Starting Out in the Evening (Paperback)

by Brian Morton (Author)
Key Phrases: New York, Henry James, Leonard Schiller (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Brian Morton's Starting Out in the Evening is a study in the danger of expectations. Heather Wolfe, a pretty, brash graduate student, is confident that her thesis on the novelist Leonard Schiller will put her on the literary fast track. Yet her first meeting with her idol produces something of a shock: "He came toward her smiling. Old, fat, bald, leaning awkwardly on a cane. The man of her dreams." Can this elderly author and "man of routines" really be the looming figure whose early fictions changed her life? The more she comes to know Schiller, the more he confounds her: his willingness to toil in obscurity falls far short of Heather's romanticized ideal. She can't even quite decide "if he was a hero or if he had wasted his life."

Schiller, however, views his own life quite differently. At first he's seduced by Heather's flattering attentions, and succumbs to at least a frisson of desire for love and fame. Yet ultimately this thoughtful, dignified man wants only to finish what he has begun. He has "no illusions about the scale of his achievement, but he had tried, through art, to bring a little more beauty, a little more tolerance, a little more coherence into the world." With wise and compassionate prose, Morton examines the intersection of these two lives, intertwining their story with a third one--that of Ariel, Schiller's unhappy 40-year-old daughter. Along the way, the author quietly raises a number of questions about the utility of art, its power to inflect our dreams, and, finally, what makes a life well lived. It is to Morton's credit that he doesn't presume to answer such questions. Yet the skill with which he asks them makes Starting Out in the Evening an elegiac and deeply affecting novel. --Marianne Painter --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
In beautifully nuanced scenes, Heather Wolfe, a 24-year-old graduate student, forces a meeting with broken-down Leonard Schiller, an out-of-print, sick old writer whose early works, written during the heyday of 1940s and 1950s New York intellectualism, forever changed Heather's life. Targeted as the subject of Heather's master's thesis, Schiller quickly falls under the seductive promise of her admiration, much to the distress of Ariel, his 39-year-old daughter, whose own struggles with failed romance and childlessness derail her energy. Morton (The Dylanist, HarperCollins, 1991) demonstrates an astonishingly sensitive appreciation for his characters as he reveals with unnerving accuracy the most private thoughts not only of his women but of the dying old man as well. These mismatched souls gradually realize that their individual journeys, which they thought were drawing to a close, are in fact new beginnings. Morton's respect for his characters and his audience is a quiet literary triumph. Highly recommended.
-?Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., Mich.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books; 1 edition (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156033410
• ISBN-13: 978-0156033411
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #402,450 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful story of life, love and passion, March 14, 2003

By	"beachrunnerjkn" (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starting Out In the Evening (Paperback)

This book sat on my bookshelf for nearly five years, and I cannot believe I allowed it to. It is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. It is deep and sentimental in topic, and yet it reads like a fast paced novel.

The characters are intense and mulit-dimensional: Leonard Schiller, a seventy something writer who's life has been dedicated to his art; Ariel, his forty year old daughter in search of her life's meaning and someone to father a child; and Heather, a twenty something aspiring writer and critic who decides to write a master's thesis on Schiller's work.

The relationship of the two women will Schiller is incredibly portrayed, as with Ariel Schiller is a loving and nurturing man, and with Heather, his passions are reignited and she makes him feel young. Also interesting is the way Heather and Ariel portray Schiller, and also the way these two women change as Schiller's life circumstances change.

The parallels drawn between the three characters is fascinating, especially since each person is so different, and at such a different place in life. Ironically, even though each feels so different from the other, when the older two are compared to Heather in their memories, it seems they are more similar then they think.

At the end of this beautiful book, one cannot help but wonder what happens to the characters. Schiller's life goal at the end is to complete his final novel, and I so wish he were a real person so that I could read it. He is a beautiful charcter that brings memories of Morrie Schwartz from Tuesdays With Morrie.

If you are looking for a touching, moving, beautifully written book, don't wait any longer. Pick this book up and you will not put it down. Even when you are finished, the characters live on.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only l6 Reviews?, February 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Starting Out In the Evening (Paperback)

I should think hundreds of people would have written in praise of this novel. I am 65 years old and was in wonder how an author could so accurately portray both youth and old age.

I give it 5 stars because of the joy it brought to me. Am buying paperbacks to give to friends. Sometimes it seemed a bit choppy to me - but this is just my opinion - it still is a wonderful novel and I hope the author thinks about a sequel.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Kleenex Art", December 1, 2007

By	Stanley H. Nemeth (Garden Grove, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Brian Morton's novel deals with some undeniably attention-holding conflicts, such as old academe vs. new, youth vs. age and spiritual resiliance vs. inevitable death and decay, but the end result, sadly, turns out to be pretty forgettable stuff, much like a kleenex, to be used only once and immediately discarded. A major problem afflicting this book is one Henry James anticipated when he advised novelists above all to get themselves out of the way, saying it is far better to dramatize than to narrate excessively. Morton, however, is unable to resist explaining rather than showing, regularly following every few lines of dialogue with a philosophical or psychological summation - often an unwitting cliche- thereby suggesting his is more a chatty commentator's interest in "ideas" than a first-rate novelist's in character and action. His chief characters - a surviving 1950's New York intellectual, a contemporary Brown University academic careerist, and a non-intellectual daughter - are all promising figures and deserved a development enabling them within the fiction to stand on their own two feet and move convincingly about. Morton's commenting tendency interferes with this, while at the same time making his fairly lengthy story unduly thin on implicative richness, and after midway a tiresome read. While Morton's heart is always in the right place, his habitual intrusions, in short, take unwarranted precedence over a novelist's chief interest in creating characters of depth or a memorable action which would merit rereading.