Seaview [Paperback]

Toby Olson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1982

The action of Toby Olson’s PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel Seaview sweeps eastward, following three men and two women across a wasted American continent to an apocalyptic confrontation on Cape Cod. Melinda hopes to reach the seaside where she was born before she dies of cancer. Allen, her husband, earns their way back by golf hustling, working the links en route. Outside of Tucson, the two meet up with a Pima Indian also headed toward the Cape to help a distant relative who has claims on a golf course there that is laid out on tribal grounds. Throughout the journey, Allen knows he is being stalked by a former friend, Richard, a drug-pusher whom he has crossed and who is now determined to murder him. The tortured lives of Richard and his wife Gerry stand as a dream of what might have become of Allen and Melinda had things been otherwise. The lines that draw these people together converge at Seaview Links, and on the mad battlefield that this golf course becomes, the novel reaches its complex ending. Seaview’s vibrant language and fateful plot make this study of an America on the edge an unforgettable read.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (April 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081120829X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811208291
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,851,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Difficult, but well worth it, April 20, 2002

By 

hllib "hllib" (King of Prussia, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seaview (Hardcover)

Toby Olson's novel is complex, and its details may seem tedious to undisciplined readers. However, for those willing to give their full attention to Olson's prose, you will be rewarded fascinating insights, rich characters, good humor, and most important the golf scene, which is easily the greatest description of the game of golf in American literature, and rises to the highest levels of prose American writers have written. Yes, the scene's that good - but you'll have to work for it. Oh yes - the book takes a funny turn toward the end, so stick with it. Overall, quite wonderful.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Novel about the end of westward expansion and Golf, August 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Seaview (Hardcover)

Golf and native americans and returning home and moving east are the themes here a great novel that ends on Cape Cod after starting somewhere out west on a golf course...