Lucky Man, Lucky Woman (Norton Paperback Fiction) [Paperback]

Jack Driscoll (Author)

Book Description

Series: Norton Paperback Fiction | Publication Date: February 17, 2000

Nominating Lucky Man, Lucky Woman for the Pushcart Editors' Book Award, Rick Bass called it "one of the best novels I've read all year--an incredible story, not of high drama but rather of a marriage, of all things."

Perry Lafond, approaching forty, knows he's had a decent life with his attractive, longtime wife, Marcia. But he's come to the point where he is not sure that he can continue on. In the meantime, there's the question of children. His wife, battling infertility, is obsessed with the idea of having a baby. Perry wants a child too--maybe. Suddenly, he can't keep his mind off other women. In his job as a probation officer he becomes recklessly infatuated with the pretty, beleaguered wife of a parolee who has a young child. Perry's own confusion endangers this child as well as a nephew under his care. Always unflinchingly honest, Jack Driscoll tracks a man's headlong--and just possibly redemptive--leap into chaos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For a man who's happily married, gainfully employed, and living in Mystic, Connecticut--the kind of town other people visit on vacation--Perry Lafond is feeling something less than lucky. He spends a suspicious amount of time with his Portable Nietzsche. He wakes screaming from nightmares about his kid sister's death. He dutifully doses his infertile wife, Marcia, with Pergonal each morning, but he's less and less sure a baby is what he wants. Then he meets Angela Knudson, the sad, pretty wife of one of his parolee "clients," and he finds himself drawn to her in a decidedly unprofessional way. His involvement with the Knudsons deepens until, inevitably, it takes a turn for disaster, jeopardizing his job as a probation officer, his marriage, and everything he holds dear. Rest assured, Perry does emerge from his long dark night of the soul, but nothing about his life will ever be the same again. Lucky Man, Lucky Woman, winner of Pushcart's Editor's Book Award, is the kind of book in which the smallest detail rings true, from Perry's volatile buddy Wayne to the emotional permafrost of his Michigan upbringing. "Love, unlived and unfelt for so long, becomes only another desperate gesture in the end, a final grimace at all the pain hoarded over a lifetime," Perry realizes, returning after his mother's stroke. With his first novel, Jack Driscoll has created a wise, complex, generous-spirited portrait of one marriage and the pressures that surround it. --Mary Park --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

It's barely summer in the seaside community of Mystic, Conn., and Perry Lafond, the restive, 38-year-old hero of Driscoll's searing first novel?recipient of the 17th annual Pushcart Press Editor's Book Award?is facing "the worst funk of his life." Chafing at the confines of both his childless 15-year marriage to Marcia, who's now enduring a grueling regimen of fertility injections, and his job as a probation officer, for which he long ago gave up a career as a teacher, Perry has begun flirting with a second adolescence. He's taking his Harley on late-night rides, rereading Nieztche and testing the affections of two actual mothers?Marcia's twin sister, Pauline, who's navigating her own divorce, and Angela, the wife of Roland, an irascible trailer-park parolee. Still haunted by nightmares of his sister, who drowned at age five on the grounds of his parent's cherry orchard, Perry is thrown into an emotional free fall after causing a jet ski accident involving his young nephew, and by news that his mother has had a second stroke, prompting a grim visit to his family estate in Northern Michigan where little has changed since his sister's death. Driscoll writes with an elegiacal kitchen-sink realism so suffused with detail that every nuance of the recriminating conversations, fraught silences and introspective fugues of Perry and Marcia is spun out at ponderous length. Yet there's also a cinematic fluidity to certain scenes, as when Perry returns from Michigan to a fiery showdown with Roland and a trial separation from Marcia, which leads to a stint of lobster fishing with his friend, Wayne, an itinerant Vietnam vet?and the first signs of catharsis. The story will resonate with readers, however, for what finally emerges, from both the high drama of reckless accidents and the slow burn of Perry's midlife depression, is a powerful portrait of a marriage holding its own against the weight of difficult past and a still more difficult present.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (February 17, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393319458
• ISBN-13: 978-0393319453
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,229,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I may be biased, but I love this book, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lucky Man, Lucky Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was honored to have Jack Driscoll as my teacher in high school for two years, so when his first novel was published, I looked forward to reading it with excitement and some trepidation, wondering if it would measure up to my expectations. I am happy to say that it did, and in fact exceeded them. In "Lucky Man, Lucky Woman", Driscoll tells a compelling story of a man, Perry, as he deals with adultery, family, and infertility. Actually, the book is about much more than that, but to say more would not do it justice. As the story progresses, you feel pulled by Perry himself to keep reading, to constantly wonder what will happen next. "Lucky Man, Lucky Woman" is, in that sense, like Life itself. In some ways, I wish the book had been twice as long: I really felt that Perry was living and breathing, and that his life extended past the last page. Actually, this novel reminds me a lot of Ray Carver's short stories, especially those from his collections "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and "Cathedral". Both authors are genuine in their portrayals of the human existence, so much so that their stories make you feel as though you were their characters, that your life was being played out by their words. Jack Driscoll, in his first novel, has truly achieved something great, and for that I will forever admire and envy him.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do yourself a favor and read this book!, March 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Lucky Man, Lucky Woman (Norton Paperback Fiction) (Paperback)

If there was any justice in the book publishing world, "Lucky Man, Lucky Woman" would be Oprah's next Book Club pick. This is a dead-on funny and honest portrait of marriage--its joy, tedium, and occasional madness. Perry Lafond is a great character. He's smart and reflective and kind, but also stubborn, confused, and mistaken--the way most human beings really are. This book is pure pleasure from the first sentence to the last.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Over-hyped, February 23, 2002

By 

Sarah (Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucky Man, Lucky Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

I chose this book for our book club selection of the month because of the overwhelmingly positive reviews received from the offical reviewers and the customer reviews on this site. All of our book members were extremely disappointed with the novel. Although there are isolated sections of excellent writing and some beautiful imagery, the characters are one-dimensional and unlikeable, the plot irritating, and the tone drab and uninteresting. I am an avid reader and can enjoy most books, but I truly pushed through this one. I must admit, I usually find it helpful and enlightening to pay close attention to reviews, but this time I felt they were extremely misleading.