The Late George Apley: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir [Paperback]

John P. Marquand (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 354 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068503075X
• ISBN-13: 978-0685030752
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,164,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is a tragedy that this book is out of print..., February 20, 2003

By 

M. A Newman (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Late George Apley (Hardcover)

John P. Marquand probably was one of the most successful authors of his day and this book, for which he won a Pulitzer prize was the start of his brilliant career. Unfortunately, with Marquand's death in 1960, he fell from favor with the academy who was itself enamoured with tales of life in a university and stories addressing issues of gender and sex. Marquand's stories about middle aged WASPs in Boston coping with trying to come to grips with their lives were no longer in fashion and sadly have not returned to the center place that they previously occupied.

This is a novel about manners and invokes the particular time and place of the WASP ascendency in America, just before the second World War. Marquand's hero is a representative of what used to be known as a "Boston Brahmin." Marquand handles Apley with a mixture of bemusement and foundness. He has clearly met George Apley's in his life and knows the type well. What would have been in less capable hands a mere characture, becomes a full portrait of what was at the time, a dying breed. Marquand sensed this and this provides the point of departure for the book.

"The Late George Apley is a bit of a pastische of privately printed books designed to memorialize a dearly departed loved one. This allows Marquand to use his frequently used flashback technique to describe the particulars of Apley's life. At times this provides Marquand with the opportunity to indulge in both high comedy and low drama, as is the case when Apley falls in love with a girl who is both Irish and Catholic. Although this enables some satire on the subject of the way Boston's elite viewed the Irish, it is also a source of regret that Apley, like so many characters in Marquand's books, did not make a different choice in life. Sentiments that as Jonathan Yardley has observed "are not just limited to the denizens of Backbay or Harvard Square."

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb use of understatement., June 29, 1999

By 

R. D. Allison ([e-mail]) (Gainesville, Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Late George Apley (Hardcover)

This novel by Marquand won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. In this book, a writer named Willing, an old friend of George Apley, is requested by Apley's son John to collect all of the late Apley's correspondence and use them to form a biography. Although Willing is using them to eulogize Apley and to describe the life of upper-class Bostonians, the reader feels pity at the waste of a life and how a man's class and upbringing can quelch his own desires and thoughts. The book is an excellent example of the use of understatement. However, I am shocked to discover that this fairly well known Pulitzer Prize winner is out-of-print. Surely this is the publisher's fault.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent novel by a nearly forgotten author., October 14, 2001

By 

R. H OAKLEY "roboakley" (Vienna, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Late George Apley (Hardcover)

J.P. Marquand was well known in his day, both as a serious writer(The Late George Apley won a Pulitzer Prize) and for the Mr. Moto detective series (made into movies starring Peter Lorre as the title character). This novel makes skillful use of the device of the unreliable narrator; it is told from the point of view of a writer putting together a life of Apley who, like his subject, is thoroughly conventional, and thus does not realize that his portrait of Apley reveals the sterility of the latter's life. The novel is also a skillful depiction of a particular class in a particular place and time. I agree with the other reviewers that it is a shame that it is out of print.