Some Other Place. The Right Place [Paperback]

Donald Harington (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

It is June. Diana Stoving's new Porsche has just broken down on the Garden State Parkway, and Diana, twenty-one, freshly graduated from Sarah Lawrence, sits in a dealer's showroom, waiting for repairs. Bored and impatient, Diana leafs through the local newspaper - and by pure chance reads the news item that will change the course of her life, that will launch her on a year's journey, a year of the strangest adventures she could ever hope to endure, suffer and enjoy. For it is this news item that leads her to meet Day Whittacker, a shy, eighteen-year-old Eagle Scout, who his high school English teacher, experimenting with 'age regression' claims is the reincarnation of a hellraising ocntryman named Daniel Lyam Montross, a man who had lived a wild, romantic life and died a violent death - twenty years earlier.

Together, Day and Diana disappear from New Jersey, setting out to explore the life and investigate the death of the man known as Daniel Lyam Montross. Through ghost towns and abandoned villages they journey, becoming in turn, amateur archaelogists, naturalists, sleuthss, historians, and inevitably and ultimately, lovers.

And always the presence of Daniel Lyam Montross is with them. Dead, he is fated to die again. Is one or both of them also fated to die?

One of Harington's most devious narratives, and a precursor to the Stay More cycle.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A highly original novel, intriguing both sexually and intellectually, and very well written. -- Publishers Weekly

Sensual, evocative, clever and very original... -- Irish Times

There is much to admire here - structure, characterization, tonal and thematic complexity, evidence of hard and fruitful labor. -- The New York Times

About the Author

Acclaimed by critics as "an undiscovered continent" and "America’s greatest un- known novelist" Donald Harington is a brilliant creator of fictional worlds, rooted in his native Arkansas. His imagination is no less expansive than Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his language is rich in a uniquely American, southern idiom. Winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Porter Prize, and the Heasley Prize, we’re delighted to be publishing With, his thirteenth novel, as well as three new editions of other novels in the Stay More cycle.

Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Toby Press (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592640710
• ISBN-13: 978-1592640713
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,029,118 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Donald Harington was one of America's greatest writers of fiction. His fifteen novels have been called jubilant, lyrical, foxy, captivating, delicate, bawdy, playful, reckless, joyful, courageous. Set in the fictional hamlet of Stay More, Arkansas, Harington's stories blend myth, dreamscape and sharply observed speech and manners to depict a rich, eccentric, rural society. All fifteen novels--from the classic Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, to the redemptive Choiring of the Trees, the love story With and the concluding novel Enduring, published just two months before Mr. Harington's death-- are now available as The Complete Novels of Donald Harington, a must-have collection for all those who wish to read the very best, authentic, contemporary American writing.

"The quirkiest, most original body of work in contemporary US letters." -Boston Globe

"Harington is hooked into the deepest traditions of storytelling, dipping his buckets directly into the well it all comes from, pursuing a literature dedicated not to documentation or self-expression, but to fascination, to lifting us out of ourselves and the dailiness of our lives -- to making our world again wondrous and large." --Los Angeles Times

"Totally satisfying... Harington reveres the most ordinary aspects of the lives of unexceptional people...he makes his joy infectious." --Time Magazine

Donald Harington (1935 -2009) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and spent nearly all of his childhood summers in the Ozark mountain hamlet of Drakes Creek, his mother's hometown, where his grandparents operated the general store and post office. There, before he lost his hearing to meningitis at the age of twelve, he listened carefully to the vanishing Ozark dialect and the old tales told by local storytellers. He published his first novel in 1965, and fourteen more for a total of fifteen, most of them set in the Ozark hamlet of his own creation, Stay More, loosely based on Drakes Creek. Acclaimed by critics as "an undiscovered continent," "America's Chaucer," and "one of the most powerful, subtle and inventive novelists in America," Harington was the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Porter Prize, the Heasley Prize, and the Oxford American Lifetime Achievement Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite ghost story..., October 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Some Other Place:The Right Place (Paperback)

My favorite ghost story is SOME OTHER PLACE, THE RIGHT PLACE. It is sexy, funny, sad, and wise. The story is about a college girl who happens reads a newspaper story about high school boy who, under hypnosis, has been channeling a ghost -- the ghost of her grandfather! She and the boy begin an odyssey, visiting all the ghost towns where the ghost used to live. Naturally the boy falls in love with the girl -- but she falls in love with the ghost who emerges in the boy when he is under hypnosis, so this becomes one strange love triangle. This book and THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ARKANSAS OZARKS by the same author are the two books I most often give away to my friends.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Favorite Book of All Time!, December 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Some Other Place:The Right Place (Paperback)

I completely agree with the other reviewers. This is the most fascinating book I've ever read. Mr. Harington is an unsung genius. He should be picked by Oprah and then he might get the kudos he richly deserves. His writing is so beautiful, stories so imaginative,etc. etc. etc. Hard to believe one person could write so well.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was (and am) completely mesmerized by this novel., March 25, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Some Other Place:The Right Place (Paperback)

There are two subjects that particularly fascinate. One is "things para-normal" and the other is "sexuality." Harington's book explores both with such stunning originality and skill that I can hardly finish the book!

Let me explain. Usually when I'm reading I will dog-ear a page that I know I will want to return to some day. In this case, I have marked so many pages and individualy sections--even sentences--and I continue to return to many of them so frequently, that after three months I still haven't finished it! Oh, yes, I have actually read all the pages, including the last, but there remains so much wonder in this story and the telling of it that I really can't (if you'll excuse the cliche) put it down.

I cannot imagine how, or from what source, the author received his inspiration or research for this book. And how can he know that much about what goes on inside the human head, whether it be the characters' heads or our own?

I don't want to overdo it, and I know nothing else about the author except the fact of this book, but I am in awe of his insights and ability to express them in this way. The title, alone, is absolutely brilliant!