PROMISE OF REST (Price, Reynolds, Great Circle.) [AUDIOBOOK] (Audio Cassette)

~ (Author), Josef Sommer (Reader)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This dark, haunting successor to The Surface of Earth and The Source of Light adds a contemporary chapter to the tormented Mayfield family's 90-year saga. Wade Mayfield, great-grandson of the woman whose runaway marriage in 1903 set the family's tragic 20th-century history in motion, is dying of AIDS. Long estranged from his parents (his black lover, Wyatt Bondurant, hated them as complicit beneficiaries of the South's racist past), Wade comes home to North Carolina in April 1993, after Wyatt's death. His mother, Ann, has left his father, Hutchins, claiming that her husband has shut her out of his life for years. Meanwhile, Hutchins's lifelong friend and onetime lover, Strawson Stuart, makes his own reproaches about Hutchins's inability to fully accept love. Extended family and friends gather around the dying Wade, grappling with matters as general as America's poisoned racial heritage and as intimate as the Mayfield legacy: "burning what they called love as their treacherous, always vanishing fuel when what they craved was merely time; more time above ground anyhow to feed their dry unquenchable sovereign hearts." Price's characters are fierce people who know the damage they have caused and don't presume to think they can redress it. Yet a deep religious sentiment permeates the novel, holding out the promise of rest for Wade and anyone else who can learn to accept life whole, with all its splendor and cruelty. The book closes, like its predecessors, with the family wedding ring passing into new hands that may put it to healing use. Price's prose-distinctively Southern yet uniquely his own, with its ring of North Carolina's brisk cadences and his characters' flinty personalities-provides just the right vehicle for his passionate, unsentimental consideration of American life as seen through its truest prism: the family. A crowning achievement in the career of one of our finest writers.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this concluding novel of the "Mayfield Trilogy" (e.g., The Source of Light, LJ 3/1/81), Hutchins faces the imminent death from AIDS of his only son, Wade. Recently reconciled after a disagreement concerning Wade's deceased companion, father and son reestablish their closeness as Hutch nurses Wade through his last days. Hutch's estranged wife, Ann, stops in regularly to assist in nursing her son, causing Hutch additional turmoil. Although the tale focuses on death, it nonetheless presents an uplifting message of renewal through Wade's inspiring strength and a secret revealed upon his death. Price explores such human concerns as love, race, family, and homosexuality, treating each with rare insight and sensitivity, going way beyond the simple story of an AIDS victim's last days. Part of the book's appeal is due to Josef Sommer's skillful reading. He gives each character a distinctive voice that enhances the listening experience. Recommended for general audiences.?Nancy R. Ives, State Univ. of New York at Geneseo
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Audioworks (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671528955
• ISBN-13: 978-0671528959
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,162,126 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Old South sensibility confronts the modern Plague, December 9, 1999

By	Doug Vaughn (Washington, Dc USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Promise of Rest (Paperback)

It was a great pleasure to (re)discover Reynolds Price in this book. I had put him aside many, many years ago when I read A Long and Happy Life and couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. My loss, it seems. I must now revisit the many books he has published over the last few decades because having read The Promise of Rest, I am sure I have missed a lot that is worthwhile.

This book, about an aging southern poet/professor who brings his only son, suffering from AIDS, back from New York to die at home, is a beautifully written and touching portrait of the characters involved. But more, it is in many ways the typical 'Southern' novel, where the tragic outcome and any hope of redemption are all bound up with family history, race, sex, friendship, the 'wages of sin' and the weight of history. There is a sensibility at work here, as in Peter Taylor's work, that seems, in its particular experession, uniquely southern but manages to be, in its effect upon the reader, universal.

This is a very moving book. The only problem I experienced in reading it was a slight twitch whenever the main character would speak of his own early same sex experiences. In these scenes, the language Price put into the protagonist's mouth seemed artifical and strained, and the euphemisms chosen to refer to body parts and sexual activity were so strange that even a Victorian would have laughed at them. Nevertheless, the story engaged the reader from the beginning and despite the inevitability of the outcome, maintained a strong emotional hold. I was deeply moved by this book, which, like the best of southern writing, left me questioning much in my own life and times.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chillingly real and poetic! Hard to put down., August 14, 1998

By A Customer

I am reading the Great Circle novels backwards -- which may be an advantage! I found reading Price's language like eating rich food. There is no speed-reading this author! You want to savour every sentence, every beautifully wrought phrase and expression. He reminds me painfully of my own southern roots, and makes me mourn for the loss in my transplanted soul of what seems to be a particularly southern appreciation for the beauty and majesty of our American language.

And it is simply a good read! I found it difficult to put down. And there were times when I had to put it down, overwhelmed as I often was by a scene, or a speech, or a description. Reynolds Price is a treasure!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I recommend this Book to everyone, December 21, 2000

By	Terri Lawless-Munro "[e-mail]" (Roslindale, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Promise of Rest (Paperback)

I simply can say enough how much I loved this book. I am an avid reader, reading approximately 2 books a month and this was my all time favorite. It was incrediably touching to witness the relationship between father and son. I cried at the end because I was so sad the book ended. Because this is the holiday season and people are always swaping ideas for presents, this is the first suggestion I make.