The Obituary Writer (Paperback)

~ (Author) "MY FATHER, who died when I was five, had a reputation as a great newspaperman..." (more)
Key Phrases: obituary desk, dog museum, jequirity beans, Arthur Whiting, Jessie Tennant, Bette Davis (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his delicate and hilarious first novel, Porter Shreve paints a fast-moving tale about the grungy, romantic allure of newspaper work and the muddled conspiracy of nature and nurture in a young man's maturation. The Obituary Writer's narrator, Gordie Hatch, has papers in his blood: his late father was a crackerjack reporter, his mother a journalism-school secretary. His environment reeks of his avocation, too, from the bundled newspapers in his garage to his comforter, which bears old headlines like TITANIC SINKS, SACCO AND VANZETTI GUILTY, and LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPED. By age 8, Gordie is fully ready to grab the newspaperman's baton, or, more bluntly, to get a paper route. ("I grew up with a heightened sense of my own importance, which my mother encouraged," he says. Not least because she seems to have delivered far more papers than he.) In 1989, when he moves straight from J School into an entry-level position at the hallowed St. Louis Independent, Gordie experiences an eternal, embryonic sense of belonging within its perfectly stereotypical nerve center, one that might have housed his father.

Sometimes I'd swear I could sense him looking out through my eyes, a young reporter waiting for the flare in the sky that points to the great discovery. I'd stop at the rackety wire machines under the mural of Remington's Pony Express to scroll through the overnight news, then pick up a late edition from the stacks before taking the long, slow route to my desk.

But Gordie knows he can't afford to move slowly. His beat, the obituary desk, is either a stepping stone for the gifted or a place to park damaged has-beens. When he makes three crucial judgment errors in succession, he is suddenly ensnared by a Southern femme fatale--who lures him into an exquisitely drawn world of highly un-newsworthy bank clerks, dog shows, and bumbling small-town artistes. A far cry from the collapse of European communism, which his luckier colleagues get to cover. Though the final third of The Obituary Writer veers into formulaic suspense-novel territory at times, Gordie always remains engagingly self-aware and the novel's denouement is well worth a bit of tough sledding. Will our hero realign himself with his destined path? How strong is fate, exactly? We cannot say, Gentle Reader. You must uncork this fine, funny novel for yourself. --Jean Lenihan

From Publishers Weekly

Balancing lies and reality is a complex pursuit in Shreve's first novel, a poignant coming-of-age story centering on an aspiring journalist, Gordon Hatch, eager to live up to the standard set by his late father, a renowned reporter who covered John F. Kennedy's assassination and its aftermath. Gordie, 22, is presently a lowly obituary writer, a job he takes seriously, preparing a file of "advancers," obituaries of elderly famous people. He gets a phone call, which might be his first scoop and lucky break, from Alicia Whiting, a young widow, who pulls Gordie into the heart of her own pathological identity crisis. While trying to hide the truth of his humble job at the St. Louis Independent from his mother, who constantly compares his career to that of his father, and from Alicia, who quickly becomes his lover, Gordie weaves a web of lies nearly impossible to escape. But Gordie's web is nowhere near as complex as Alicia's, and as he faces some shocking truths about his lover, and about his parents, Gordie has to reevaluate the importance of truth itself. Although the story raises compelling questions about honesty and friendship, Gordie's epiphanies lack power, often falling flat: when Gordie finally appreciates the loyalty and support of his mother and his former girlfriend, he says, "It dawned on me that my mother and Thea were good, that they had wanted to see me on my birthday." Lucidly demonstrating the widening gulf between Gordie and those who love him, Shreve then offers disappointingly little to bridge it, particularly since the lies and betrayals exposed are devastating, though the ultimate surprise, the lynchpin of the plot, lacks credibility. Yet unexpected twists, the deft buildup of suspense and a clever premise sustain the momentum. Agent, Joe Regal. Author tour. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (June 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395981328
• ISBN-13: 978-0395981320
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,027,201 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Accidental Purchase..., July 12, 2000

By	Quaker Annie "reader" - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

...while looking at books in a local bookstore, I had thumbed through this one and actually read the ending, then planned to put it back...good writing, but nothing I wanted to read.

But I forgot to put it back, as I stacked up books and there it was when I got home. I decided to read it anyway, even knowing the ending, and find that I'm glad I did.

Very well-written, with a clever, poignant plot, this is a story that will stick with you. The narrator is Gordie, a young writer who wants to achieve the same fast success his mother reminds him (constantly) that his deceased father managed to find.

It's hard to say what needs to be said about this very good book without giving things away.

Gordie starts at the bottom, as an obit writer, low-end in the newspaper world - under the supervision of an aging, failed writer and editors who stab at Gordie's eager ego every time he attempts to take short cuts to success.

His lies tangle with the lies of others, his pride encourages him to inflate himself and blinds him from the truths. His inexperience couples with his wish to succeed; he seduces himself into believing what he wants to believe (aided by Alicia, a young and recent widow who has ego needs of her own).

Inevitably, Gordie finds himself both caught in, and part of the cause of, a tragedy.

(Note: what a previous reviewer's comments mean -- about LBJ, cowboy songs and Vietnam -- is a mystery to me, for none of those things are in this book)

This story is one that is not just good to read, but causes you to reflect for a long time after finishing.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A subtle, good read, May 30, 2000

By	Anthony Reed (Ithaca, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

About halfway through The Obituary Writer, the main character's mother tells him: "I hated to lie, but I had to tell her something." That "saying something"-those stories with which we invent ourselves-is the organizing trope of Porter Shreve's first novel.

In 216 lean pages, we meet Gordon Hatch, an ambitious-to-a-fault aspiring journalist ca. 1989, paying his dues as an obituary writer for a St. Louis newspaper. We watch as he falls in love with the mysterious Alicia, who, like Gordon, is trying to find her place in the world. We watch as he botches another relationship, and we watch him finally get tangled in his own web of white lies. And we want badly for him to succeed.

Mr. Shreve handles his subject seriously, but with a light touch that seems almost self-effacing, as if perhaps he sees a bit of himself in his naïve twenty-something narrator. All of us can find some part of ourselves in this character, in over his head in situations he cannot fully grasp. Perhaps we all have watched helplessly while it seemed that control over our lives was wrested from our hands. Our ability and desire to empathize with Gordon and his desire to have "arrived" already, that makes it so much fun to be with him.

Ultimately, The Obituary Writer is a mystery involving the events surrounding the death of Alicia's husband, Arthur. Her story unravels as does the Eastern Bloc countries featured in the background as a constant reminder of the way people construct Iron Curtains, as it were, just as nations do. As Gordon first begins having doubts about Alicia, the Berlin Wall falls, reminding us that it is necessary eventually to remove those artificial boundaries (such as status) we construct around ourselves. As with any good mystery, The Obituary Writer makes sense of its twists and turns as it goes along. It is to Porter's credit that, as with real life, things remain tangled enough at the end that the novel stays with us after we have finished.

This is an author to keep your eye on.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To Have Killed Or Not To Have Killed, That Is The Question, September 19, 2000

By	Chad Spivak (North Miami Beach, Florida) - See all my reviews

Did Alicia do it? That's the question that will be haunting me for a while. The Obituary Writer left me up in the air, and in all honesty, that's the only way this book should have left me. The ending is truly remarkable.

Gordie Hatch is a young obituary writer for a newspaper. He seems to be stuck at his position, and his father being an ace reporter who covered the JFK assasination always seems to be looming in the background. One day, Alicia Whiting calls after her husband's death, claiming that there is a good feature story in the making. Gordie is thrown into Alicia's life, and the twists and turns are plentiful from there.

What I liked most is the several different storylines within the one main plot. The substories are all interesting and they are all tied in quite nicely at the end. There were several points in the book where I thought that I knew what was going to happen next, but the novel never seemed to go the way I was thinking.

Overall this was a really quick read with a very subtle language peppered with humor quite well. I sincerely recommend this book for the mere fact that Gordie Hatch is definately one of the most interesting characters you will read about in a long time. This book will not disappoint.