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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gem, emotionally and stylistically.,
By
This review is from: Larry's Party (Mass Market Paperback)
Like so many of us, Larry Weller finds himself, on occasion, lost. Is that why he is drawn to the arcane profession of maze-making? Or is his fascination with mazes a reflection of his deepening intellect and development as a man? In the course of fifteen carefully observed chapters, Carol Shields examines the maze-like Life of Larry. Each chapter is like a short film in which Shields refocuses her lens on a specific aspect of Larry's life: "Larry's Words," "Larry's Love," "Larry's Kid," etc. The end result is an in-depth portrait of a multi-dimensional guy, a compendium of details that elevates the seemingly ordinary Larry into someone utterly unique. She follows him through college (actually a trade school for florists), through the courtship of his first wife, through disillusionments and deaths, and finally to the party of the title, in which many of his life's loose ends are resolved. This is deep, smart, resonant writing, a subtly cajoling book that satisfies and delights.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
unique read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Larry's Party (Mass Market Paperback)
In Carol Shield's novel, Larry's Party, each chapter is divided into chronological periods in the main character, Larry's life. What Shields shares with the readers in this book are not the main events in Larry's life, but instead are sketches of numerous (seemingly insignificant) occurences that shape the character's life. From the outside, Larry appears to lead a normal, mundane life. Once the reader is allowed into Larry's private thoughts, however, the ordinary dilemmas and difficulties this man faces form into an immensely complex character. "And he's tired- tired of his name, tired of being a man, tired of the ghostly self he's chained to and compelled to drag around." Shields writes each sentence in almost a poetic manner. "He would fall alseep, finally, to the rhythm of those strange voices: Stu and Dot Weller, his silent poetic parents, coming awake in the soundwaves of their own muffled words, made gracefully by what they chose to say in the long darkness." Shields chooses extraordinary words and phrases to best portray the deep and sometimes hidden meanings. The wording and language Shields uses throughout the novel grow increasingly brash and crude. She writes in a pattern that describes every character in a journalistic way each time they are mentioned. "Dorrie, his first wife... Larry, from Winnipeg." This way of labeling becomes redundant and unnecessary. Shields tends to write each of the milestones of Larry's life in one brief sentence, while she goes into great detail and depth with the daily, routine events. It would be easy to assume that such deep analyzing of one certain character would be dull and without a driven plot, but Larry's Party draws in and captivates the reader. The characters do not grow tiresome because the further one gets into the novel, the more the characters reach out and become more relatable to the reader.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A story of a life lived and observed,
By
This review is from: Larry's Party (Mass Market Paperback)
Carol Shields has a way of writing about the ordinary that elevates it to the sublime. We follow Larry, an ordinary guy, through his life through jumps in time of several years at a leap. Through the chapters, we follow him through a callow youth, through a first marriage and parenthood, divorce, his parents and sister's relationships with him and each other, remarriage and re-divorce, and most central to the book, his mundane job and rise to stellar status in his field of maze designer, of all things. But of course the maze is a metaphor for the complexities of life, trying to find ones way in the world. The dinner party at the end is clearly meant to represent the 'goal,' the center of the maze, but it's left to the readers to decide if Larry is likely to find his way out again.A lovely tour de force.
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