Customer Reviews

An Unfinished Season: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ward Just's novel about the loss of innocence is the type of novel that can sneak up on a reader with its unassuming style and emotional power. Told in the steady voice of narrator Wils Ravan, AN UNFINISHED SEASON is set mostly in and around Chicago during the 1950's. Wils, who will soon enter the University of Chicago, spends his summer divided between working for a tabloid newspaper and attending the obligatory debutante balls: seersucker jacket by day, tux by night. These diversions, and the promise of leaving home for his own future at the end of the summer, make it easier for Wils to turn away from the troubled turn in his parents' marriage, something Wils can define only as "unequal grief". When at one of the dances Wils encounters a girl unlike those he has met before, he finds himself entering her world and leaving behind his own. Aurora Brule captures his heart, but it is her father Jack, a man who zealously guards his innermost demons, who haunts Wils long after the summer ends.

This surprising complex novel is only 250 pages long and yet it manages to weave in the political and historical atmosphere of the time, with the McCarthy hearings and tabloid journalism and the relative innocence of the upper class. It evokes a time when the country's own innocence was on the brink of disillusionment. Written without quotation marks, this book demands slightly more concentration that a more traditionally punctuated novel, but the confident language of Wils's voice makes it easy to navigate.

I highly recommend this novel for readers of literary fiction, especially those who like fiction in the style of Tobias Wolff's OLD SCHOOL. This intimate look into the turbulent summer of a teenage boy deserves a place on the bookshelves of serious readers.

4.5 stars

"It did not seem to me that you could fashion a life until you could make the decisions that governed it" -- with a maturity and honest self-scrutiny that never were granted to, say, Holden Caulfield.", so says Ward Just. He has written a novel that requires much thought and introspection.

Wils Raven is on the cusp of adulthood. He remembers in first person that time, and he is speaking from a 60 year old memory. This is one of the first times Ward Just has written a novel in first person, but as he tells it, "it just came out that way, and it seemed the thing to do." Ward Just started his career as a journalist and soon graduated to the Washington Post, where he reported from Vietnam. He left journalism in 1969 and started his first novel. Since that time he has written 14 novels. This is the novel that was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

Wils Raven is a child of privilege. His father owns a newsprint business; they go to the Country Club for golf, dinner and conversation. Wils is an only child. He is studious and not much of an athlete. His father was a renowned athlete, especially in hockey. He would come every evening in the winter, to the luxurious superb of Quarterday, outside of Chicago. He would chide Wils about his lack of athleticism. Wils has the summer to get to know himself better, and he decides he wants to work for a newspaper. H father, of course, has connections and helps Wils obtain his summer job. In-between his day job, he goes to many debutante balls, and it is at one of these that he meets his first love, Aurora. Aurora is fascinating, but so is her father, a well known psychiatrist who marched in the Baatan March and has never really been able to work through that. It appears that Wils is one of the few people that he has told about his time in the Army and that leave a mark in Wil's soul. Dr Jason Brule's death from his own hand changes the life that Wils has set for himself, He is in-between the cold war his parents have set for themselves, his life at the newspaper, the debutante balls and the pull he feels for the "regular" people he meets everyday at his job on the paper. How is he to work out the dramas of this summer? What will the relationship of all of these new people bring to change his life? We don't know. We can only see from the outside that a change is a'comin'. This is a well related story of a father, his son and the world that he enters in the Eisenhower years of the 1950's. Wils is a wounded spirit coming to terms.

Ward Just is a fascinating man. He has written 14 books, but is not as well known as he should be. He considers himself "undersold". "An Unfinished Season" is one of he best,
and he tells us "It goes without saying that most people think this book is deeply autobiographical, which it is not. The autobiographical parts about it are the things that I remember indelibly as if it happened yesterday. Not the dialogue. Not the people, but the look of things, the look of the dancers, and the kind of conversations that were going on. I remembered all of that pretty well." Highly Recommended. prisrob

Ward Just is a writer with few equals. He wrote for the Washington Post for many years, most notably as a Vietnam reporter in the seventies. Just successfully made the transition to fiction and hasn't turned back in some three decades.

An Unfinished Season is an exceedingly well crafted novel, set in Eisenhower era Chicago. The narrative is exact in the details it reveals, yet still spare enough to leave a reader guessing.

The reader is offered a rare inside glimpse of the North Shore W.A.S.P.s of Chicago, frozen in some ways like the cold midwest they inhabit. And frozen like the mysterious poor woman who appears throughout the book.

This is something of a coming of age novel, for both the main character, Wilson Ravan, and his father, Teddy Ravan. Wilson Ravan's unfinished season is the period after high school and before college - he's gotten a day job of sorts at a Chicago newspaper. It's here that he gleans the smutty stories he tells at the debutante balls he attends in the evenings. He experiences his first love and his first heartache.

Teddy Ravan's unfinished season is the end of his middle age years and possibly of his marriage - the reader never really finds out if the marriage is ending, or just settling in for the long haul to the twilight of the couple's years.

This novel is so tightly woven, it's difficult to dissect - and even after finishing it, one can't be sure of it. The reader is never completely let in, which is just as telling as what is learned. Just's prose is deeply symbolic without being corny.

This is a quiet, thoughtful book - highly recommended. A beautiful piece of work, and an affirmation of why I read fiction.

There's no doubt that An Unfinished Season is a beautifully written book. The prose slowdances its way throughout the novel in meditative, reflective, gorgeously precise and crafted lines. And while there is a precision to much of the prose, the background geography and sociology of 50's era Chicago is more evocation, more atmospheric mood and presence than a mortar and brick sense of reality, which fits the memory tone/structure of the book.
Told as a long reminiscence, the narrator is Will Ravan as he looks back on the summer of his 19-year-old self, a summer where he moved through three worlds that were, in a phrase of the times, separate but equal in their impact on him. The first is that of his family, which we are introduced to in a time of great stress as they deal with an increasingly violent strike at the father's printing business, his mother's father's death (a father who did not get along with his son-in-law), and the increasing coldness of his parents' marriage, which leads at one point to a separation and a closer bonding between Will and his father.
The second world is his day job at a city newspaper, one that focuses more on the seedier aspects of life, allowing Will (and Just) to muse on items of class and politics.
The third and final world is the debutante party world of affluent North Shore. Here Will meets Aurora and her psychiatrist father and here we start to see him moving into young adulthood as he separates from his family and moves among his peers, though never seeming to fit all the way in. His relationship with Aurora grows more intense and this world more intimate and personal and eventually more overwhelming than the others.
As mentioned at the start, Season is a meticulously crafted novel. Its prose evocative and precise, the mood created in subtle, pervasive fashion, Will's growth and his movement among the intertwined worlds sharply and subtly portrayed. But if anything, the story was a bit too subtle, a bit too tenuous for my liking. I never felt much attached to Will or any of the other characters, never felt fully engaged by any of them and so didn't really care too much what happened to them. Part of this was the style and structure, part of it the sense of reminiscence rather than in-the-moment presence. But part of it too was that the same sense of craftsmanship that went into the descriptive passages was also present in the dialogue, so that the characters spoke as characters rather than people. Too little of the dialogue rang true, making the characters feel artificial and thus diminishing my engagement with them. Similarly, Will's narrative voice was also far too eloquent and reflective at times. While his actual language could be explained away (somewhat) by the fact that he is narrating as an older, wiser adult rather than as a 19-year-old boy, the observations and insights he recalls himself making at 19 (as opposed to as an adult looking back) struck me as false through being far too mature and sophisticated. A problem Just himself perhaps perceived as he often has characters remark on how "old" Will seems at 19, declarations that seemed more contrived than sincere.
The book's episodic, somewhat random structure didn't help matters and this combined with the lack of engagement with the characters and a sense of unreality overlying it all made it a slow read. In fact, I picked it up and put it down so often that I started and finished 3 or 4 other books during the same time. It wasn't so slow or bad that I just gave up (I've learned over the years there are too many books out there to keep reading bad ones so I'm not one of those who finishes a book just because he started it) but it wasn't interesting enough to make me keep reading consistently. The end is well-done and has its own power, but overall the book was a disappointment. Based on his reputation and his obvious writing talent, I'd pick up another novel by Just, but I wouldn't recommend this particular one.

With almost half a century of perspective, most of us remember the 1950s as a deceptively serene time in America. The race issue hadn't yet erupted, the pill had not yet "liberated" women, gays were still in the closet and a sense of national innocence had not yet been corroded by the twin traumas of Vietnam and Watergate.

Ward Just has set his latest novel, The Unfinished Season, against this backdrop, which is recalled today with such a contradictory mixture of both fondness and derision. Written with his usual elegance, depth and understatement, this coming-of-age novel traces a formative summer in the life of Wilson (Wils) Ravan, the son of an upper class Chicago family.

Wils is 19-years-old, a combination of innocence and awakening maturity, who is spending his last summer at home in the mythical Illinois community of Quarterday, north of Chicago, before going to the University of Chicago. During the day, he works as a copyboy at a downtown Chicago newspaper, a job he attained through his father's friendship with the publisher. In the evenings, he makes the rounds of debutante parties on Chicago's opulent North Shore.

The two worlds are a study in class contrast-the working class domain of tabloid journalism, viewed as inherently sordid by Wils's social class, and the upper class milieu of the country-club set, scorned by Wils's newspaper colleagues as a snotty bastion of privilege. Occasionally, the two worlds collide, as when Wils forgets to change out of his dancing shoes before strolling into the newsroom and is mocked by the City Editor for being a swell.

In the first part of the novel, Wils's key relationships are with his parents, whose marriage is suffering from the strains of a labour dispute at his father's printing business. There are threatening phone calls, and then a brick smashes through the window of their home, mildly injuring his father. Wils' mother, a product of Connecticut gentility, wants her husband to settle with the strikers, but Teddy Ravan, a no-nonsense Midwesterner who views the strike leaders as Communist agitators, insists on standing his ground. The price he pays is his wife's alienation.

Wils enjoys a brief season of male intimacy with his father, as the two bond at cocktail hour while Mrs. Ravan makes a prolonged visit back East to her parents. But soon his affective centre of gravity shifts toward Aurora Brule, the 18-year-old daughter of a prominent Lincoln Park psychiatrist. Wils has met her on the debutante party circuit. They initially seem to be at a similar place in their lives, preparing to leave the nest for university, mildly rebellious against their fathers, skeptical of their social class but not willing to forfeit its advantages.

This is a modest, episodic story built around the tensions between two generations-one limited by their life experience, the other limited by their lack of life experience. As with Just's earlier fiction, the strength of The Unfinished Season is not so much in the characters or the narrative but rather in his precise depiction of the way people think, speak and behave in a particular place at a particular time. The ethos of 1950s Midwestern America is itself the most memorable creation, "character" if you will, of this novel. Working on a deceptively compact canvas, the author has infused his work with large themes that fester just below the surface-much as they did during the decade of the 1950s itself.·

Wilson Ravan is on the cusp of the rest of his life, the years with his parents soon to be left behind, childhood memories to be savored in his own middle age. Wils has flashes of insight into the inherent complications of marriage, but is preoccupied with his own emerging future. A child of 50's Chicago, Wils' generation is informed by a black and white world, capitalism, Communism and the opportunities for renewal after a world war. Wilson echoes his parents' choices, college, the coming out parties of North Shore debutantes, an esoteric blend of wealth and privilege: "So that year we all grew apart, secessionist provinces of an unstable nation".

In An Unfinished Season, the characters embody a sense of place that is extraordinary, reflecting the history of the Eisenhower years, post-World War II, when conservative ideology permeates a generation of businessmen, industrialists and rabid anti-Communists. Power is a recurring theme in the novel, the events that shake a man's beliefs and alter his worldview irrevocably. The McCarthy era is indicative of the country's mentality and the Ravan family staunchly supports current policy, especially Teddy Ravan, his business mired in a strike by the workers. Teddy feel betrayed: "You played as a team for the team, a philosophy that endured a lifetime."

As the 40-something Wils looks back over that fateful summer before college in Chicago, he savors that lost innocence, but has moved away from the class distinctions his parents embraced, a man who has devoted his life to a different set of values. But back then, running from day job at a tabloid newspaper to nights at debutante balls, Wils drifts back and forth between these unique universes, savoring the differences, the subtle nuances missed by most young men his age. In a way, the young Wils is simply the unformed, older Wils, already watching and questioning the values of those around him.

Wils becomes infatuated with Aurora Brule, the daughter of a prominent Chicago psychiatrist, a troubled man at best. Through his intense pursuit of Aurora, Wils stumbles over his own best intentions, his heart victim to youthful hubris, the undoing of first love as Wils misjudges Aurora's commitment when challenged by tragedy. With a natural temperament older than his nineteen years, Wils is a watcher, always on the way to the rest of his life, caught up in the present without noticing his missteps, too busy planning the years ahead with Aurora.

This is a remarkable book on many levels, deeply intuitive and observant. It is the subtle weaving of all the elements, politics, the tools of power, a nation on the rebound from World War II but soon to engage the Korean War, parents caught in the complexities of their maturing marriage and the utopian life of the North Shore debutantes, a sheltered arena, where the future offers only promise and wealth. The prose is richly textured and compelling, a delicate balance of Chicago politics, interpersonal relationships and the rarified world of privilege. Finally, Wils' life assumes a shape he never imagined, where "winning was not the only thing; often, it wasn't anything". Luan Gaines/2005.

Reading novelist Ward Just is a journey to a different era in American literature. His work fits comfortably in the period of Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Indeed, readers of Just's most recent novel, AN UNFINISHED SEASON, may be struck by its distinct similarity in theme and tone to Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY. Both novels view the clash between American cultures and class as observed by a young, innocent narrator learning difficult life lessons.

The Nick Carraway of AN UNFINISHED SEASON is Wilson Ravan, a nineteen-year-old resident of Quarterday, Illinois, an affluent North Shore suburb of Chicago. "The winter of the year my father carried a gun for his own protection was the coldest on record in Chicago" begins the novel. The winter in question is the early 1950s when Midwestern America and the nation are suffering the trauma of post-World War II metamorphosis brought about by anticommunist fervor, worker unrest and reexamination of the role of the United States in a changing world. In the brief time frame of the novel, young Ravan will graduate from high school, prepare to enter the University of Chicago, spend his summer on the North Shore social circuit, and work as a copy boy at a tabloid Chicago newspaper. Along the way, the struggles of his father and mother to confront both business and personal dilemmas will awaken Wilson to the complexity and injustice of life. Just like Nick Carraway, he will see the destruction caused by shallow and callused people.

Young Ravan meets Aurora Brule at one of the numerous debutant dances of the summer. The young couple fall in love. Aurora's father, Jack Brule, is a society psychiatrist, a man of complexity and mystery. Dr. Brule is a man burdened by tragic memories of World War II. Through this character, Ward Just, a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, is able to share with the reader his views on the experience and horrors of war. Like Ernest Hemingway, Just has led a rich and adventurous life. Those experiences form a foundation for his writing. Be it combat, politics, journalism or any number of issues, Just is not afraid to share with the reader his life experiences through the characters of his novel.

Ward Just grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, a middle-class community north of Chicago lacking the social status of the mythical Quarterday community chronicled in AN UNFINISHED SEASON. His family owned a small paper, the Waukegan News-Sun, where Just spent his early years as a journalist. While this novel is not a biographical work, it is nonetheless written from the perspective of a man who has experienced the evils of yellow journalism. Just knows his profession and he also knows well the politics and psyche of the Midwest. Whether it is the working class laborers of Ted Ravan's factory, or the upper class debutantes of Lake Forest and Winnetka, the characters in this novel have been superbly created by a writer of brilliance and insight.

Ward Just may be one of America's best-kept secrets. This is his 14th novel, and although several of his previous efforts have earned accolades and writing awards, he may still be an unknown talent to many readers. AN UNFINISHED SEASON is a coming-of-age story reminiscent of not only THE GREAT GATSBY, but also of J.D. Sallinger's CATCHER IN THE RYE. For those familiar with Ward Just's work, AN UNFINISHED SEASON is an anticipated summer treat. For first-time visitors to this novelist, be glad that you have thirteen other novels to read while you wait for his next effort.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

The quality of the writing here is excellent but the story and characters are very boring.
It is the quality of the writing, alone, that can get you to continue reading beyond say the first 50 pages, however there is no big pay off at the end.
No punctuation is a travesty; a time waster in an otherwise dreary read.

SUMMARY
Set in Eisenhower era Chicago, Ward Just in his novel An Unfinished Season, successfully was able to describe the summer of a nineteen year old named Wilson Raven. Wils, as his family and friends refer to him is a boy troubled with the issues of most adolescents during their summer before college. his life is filled with parties of the rich at the north shore, his summer jobn at the newspaper, and the relationships between his parents and his girlfriend. Although all the events take place in a two month period they have a lasting impact upon the boy for the rest of his life. It is the first time the boy recognizes how people and their relationships change over time. He observes how his parents have changed due to his fathers job and how his friends change with the coming of college. As well it is the first time that Wils has a job and a girlfriend. He learns at his newspaper job hos society functions and is revealed to its truths and dark side. As well his first relationship with his girlfriend was an experience that truly showed him how woman are. The novel is a truly interesting story that keeps a reader enthralled from the beginning to the end and accuratly is able to capture the emotions of a teenager through the eyes of an adult.

REACTION

Although to myself and my family it is not a surprise that I hate reading, this was a novel that i truly enjoyed reading. I went to border's to pick out a short book to read and get over with yet as I finished hte book I was lucky to have picked one out that I enjoyed. I felt that I could relate with WIls and the many issues he dealt with. In the novel he is nineteen just two years older than I am now. ALong with that he dealth with a first girlfriend and life in an upper class suburb of Chicago. I had my first experience with a girlfriend last year and had many of the same aspects and emotions he had during his relationship with Aurora. Secondly, he grew up and lived in Quarterday, a rich suburb of Chicago similar to Pinecrest in Miami. ALong with the ability to relate to WIls i enjoyed the book since it was easy to read. The pages seemed to pass by and the vocabulary was simple. Also, I think that Ward Just created the relationship amongst the characters very well. In the end after having read An Unfinished Season I felt it was a good choice andI enjoyed reading it.

The prose of this novel is pleasurable to read at times. Ward Just effectively conjures images of the 1950's culture of affluent suburbanites in Chicago. But I couldn't really get into the characters. There are moments where we begin to get to know a character, but then Just resorts to declarations like "I was never closer to my father than at that time" (I'm paraphrasing) instead of showing us how and why two characters were close. A couple of pages of dialogue between them wasn't enough to make me feel they were close.

The dialogue rarely rings true; it feels like glossy pontifications, not something a real person would actually say. It's rather cumbersome getting through it without quotation marks, too. The other thing that undermined the believeability of this novel is that while the protagonist is only 19, his reflections and interpretations of things sound way too mature. Perhaps this can be explained away by the fact that the novel is a reminicence of a much older man, but he claims to be having all these wonderfully deep insights at the time, not as he's writing his memories. Overall, the book has nice moments, but it didn't move me. I didn't believe that much of what the main character said and thought could be authentic. I think Just is trying too hard to be ethereal but deep at the same time.