Love Among the Ruins: A Novel [Hardcover]

Robert Clark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2001

A beautifully written story of love, idealism, and our recent history.

Amid the crises of the summer of 1968, two teenagers become lovers. Emily is a good Catholic girl, for whom an incarnate God means joy and contentment in the life of the body. William is preoccupied, in a vague sort of way, with politics and the evils of the System. Together, impelled by physical passion and the idealistic notion that "all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief," they run away to create a new life in the wilderness. In their absence, their parents' predictable lives take an entirely different course, and America itself seems to lose its innocence, never to be quite the same again. Not since Alice McDermott's That Night or Scott Spencer's Endless Love has there been a novel that portrays with such immediacy and respect teenagers' first loveits intensity, finely calibrated moods, and worldly innocenceand the elusive nature of adult loveits passion and fragility, comforts and betrayals.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Edgar Award-winner Clark (Mr. White's Confession) abandons the psychological murder mystery genre of his earlier work to plumb the emotional depths and dangers of young love and mature infidelity in this literary fiction set in 1968 Minnesota. Clark rambles through the hearts and minds of Bill Lowry, 17, and Emily Byrne, 16, in wordy, reflective fashion, treating teenage passion with serious intensity. Bill's divorced, politically active mother, Jane, is a delegate to the Democratic convention in Chicago. The riots there and Humphrey's selection as the Democratic candidate find her disenchanted with the system and skeptical about the chances for an early end to U.S. participation in the Vietnam war. Bill will be graduating from high school next year and the specter of the draft hangs over him as he begins his romance with Emily by letter. Emily's parents, Edward and Virginia, are a loving, Catholic, middle-class couple whose comfortable marriage contains neither pain nor passion. As Emily and Bill's romance progresses from letters to coffeehouse dates to surprisingly mature sex, Clark effectively evokes the youthful yearnings for freedom and a return to nature that characterized the '60s. Swept away by their love, Bill convinces Emily that their only chance to remain together is to run away to the north woods of Minnesota and live off the land. When the two teenagers disappear, their parents react to the stress in decidedly different ways. Readers will be drawn in by Clark's languid rhythms and his careful period detail, and the novel's tragic conclusion will serve baby boomers as a bittersweet reminder of a time when the nation was jerked painfully from adolescence into adulthood.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Beginning on the day Robert Kennedy is shot and ending when Richard Nixon is inaugurated, the passionate first love between teenagers William and Emily follows a cycle of hope and tragedy. After the romance of these seemingly well-adjusted teens leads to their running away, the focus shifts to the effects on their parents. Clark (Mr. White's Confession) dissects the blooming of first love with an analytical precision that reflects the intensity, uncertainties, and idealism of youth. He is equally insightful in portraying the parents, whose confusion, anger, and fear over their children's disappearance leads them to reevaluate their own lives. In the book's final section, told in the present, Clark investigates the relationship of national events to our individual lives and draws some intriguing conclusions. Recommended for most collections. Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (July 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393020150
• ISBN-13: 978-0393020151
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,097,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Clark is the author of ten books, the novels In the Deep Midwinter, Mr. White's Confession, Love Among the Ruins, The Lives of the Artists, and Heaven (just published) as well as the non-fiction works The Solace of Food, River of the West, My Grandfather's House, Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces, and Bayham Street: Essays on Longing (coming in 2012). He is a winner of the Edgar for Best Novel, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Washington State Book Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction as well as being a finalist in the Los Angeles Times Book Awards and the IMPAC Dublin Award. He lives in Seattle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Work -- Again, September 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Love Among the Ruins: A Novel (Hardcover)

Robert Clark has become one of my two or three favorite contemporary American writers. I loved "In Deep Midwinter" -- having grown up in Minnesota and having experienced the environment and the people he described in that tale. And now this -- growing up and wising up -- in Minnesota in the late 1960s. Clark is a careful and thoughtful writer and his ruminations on our times, on growing old, on the whims and fancies of fate and history, of our illusions of control and of the afflictions of melancholy and the glories of love -- love of a boy for a girl, a man for a woman, a mother and father for children -- is incomparable among other writers today. I am always sad to come to the end of his books -- both because they ring so true in the end in a sad (but true) way and beause I want the story to go on and on and on. Bravo Mr. Clark. Please give us more.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tragic and beautiful, August 17, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Love Among the Ruins: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is easy to read, and not-so-easy to read at the same time. It's easy to read because the characters are so real, and there are just two major (intertwined) story lines. The reader is drawn in to the story through the narrative and attention to detail. It's difficult to read because Mr. Clark seems to display an uncanny knack for getting in the mind of 16-17 year olds - he accurately portrays the stage of life without becoming histrionic (like many other writers do). Be warned: some of the thoughts and feelings described may hit close to the bone. If you like literature that will have you examining your own feelings long after reading the final page, read this book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars extraordinary work, April 5, 2004

By 

Alan Weisman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love Among the Ruins: A Novel (Hardcover)

Robert Clark's characters are so authentically identifiable that, upon reading his novels, you sometimes have the haunting feeling that he somehow knows you, too -- and knows exactly how to reach you. His portrayals of his fellow humans, so dignified by precise, loving language, make you feel honored to be included. (And a little grateful, too: He has a gift for compassion and forgiveness.)

I neither know Clark, nor am in the habit of writing reviews unless I'm especially moved. This is such a special case: an author who conveys universes with a handful of sweetly drawn individuals.