A novel (about family love and sexual identity) that reverberates to the depths of the soul. --Booklist (starred review)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With mixed results, Erhart (Augusta Cotton, 1992) uses five first-person narrators to explore issues of sexual identity and stifling emotional barriers as played out in suburban New Jersey during the turbulent 1960s. To a casual observer, the Haas family-mother Tommie, father Frank, son Brighton, daughter Helen-might appear the nuclear ideal. But Tommie's miserable, Frank's remote, Brighton broods and Helen tries to figure it all out. Tommie, it turns out, had a satisfying lesbian relationship with her college roommate, Jeanne Ann Love, and married Frank because, given the times, she believed she had no choice. Her best friend and next-door neighbor is Hal Chapin, who endured six months of an awful marriage before he could admit that he was gay. Brighton and Helen, tormented by their mother's misery and by their father's silence, struggle with the pains of adolescence and sexual questions of their own. The novel begins promisingly, especially with the engaging voice of the troubled Brighton; but after a while, the spectacle of all five main characters wrestling with similar sexual identity conflicts grows wearisome. Tommie begins drinking, and her frustration and confusion come to a climax on her 40th birthday, culminating in an accident that leads her to leave her family for a commune of women in Vermont. Eventual reconciliation with her family comes hard, though not as hard as the patience that a reader, despite Erhart's genuine compassion and insight, needs to finish this frustratingly elusive work.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Haases had a bad time. Father Frank's income kept them comfortable, but mother Tommie's restiveness grew, and after the accident, she took off, first to the arms of her college roommate, then to the West Coast, then to rural Vermont. Son Brighton finished a decade of sullenness and psychotherapy to become an attractive young man (albeit gay--like mother, like son?), but as he did, daughter Helen withdrew, dropped athletics, almost stopped eating. Meanwhile, Tommie's best friend and the family's neighbor, Hal, came out of the closet yet always staunchly maintained "the halfway house for Haases." First one, then another of the Haases and Hal advance the story of their hard years. Each speaks in a distinctive voice; at the same time, the testimony of each is heartbreakingly lucid, simple, and intelligent. Together, they represent the human condition in late-twentieth-century America: craving the meaning family might give but living an arid individualism, suffering but not guilty. The author of the marvelous Augusta Cotton (1992) gives us another quiet novel that reverberates to the depths of the soul. Ray Olson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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More About the Author
Margaret Erhart is the author of five novels. Her fifth, The Butterflies of Grand Canyon, is due out at the end of December, 2009. Her fourth, Crossing Bully Creek, won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and in several anthologies, and her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona and teaches creative writing on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. She is a river guide and hiking guide in Grand Canyon.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A modern family on the verge of breaking apart.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Old Love (Hardcover)
A lucid heartbreaking novel about a family in the midst of fragmentation, honestly and eloquently told by the different characters. Tommie Haas is a mother, wife, best friend, and lover. Her husband is voiceless, her children are bitter, and her best friend must try to hold the pieces of the frayed Haas family together. This novel reverberates with hurt, bitterness, and failure but is no less wonderful and telling for that
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