Laments [Hardcover]

George Hagen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2004

When Howard and Julia Lament adopt Will, a baby secretly switched at birth in a bizarre hospital debacle, it marks the beginning of a journey that takes them from Northern Rhodesia in the 1950s to the Persian Gulf, England and suburban, Seventies America, as they search for their place in the world. Howard is an engineer and dreamer, obsessed by the conveyance of liquids through valves. Julia is a woman of fiery spirit and an artist, who is constantly called upon to reinvent her family's life and her own. Forced by his younger, anarchic twin brothers to question his place in the family, Will struggles to find a sense of his own identity through the characters he meets en route - from Ruth, his first love in Africa, who carries around a biscuit tin lid to admire her reflection to Dawn Snedecker, the lisping intellectual who breaks his heart in America - and fights to keep his family from breaking apart. Through the Laments' restlessness, their responses to adversity, and especially their unwieldy love for one another, George Hagen draws a picture of every family that is funny, tragic, hopeful and true.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ever in search of greener pastures, idealistic but frustrated engineer Howard Lament drags his long-suffering wife, Julia, and their three sons from South Africa to Rhodesia, Bahrain, England and America. The family's rootlessness weighs most heavily on eldest son Will, secretly adopted after a maternity ward mixup goes horribly awry, who feels the odd man out in the face of his constantly changing surroundings and the preternatural solidarity of his twin brothers. Hagen, a screenwriter and first-time novelist, makes the story a coming-of-age saga and familial drama, often comic in tone but also full of tragedy: car crashes, a kidnapping, death and dismemberment. As the Laments give up their privileged status under apartheid and eventually settle for downward mobility in the crass American suburbs, Hagan makes their wanderings and expatriate identity crises a commentary on the vexed legacy of British colonialism. The narrative sometimes slows to allow the Laments to hash out their liberal politics, and some sketchily drawn characters (Lament's son Julius is memorable largely for his un-self-conscious masturbatory rituals) die when their plot assignments are completed. Hagen pokes fun at Albion's seed with comic clichés-the Rhodesians are racist Colonel Blimps, the English are soccer thugs, the Americans are conformists, religious zealots or strident New Leftists. The Laments themselves, saddled with the melancholy of postimperial decline, are a spirited but slightly sad lot who wish for better lives. This is a funny, touching novel about the meaning of family, with an oddly high body count.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–The Lament family has a secret. Will is not the jolly, glowing baby born to Julia and Howard in Rhodesia during the 1950s. He is the weak, transparent preemie abandoned by his distraught mother when she kidnapped the Lament infant from the maternity ward. When the woman and child die in an automobile accident, the attending physician persuades the stunned Laments to pretend the abandoned child is theirs, and take him home. For the Laments, home is more a goal than a place. Soon Will, his younger twin brothers, and his parents begin a series of disastrous moves. Idealistic and impractical engineer Howard longs for a career that will make full use of his inventive genius. Artistic, progressive Julia wants a perfect community. Leaving a prosperous situation in Rhodesia, the family follows Howard as he accepts ultimately unsatisfactory jobs around the world. Will minds the uprooting more than the others do as the family moves from Africa to Bahrain to England to the U.S., and his struggle to make a place for himself is complicated by the family's downward economic spiral. Since much of the focus of the story is on hormone-driven teenage boys, the language and situations are often crude and sexually oriented. Despite a surprising number of bizarre tragedies, the book is full of humor, and the gradual development of the characters leads to a plausible and satisfying conclusion.–Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 370 pages
• Publisher: Sceptre; First Edition edition (August 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034083272X
• ISBN-13: 978-0340832721
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,883,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 336 pages of pleasure, June 16, 2004

By 

Candace "thepageturner" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Laments: A Novel (Hardcover)

Start hoping now that George Hagen is hard at work on this next novel, because when you finish "The Laments" you won't be able to wait.

"Laments travel," explains Howard Lament, a Southern Rhodesian engineer with a deep fascination for valves. His wife, the bold, arty Julia, their son Will (who is not really their son but an infant given to them after a peculiar mixup in the maternity ward), and later a pair of rambunctious twin boys join him in these travels which take them first to Bahrain, then back to Africa, then to England, and finally to New Jersey. In one place after another Will falls for the odd-girl-out and the twins pick up the local accent and wreak the havoc particular to that place.

The Laments' adventures are charming and endrossing, even when their story begins to darken upon their arrival in the US. John-Irving-ish events occur which cast a pall over the family and make the reader wonder about the purpose of sending the story in this direction. Is it to show that suburban America can be the weirdest place of all? Don't we know that already? When Howard recommends that the Laments move again, you'll be all for it if it means getting them out their increasingly uncomfortable situation.

George Hagen is a first novelist of great talent with a high-spirited, engaging style and the ability to create appealing characters. "The Laments" is the sort of book readers will look forward to getting back to. He still has some learning to do (the twins, George, the twins!) but this will not lessen the enjoyment of this novel. This would be an interesting book club selection with lots of opportunity for lively discussion.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars High body count, July 18, 2004

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Laments: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a novel that defies description. It falls somewhere between bizarre slapstick and sarcastic social commentary. The deal is that a couple from South Africa marry and have 3 children - well the first one really isn't theirs, because their real child was kidnapped at birth, then killed the same day in a car crash, so the doctor who inadvertently precipitated the kidnapping suggests that the bereaved couple just take home the baby of the couple killed in the car crash, no problem, no one will be any wiser, papers? who needs papers, everything will be fine, yada-yada.
Right.
Then they begin moving from one continent to another, always searching for the greener grass on the other side of some ocean, always slightly dissatisfied, always at odds with their surroundings. A large part of the story is told from the point of view of their eldest son, the one who was switched at birth. Not only does he feel at adds with whatever school/neighborhood/city/country/continent in which he finds himself, he also feels out of synch with his own family - as though he just doesn't belong.
Little does he know...
A little bizarre, a little unusual, a little indefinable, The Laments is a witty and sarcastic piece of writing that lampoons one society after another, from puffed up Rhodesia to suburban America. Really, really good.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch family saga!, October 4, 2005

By 

John P. James "Texican1973" (Houston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Laments: A Novel (Paperback)

'The Laments' is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and I read voraciously. George Hagen mixes humor and sadness into a compelling, heartrenching novel. His prose is clean, and the pages fly. I normally don't recommend novels because people's taste in books is so relative, but I can't imagine anyone not liking this novel. Highy recommended.