Customer Reviews

The Flaming Corsage

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I hate to admit that I've been defeated by a book, but this one did it. I absolutely could not finish it. While the premise was good enough, and the opening engaging, the plot's jumps in time were badly handled and the story really began to drag early. I can't for the life of me imagine what Kennedy was thinking when this otherwise good author came up with such a mishmash!

William Kennedy is one of the best writers alive. Unfortunately, he is not one of the better story-tellers.

Once again set in Albany, this novel goes back into the 1880's to begin. We see young versions of some of the characters to arrive in Kennedy's other books. Unlike most of his other novels, politics and bootlegging do not play a big role.

The book starts as a love story between a young Irish man with some education and a beautiful upper crust old money girl. The characters are engaging, the writing wonderful and the dialogue terrific.

The novel then begins to go off the deep end. It seemed to me to cry out for an editor. Suddenly it became non-lineal without reason. Nor did the non-lineal aspect add a thing to it - it only made the plot difficult to follow.

By the end there has been a love triangle (told in snippets of retrospective) and a murder-suicide. As the main character/narrative slips into depression after the beautiful wife has died in a fire ending her life of quasi-madness he turns into crime solver and seeks retribution. If you had difficulty following that recap of the last fifth of the book, imagine when it is spread over 40 pages.

Kennedy's writing is superb. Unfortunately after the first half I began to hurry to the end. By the last portion I was shaking my head in wonderment that such a fine writer could have told a story so poorly.

I am not sure that THE FLAMING CORSAGE, by itself, is worth going out of one's way to track down and read now, fifteen years after it was published. Its claim for the reader's attention is as the sixth in William Kennedy's series of novels centered on his hometown of Albany, New York - an extended literary portrayal of one city that has few parallels in literature. The third of the series, "Ironweed", won the Pulitzer Prize for Kennedy, and it concluded what at the time of its publication was touted as the "Albany Trilogy". But Kennedy has continued to feature Albany in succeeding novels, reprising many characters (sometimes through their forebears or descendants). After THE FLAMING CORSAGE came "Roscoe", and an eighth Albany novel, "Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes", is scheduled for release in a couple weeks.

The Albany novel that THE FLAMING CORSAGE is closest to in story line is "Billy Phelan's Greatest Game". Next to the inimitable Billy Phelan, the most important character of that novel is Martin Daugherty. The central characters of THE FLAMING CORSAGE are Martin's parents, Edward Daugherty and Katrina Daugherty (née Taylor), and the novel essentially tracks their star-crossed courtship and marriage, from 1884 to 1912. Edward was North Albany shantytown-Irish made good, with an education and manners, but still tainted by potatoes and cabbage and beer and Roman Catholicism in the eyes of Katrina's parents, the descendants of the 17th-Century Dutch and English settlers who grew into Hudson Valley aristocrats, dining on oysters and foie gras. At one point in the novel, Edward expresses the notion that "the impulse to love is a disease" and the novel fleshes out that notion, against the localized Albany backdrop of class- and ethnic-based strife and animosity and a more universal backdrop of lust and infidelity.

One dramatic highpoint of the novel occurs on December 30, 1894, when the Delavan House - a nationally famous hotel and THE social locus of Albany's political crowd - went up in flames (an actual historical event). When the elevator shaft exploded, it hurled into the air "blazing splinters and sticks, one of which pierced the breast of Katrina and instantly set her gown aflame," including her corsage of violets. Hence the title of the novel. And, hence the title of one of Edward's plays, in which he tried to pin down the elusive truth of the events leading up to the novel's other dramatic highpoint - the "Love Nest killing" from 1908 at the Millerton House in Manhattan. The novel ends up casting shadows of doubt on "facts" and "the truth", just as it does on love.

THE FLAMING CORSAGE is most successful as an historical portrait of its time and place. It is slightly less successful as an overall story, though still entertaining. It is yet less successful in limning convincing characters, with whom a reader can empathize. Oddly, for an historical novel of sorts, it seems to operate as much in the realm of myth as that of reality. There are a few great scenes (especially the one in which Edward tries to overcome the ingrained hostilities of Katrina's parents to any and all Catholic Irish), but there also are a few contrived ones and even some silly moments. The writing generally is above average, but I found the admixture of styles (excerpts from diaries, newspaper journalism, and stage plays inserted into a conventional prose narrative) somewhat forced and disconcerting. I don't begrudge my time spent reading the novel, but that mostly is because I enjoyed fitting the characters and events into the overall Albany saga being produced by William Kennedy. Three-and-a-half stars.

I had to write something to counteract that unfair review by the gentleman from Switzerland. Is _The Flaming Corsage_ Kennedy's best? Nope (that w/b Very Old Bones, no contest). This isn't the first book to start with on Kennedy; since several characters show up from other books of Kennedy's Albany Cycle (Ironweed and Legs, I believe), it is helpful to read those first to get a better appreciation of some of the implied goings-on of this text; it certainly helps with the time-jumpyness of the story, which goes back and forth between the late 1800s and early 1900s, right before Francis Phelan drops the baby...in another book.

Kennedy has a natural gift for storytelling, but as my previous sentence might imply, there's a sort of neo-Faulknerian insularity in _Corsage_; it helps to know about the other novels Kennedy wrote, and maybe even Kennedy's own life as a budding playwright himself (interesting parallel btw. the play in this book, and Kennedy's own progress in getting his first play produced), before tackling this one; otherwise it may make for a fairly confusing 200 pages. But insiders would disagree with me on that. And that's my point.

Memo to Mr. Kennedy...when _Roscoe_ is finished, please, PLEASE come to Bellingham to promote your work!

Recently, in reviewing an early William Kennedy Albany-cycle novel, "Ironweed" I mentioned that he was my kind of writer. I will let what I stated there stand on that score here. Here is what I said:

"William Kennedy is, at least in his Albany stories, my kind of writer. He writes about the trials and tribulations of the Irish diaspora as it penetrated the rough and tumble of American urban WASP-run society, for good or evil. I know these people, my people, their follies and foibles like the back of my hand. Check. Kennedy writes, as here with the main characters Fran Phelan and Helen Archer two down at the heels sorts, about that pervasive hold that Catholicism has even on its most debased sons and daughters, saint and sinner alike. I know those characteristics all too well. Check. He writes about that place in class society where the working class meets the lumpen-proletariat-the thieves, grifters, drifters and con men- the human dust. I know that place well, much better than I would ever let on. Check. He writes about the sorrows and dangers of the effects alcohol on working class families. I know that place too. Check. And so on. Oh, by the way, did I mention that he also, at some point, was an editor of some sort associated with the late Hunter S. Thompson down in Puerto Rico. I know that mad man's work well. He remains something of a muse for me. Check."

That said, this little novel from an earlier time in the Albany cycle than "Ironweed", the period between the well-known and written about "robber baron" age (Edith Wharton, Henry James, etc.) in American and the end of the Victorian period just before World War I is the saga of an upwardly mobile son of a "bogtrotter' Irishman and a daughter of a member of the central committee of Waspdom, Albany version. That the pair are congenially mated yet-ill-fated may speak to the problems of cross-class transformations, or to the unpredictable predilections of WASP maidens.

In any case as the tone of the novel is set from the first page by reference to the star-crossed lovers theme of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado" (one of the few times in recorded history that that pair has been the source of a front piece quotation, I am sure). Kennedy, here keeps the dramatic tension up by going back and forth between times from early int he period until late as the tragedy behind the convoluted story unfolds. Katrina, the central female character, gives portent of the new age for women to be heralded at the end of this period by women's suffrage, although her appetites and melancholia prevent her from partaking of that freedom. I might add that Fran Phelan, the main character of "Ironweed" makes a cameo appearance here, and I am sure that as I read more in this cycle other references to the story will reappear. Needless to say, now that Mr. Kennedy has my attention I will be devouring the rest of the Albany cycle , as quickly as I can get my hands on copies of the other works.

Even when he is writing a novel that is not his most memorable, William Kennedy still inspires awe. This novel, the sixth in the "Albany Cycle," differs from the more famous novels that have preceded it, taking a close view of the lives of the upper class of Albany and those Irish who have "made it," rather than his more familiar stories of Irish who are scrambling for a foothold, trying to drown their sorrows because of their failures, or adapting to the environment, often political, which can ensure their long-term survival.

Opening the novel with a 1908 "love nest murder-suicide," told as if it were a stage play, the author then moves backward to 1885 and the love story of Edward Daugherty and Katrina Taylor. Daugherty is the son of poor Irish from North Albany, a boy taken under the wing of a wealthy benefactor, who has provided him with an education and an annuity so that he can "progress" beyond his early beginnings. Daugherty eventually becomes a novelist and playwright, falling in love with and marrying Katrina, descended from Dutch Protestants and Oliver Cromwell.

Set a generation before any of the other novels, this novel provides background for the cycle, dealing with the same themes--fathers and sons, the process by which children seize the American dream and rise above their fathers, the joys of love and its fragility, and the overwhelming grace of forgiveness for transgressions. Here we see both Katrina and Edward engaging in affairs, and Katrina's, with the ballplayer Francis Phelan, echoes throughout the Albany cycle. Edward and his friend Maginn know the Irish ward bosses and politicians who eventually dominate Albany and New York state politics (and the Albany novels set in the 20th century), and the tensions between the old guard Protestants in Albany and the rising Irish immigrant population reverberate throughout.

Though the novel does not follow a strictly linear format, the story of Edward and Katrina dominates, and Kennedy clearly specifies dates--the Love Nest Murder/Suicide in 1908, Edward and Katrina's marriage in the mid-1880s, and the fatal fire at the end of the novel in 1912. This novel, though less intense than novels like Ironweed, is still atmospheric, filled with the local color which characterizes the other novels in the cycle. Its characters, though less sympathetic initially, are as carefully drawn as those from the grittier neighborhoods of Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and Ironweed. Ultimately, the reader sees that the same issues plague both the wealthy and the destitute--families, the need for forgiveness, and one's hopes for the future. n Mary Whipple

Having first read Ironweed and Billy Phelan, The Flaming Corsage fit right into the mix. I found the structure a bit choppy but the story of Katrina, or is it the story of Edward's love of Katrina, to be most compelling.Every character, no matter how small, is as true as life itself. Tragedy, crime, class struggle, vengence, loss, carnality, and finally madness played out on a finely drawn historical background. I cried for them all.