A Hole in the Universe [Hardcover]

Mary McGarry Morris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 2004 | Series: Morris, Mary Mcgarry

When Oprah Winfrey chose Mary McGarry Morris’s Songs in Ordinary Time for her book club, she brought more than a million new readers under the spell of a novelist praised by the Boston Sunday Globe as “brilliantly acute . . . remarkable” and by USA Today as “extraordinary.”

In her stunning new novel, Morris introduces us to Gordon Loomis, who, after twenty-five years in jail for a senseless high school murder, cannot come to terms with the enormity of his crime and its violation of all that is good and right. A giant of a man, he has learned to preserve a polite low profile and meager expectations for his life. Pressed by his family to start over, he stubbornly refuses to leave his old home and neighborhood—now devastated by a quarter century of decline. A Hole in the Universe follows Gordon and the three women who care for him as they force him to confront real life.

Graced with Morris’s signature command of dialogue, her talent for creating vivid, unforgettable characters, and her masterful use of suspense, A Hole in the Universe is an engrossing story from “one of the most skillful authors at work in America today” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What happens when a 43-year-old man returns to live in his hometown after serving a 25-year prison sentence for murder? That is the dramatic question at the center of this fifth novel by Morris (Songs in Ordinary Time; A Dangerous Woman). A contemporary Rip Van Winkle, Gordon Loomis returns to the home he left at age 18 to find a deteriorating neighborhood, overrun by drug dealers and mired in poverty. Gordon's brother, Dennis, sister-in-law Lisa and loyal friend Delores can all forgive Gordon for his crime, but he can't forgive himself. Though expertly drawn, Gordon is an enigmatic figure. Is he a bland and dull-witted giant ("three hundred and fifty pounds, six and a half feet tall") who just wants to be left alone or a paragon of virtue? Is Gordon's interference in his brother's marriage wrongheaded meddling or blessed intervention? When he aids Jada, a teenage neighbor whose mother is a junkie, is he asking for trouble or lifting up an oppressed and innocent child? Because he is a known ex-convict, Gordon becomes the neighborhood scapegoat, punished for his good deeds by those he seeks to help and protect. Only besotted Delores believes wholeheartedly in Gordon's goodness. Though Delores does eventually win Gordon's affection, he is alternately repulsed and comforted by her desperate loneliness and overeager attempts to help other people. Once again, Morris scores with her sympathetic portrayals of hard-to-like heroes and hopelessly floundering outcasts, infusing them with humanity. The plot picks up pace toward the end, reaching a fevered pitch as Gordon faces new (and unfounded) accusations, and the novel comes to a redemptive but satisfying and believable conclusion.
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From Booklist

Gordon Loomis, 43, imprisoned for 25 years for his participation in a robbery-murder, is released on parole. Instead of starting with a blank slate, he opts to return to his old neighborhood in Dearborn, Massachusetts, which is now decayed and drug-ridden. Gordon's principal edict is to lie low and not get too involved with the police, his family, or Delores, the friend who faithfully visited him all those years. Gordon spurns his brother's attempts to help him get a job, afraid of the inevitable reaction when his identity is discovered. His fears are justified when job offers are suddenly withdrawn, and elderly neighbors cringe at his offers of assistance. Suffocated by dread and lingering guilt, Gordon can barely cope with life outside prison walls, and Delores' intrusive attention and the obvious need of a pathetic neighbor, forced by her mother to deal drugs, are more than he can bear. Morris has previously established her affinity for the misfits of the world. Her empathy for Gordon and his supporting characters in this novel, her fifth, is palpable, leaving the reader in awe of her uncanny ability to capture and convey each personality's unique essence. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (March 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670032883
• ISBN-13: 978-0670032884
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,271,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Morris Is Back With a Winner!, March 25, 2004

By 

Mary Lins (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Hole in the Universe (Hardcover)

I found "A Hole in the Universe" to be Morris' best novel since "A Dangerous Woman" (which I loved and highly reccomend), because what she does in these two novels is what she does better than almost anyone else: she brilliantly captures the essence of characters who are on the fringes of society; those who are socially inept, socially shunned, those "too needy" for other people's confort levels. She very craftily makes her readers both sympathetic, and at the same time repelled, by her characters.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best money spent, May 11, 2004

By 

T. Young (Volcano, Hawaii USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Hole in the Universe (Hardcover)

I LOVE Mary McGarry Morris so what you'll read here is 100% biased. Having devoured A Dangerous Woman and Vanished before realizing Ms. McHarry Morris is not exactly prolific, I promised to buy my own copy of her subsequent books and refrain from lending them to others if she'd just "step on it" a bit more. Fell on deaf ears, though ... .

Alas, what attracts me to her books are the characters and the prose. Her characters are somewhere between mainstream akimbo and slipstream irregular; fringe-dwellers who we're all capable of employing at one time or another. Her dialogue flows easily and every so often hesitates momentarily for honest and revealing introspection.

My offer still stands, Ms. McGarry Morris: Hardcover purchase, no lending. Now, get going on the next book!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I cared about these characters!, June 20, 2004

By 

Lita E. Mathy (Lafayette, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Hole in the Universe (Hardcover)

I've read many reviews of books with the testimony "I couldn't put it down'" but had never really felt that way about a book. To me that was one of the beautiful things about a book, I could always put it down and do something else and come back to it when it suited me. Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish the last 100 pages of A Hole in the Universe. I so needed to know what was going to happen to Gordon, Jada and Delores the three main characters in the novel. Mary McGarry Morris makes these characters part of your life and you care deeply for them and hope beyond hope that their lives will get better. Needless to say I loved this book!