A Ship Made of Paper: A Novel (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: Eight Chimneys, Star of Bethlehem, Windsor County (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Spencer's latest novel should cement his reputation as the contemporary American master of the love story. Daniel Emerson is a New York City lawyer who has returned to his hometown of Leyden, N.Y., a picturesque Hudson Valley village, with his girlfriend Kate, a novelist, and her daughter, Ruby. Kate drinks and obsesses about the O.J. Simpson trial instead of writing fiction. Daniel finds himself falling in love with Iris Davenport, an African-American grad student at the local university. Iris is married to Hampton Welles, an investment adviser. The book records Iris and Daniel's affair from both perspectives and poses the question, is their fleeting happiness really worth so much ruin? For ruin there is a-plenty: Daniel thoroughly humiliates Kate, destroys his financial status, becomes a subject of gossip in the village and inadvertently mauls Hampton in an accident with a roman candle, making it almost impossible for Iris to leave him. Spencer is an unerring writer. He describes the two couples at a local concert: "From time to time, Kate must glance at Daniel. His eyes are closed, but she's sure he's awake. Hampton takes Iris's hand, brings it to his lips, while she stares intently ahead. And then, Kate sees Daniel glancing at Iris. Their eyes meet for a moment, but it has the impact of cymbals crashing. It is a shocking, agitating thing to see. It's like being in a store with someone and watching them steal something." Kate's violated sense of order is captured in perfectly chosen metaphors. This book, in which matters of sex and race are treated with unusual frankness, could well be both the critical and commercial surprise of this spring season.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

A violent incident sends Daniel Emory, a successful white New York lawyer, back to his Hudson River hometown, where he is ensconced in edgy domesticity with his girlfriend, Kate Ellis, and her daughter, Ruby. His daily routine of taking Ruby to day care introduces him to Iris Davenport, a black woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. Daniel develops an obsessive attraction to Iris, who embodies for him the possibility of release from an emotional distance he has felt all his life. Iris tentatively returns the affection, yearning for her own respite from a frosty marriage to Hampton Welles, an investment banker, resident only on the weekends. A freak snowstorm affords the opportunity to begin an affair that sets in motion fierce jealousy--tinged with racial animus--in Kate and Hampton. This is an engaging novel of passion, romantic longing, race, class, family responsibilities, and the riveting anxieties of a couple embroiled in a relationship that cannot end well. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (February 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061367443
• ISBN-13: 978-0061367441
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #311,204 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Endless Lust?, June 5, 2003

By	H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Ship Made of Paper: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read several years ago ENDLESS LOVE, a novel I liked immensely and was therefore eager to start this one. The novel is certainly an easy read. You can race right through it. It's all about Daniel Emerson's obsession with Iris Davenport and his pursuit of her come hell or high water as he rides out his passion in a fragile "paper boat," if you want to mix your metaphors. The characters for the most part are well developed although I thought Iris's husband may have been almost a stereotype. Spencer tackles head-on the dicey subject of an affair between a black woman and white man, certainly an area not every writer is willing to explore.

Having finished the novel, I was troubled by the character Daniel, however. Although his lover Kate continuously describes him as a good man, I'm not at all sure he is. I believe the moral question is this: does anyone have a right to insist on getting whatever he thinks he wants, no matter who gets hurt or destroyed along the way, in order that he can have an all consuming affair? There are of course similarities in Daniel and the young man in ENDLESS LOVE who, as I recall, in a fit of passionate love, burns down the home the young girl he's crazy about lives in. We may be able to forgive youth their folly. I'm not sure we can overlook as easily the sins of people entering middle age.

Having said that, if you accept the premise that everyone here gets hurt or destroyed, you'll find this compelling reading.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I hated this book, November 1, 2004

By	a reader (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Ship Made of Paper: A Novel (Hardcover)

I'm a big fan of two previous Scott Spencer novels ("Endless Love" and "Waking the Dead"). But after reading a "A Ship Made of Paper," I wondered whether Spencer might be one of those writers who had a finite number of stories in him -- and we've already heard them all.

With his desire to speak out against racism in America, Spencer's heart is certainly in the right place, and it's too bad that more writers aren't of a like mind in that sense. Unfortunately, this novel functions more as an advertisement for adultery than it does for colorblindness. Neither Daniel nor Iris is trapped in a relationship that couldn't be gotten out of without, in Iris's case, a lawyer, or in Daniel's, a U-Haul. Yet instead of showing a bit of backbone, both Daniel and Iris, separately, before the central action of the book begins, decide to go looking for love behind their partners' backs. Only then do they develop a flirtation, start an affair, and Fall in Love. Then they have the gall to do things like, in Daniel's case, lie to his girlfriend Kate, carry on under her nose while living in her house as her suspicion rises, and research the practicalities of making a life with Iris while Kate sits at his side (I'm thinking of the scene where he queries a mixed couple about the practicalities of having an interracial marriage, while he's on what's supposed to be a romantic outing with Kate).

In an apparent effort to remove some of the sting of Daniel's actions, Spencer makes Kate an unappealing character herself -- she's racist, for one thing -- but do her flaws make it OK for Daniel to treat her in this manner? It seems to me that the answer is no; a good person would treat Kate with at least a minimal level of respect, regardless of her catalog of flaws. But Daniel is not of this mind. And it seems that Spencer, by making it easy to dislike Kate, is trying to take the easy way out, in a sense.

As for Daniel, Spencer has chosen to imbue his character with many of the traits he gave David Axelrod, the first-person narrator of "Endless Love." Yet while those characteristics (obsessiveness, among others) made sense in the older novel -- where the character in question was a teenager heartsick over the loss of his first love, and perhaps a bit crazy as well -- in Daniel, a middle-aged lawyer, these traits are charmless. They make Daniel seem like, well, an adolescent, when in fact he ought to be a grownup.

I won't get into the many implausible plot twists -- like the police officer who sends a volunteer search party out into treacherous terrain without flashlights, for instance, or Daniel's decision, while on his way to care for an invalid who despises him, to bring along two 5-year-olds, one of whom likes to beat the other up, even though the kids are supposed to be in day care anyway. Suffice to say there are plenty of unlikely scenes, and, yes, they're annoying.

Most offensive, though, is the author's suggestion that dishonesty is OK, as long as one has a worthy goal, like love, and especially if your love is interracial. A close second in the offensive category is the treatment of alcoholism, which, the text suggests, is a character flaw on a par with racism.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful read, September 29, 2006

By	Book lover in NYC (NY, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Ship Made of Paper : A Novel (Hardcover)

This is my first Scott Spencer book, and I will definitely seek out his previous works. I loved this book, and could identify with many of the characters. Mr. Spencer writes beautifully, his decriptions of people, places and situations are unconventional and startling. The book's main theme is obsession, and how it can destroy the lives of many. It doens't have the happiest of endings, but it was extremely well-written and enjoyable.