who dreams of finding an earthly paradise at Fiddlers Green.

Robin should have a series of his own, for he is a thoughtful, dreamy romantic figure who would fit in nicely with the famous Aubrey and Maturin novels of the late Patrick O'Brian. If you liked Cornelia Underwood or Mollie Peer (by Reid) or THE PICKWICK PAPERS or MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (by Dickens), you might like FIDDLERS GREEN.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Long live the Moosepath League, January 18, 2008

By 

Patience Crabstick (Charlottesville VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fiddler's Green: Or A Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss (Hardcover)

I'm not quite finished with Fiddler's Green, but I've read enough to know that I like it. I've found the whole Moosepath League series to be charming. The other day I was watching a Monty Python clip--Upperclass Twit of the Year--and I couldn't help wondering if this sketch may have provided a tiny bit of inspiration for the characters of Ephram, Eagleton & Thump. Not that they would ever "kick the beggar" or "insult the waiter" but the haplessness of these three men never fails to entertain. Fiddler's Green is a departure from the other books in the series because much of it focuses on Sundry Moss and an adventure he has on his own. It's a bit of a creepy adventure, too, although each of the books in the Moosepath League series flirts with the dark side just a bit. As with the other books, Van Reid inserts tantalizing bits of old New England folklore that make me want to do my own research.