Mr. Ives' Christmas [Paperback]

Oscar Hijuelos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 1996

Hijuelos' novel tells the story of Mr. Ives, who was adopted from a foundling's home as a child. When we first meet him in the 1950s, Mr. Ives is very much a product of his time. He has a successful career in advertising, a wife and two children, and believes he is on his way to pursuing the typical American dream. But the dream is shattered when his son Robert, who is studying for the priesthood, is killed violently at Christmas. Overwhelmed by grief and threatened by a loss of faith in humankind, Mr. Ives begins to question the very foundations of his life. Part love story--of a man for his wife, for his children, for God--and part meditation on how a person can find spiritual peace in the midst of crisis, Mr. Ives' Christmas is a beautifully written, tender and passionate story of a man trying to put his life in perspective. In the expert hands of Oscar Hijuelos, the novel speaks eloquently to the most basic and fulfilling aspects of life for all of us.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The signal event of this novel?the shooting of the protagonist's son?is announced early, and the rest of the book is imbued with a melancholy only occasionally illuminated by spiritual revelation or insight. Edward Ives is a foundling, adopted by a widowed print shop manager and raised uneventfully in an idyllic?though Depression-era?New York City of egg creams, stickball and melting-pot color. Ives's dark looks and his father's long history of working amiably with Cuban pressmen incline him toward a sympathy with Hispanics and their culture, which conveniently anchors Hijuelos in a world he knows well. As a child, Ives shows a penchant for drawing, and he meets his future wife, Annie MacGuire, in a class at the Art Students League. Their first child, Robert (or Roberto), born in 1950, is murdered at age 17 on the streets of New York by a Puerto Rican teenager. The case is celebrated?Robert had just decided to enter the priesthood and was killed for a measly $10; by his side was found a shopping bag full of record albums?Christmas presents carefully chosen for each member of his family. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Hijuelos showed he can sharply evoke a vibrant, multicultural New York, capturing its music, its menace and its smell. Here, however, every storefront is darkened by the grief of Edward Ives, and every note is tamped. It is as if the lovelorn Nestor of Mambo Kings has returned from the dead to play his sad arias in a world?and a book?absent his lively, spirited brother, Cesar. The author's attempts to render all this as a Dickensian tale of redemption through dignified suffering?Dickens is invoked more than a dozen times?are crude and work no wonders. Not even a long-foreshadowed and deferred meeting at the end of the book between Ives and his son's murderer helps: "Nothing monumental transpired. Niceties were exchanged." Same for the book. BOMC selection; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

For Edward Ives, a graphic artist employed by a Madison Avenue advertising firm, Christmas has always been an emotionally charged holiday. It was during the Christmas season that Edward's foster father first visited him at the foundling home, and at Christmas a few years later Edward was finally adopted. Ives met his wife at an art students' Christmas party, and-most importantly-it was during the 1967 Christmas season that Ives's 17-year-old son was senselessly gunned down as he left choir practice. Ives has never fully recovered from the killing, and his unshakable depression threatens to destroy his marriage, as does his strange obsession with rehabilitating the murderer. It is significant that Mr. Ives's most prized possession is a signed edition of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Hijuelos, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Cuban exile, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, breathes new life into the Victorian Christmas genre. Highly recommended.
--Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060927542
• ISBN-13: 978-0060927547
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #769,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

OSCAR HIJUELOS, the son of Cuban immigrants, is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His seven novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in New York City and spends part of the year in Durham, North Carolina, where he teaches at Duke University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars O beautiful humanity!, January 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mr. Ives' Christmas (Paperback)

It's a diamond that cuts into the great spiritual wasteland. Oscar Hijuelos nails the virtues of moral truths and redemption of love, forgiveness, compassion -- those simple selfless qualities that our world considers trite. He does it through an amazing story of a quiet, humble man whose deep faith inspired: Ed Ives. This book is among my top favorites ever. I laughed, cried (blubbered while reading parts to my wife, actually) . . .

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is there a fundamental goodness inherent in this world?, January 7, 1999

By 

michael jennings - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Ives' Christmas (Paperback)

Ed Ives is of an unknown origin. His search for an identity and an understanding of life beyond his present situation prompts him to explore the world. While he does not find what he is looking for a series of mystical experiences provide him with what he needs. The needless murder of his son Robert shakes his life and marriage like a great and devestating earthquake. He is forced to make sense of his world in light of this travesty. It is here that the carefully woven Christmas motif of author Oscar Hijuelos emerges with its spiritual splendor. Christmas operates like an epiphany in the life of Mr. Ives. It serves as a reaffirmation of the goodness that inherently exists in this often dark world. It is a testimony to all that is of worth to a life in search of meaning. It is also the occasion of Ed's superhuman forgiveness of his son's killer. This is a marvelous book of tracing a life's movement against the current of despair. It is in the Christian world of the spiritually-minded Ed Ives that the struggle to embrace good in a world stained with evil is ultimately won.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lyrical perfection, March 22, 2000

By 

"mjk32" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Ives' Christmas (Paperback)

Yes, Hijuelos won the Pulitzer for Mambo Kings. Mambo Kings deserved two Pulitzers: it was excellent. But Mr. Ives Christmas exists on a different level; it's among the best books written in the past twenty years. Hijuelos' style is lyrically exquisite, his tone soft and measured, his insight is startling and poignant. A profound, moving, nearly perfect piece from one of America's most gifted, beautiful writers. Takes the best of American realism and dips it into latin magic to produce Hijuelos' best book by far - a book that every human being should read.