World's End (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

by T.C. Boyle (Author)
Key Phrases: jellyfish eater, ancestral dirt, upper manor house, Van Wart, Van Brunt, Tom Crane (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
T. Coraghessan Boyle, author of Water Music, a hilarious reinvention of the exploration of the Niger, returns to his native New York State with this darkly comic historical drama exploring several generations of families in the Hudson River Valley. Walter Van Brunt begins the book with a catastrophic motorcycle accident that sends him back on a historical investigation, eventually encompassing the frontier struggles of the late 1600s. Any book that opens with a three-page "list of principal characters" and includes chapters titled "The Last of the Kitchawanks," "The Dunderberg Imp," and "Hail, Arcadia!" promises a welcome tonic to the self-conscious inwardness of much contemporary fiction; World's End delivers and was rewarded with the PEN/Faulkner Award for 1988.

From Publishers Weekly
"A triumph; resonant, richly imagined and written with unfailing eloquence," exclaimed PW of this saga of the Van Wart and Van Brunt families, which limns and links the Hudson Valley's early Dutch settlers, the Indians they displaced, and their descendants in the McCarthyite 1940s and wild 1960s.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 20, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140299939
• ISBN-13: 978-0140299939
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #59,868 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Pieces Don't Fit, November 22, 2005

By	Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Here's what you get with this one. You get a narrative about an aimless twenty-year old of Dutch descent in late sixties, upstate New York. He's conflicted and anxious for reasons he can't understand, not to mention that he sees ghosts. He loses his foot in a motorcycle accident at the site of an historic Indian marker. You also get a narrative about his mother and father in the late forties who take part in what is seen by the locals as a communist rally, and that has tragic results for both of them. Lastly, you get a narrative about his forefathers in 17th century New York, the most important plot-wise of whom loses HIS foot in an accident.

Intermingled in these narratives are the stories of those who interacted with our twenty-year old and his family--primarily a wealthy Dutch family and the local Indian tribe--and all those in the present story are descendants of those in the past. In general, the wealthy family is cruel, the regular family is cowardly and the Indians are oppressed. Oh. And there are a number of striking--if not improbable--coincidences between past and present of a kind similar to the amputated foot thing.

This really isn't as confusing as it sounds, although it helps that there is a two page list of principal characters at the beginning. You may find that you don't have to refer to it after every page, but refer to it, you will.

They're all pretty good stories, though, and despite the obvious forays into magical realism Boyle mostly keeps it real. The characters are distinctive and he is very good at maintaining narrative tension. It is one of those books in which you find you regret that a chapter has come to an end, only to become completely immersed within a few pages of the next.

But as engrossing as all of these stories are individually, they really don't mesh as a whole, and that, in a nutshell, is the problem with his novel. The twenty year old learns that his father, who abandoned him, acted despicably. When he finally confronts him, late in the novel, he is told that it has to do with what happened in 1690. In 1690 their ancestor acted despicably also, but why? In the face of adversity, this heretofore rather fierce character, without reason or warning, suddenly gives up.

Early in the novel, our twenty-year old is told a legend of the land on which they all now live. Before the white man ever came, an Indian tribe--fictionally named--was dominated by the Mohawks. To appease a fierce Mohawk who'd appeared among them, they presented him with the chief's beautiful daughter. Later, and to their horror, they found that the Mohawk had killed this girl and was in the middle of making a meal of her.

So maybe that's the point. The land was cursed from the very beginning. Or maybe it was the kid's family that was cursed, for acting like cowards. Or maybe it is the white man in general that is cursed, for treating the Indians abominably. Something is cursed, in any event, and it's really not clear that the kid's confrontation with his father at the end resolves it in any way.

Maybe it's just the book. It was published pretty early in Boyle's career and it's possible that as a young writer he simply bit off more than he could chew. One of his later works, Drop City, is more focused, and a richer experience as a result. World's End is a good effort, but Boyle is a far better writer now.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big family saga minus the cheap melodrama, February 17, 2001

By A Customer

T C Boyle's Pen/Faulkner Award winning novel "World's End" looks like a daunting read. It's after all over 450 pages long and boasts a cast of characters that spans several generations and makes Tolstoy's "War and Peace" seem like a cosy family drama. It's hard work initially figuring out who's who and this is complicated by Boyle making us jump backwards and forwards alternating between the 17th and 20th Century, but once you get into a groove, it's no sweat. "World's End" is a multigenerational family saga with all the pyrotechnics you'd expect but Boyle expertly skirts and avoids melodrama. The themes of real estate, power, race, class and betrayal are worked to their fullest and the effect is nothing short of stunning. All quite old fashionedly powerful stuff except for Boyle's quirky sense of humour (eg, Walter van Brunt's accidents) that nudges the novel somewhere left field. Boyle's own empathy for the hippy movement of the 1960s also lends an authencity to the "present day" developments. The novel is really about Walter's search for his mysteriously missing black sheep of a father, Truman - an enigma till the end - and as he drives himself and others crazy discovering his past and how the histories of three feuding clans are inextricably bound by blood, hatred and deceit, he comes face to face with the shocking truth that in three hundred years, nothing changes and humanity is powerless against the forces that threaten to engulf them. Boyle is a great storyteller. His prose is exotic, colourful, always compelling and a joy to read. Reading "World's End" takes commitment and dedication but the reward makes it all worthwhile. This is one novel nobody who loves serious literature should miss. Highly recommended.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars shed his grace on (some) of thee, September 12, 1999

By A Customer

Boyle shows us with breathtaking style how the powerful stay powerful and the powerless stay powerless. By writing about the same two families in both the 17th and the 20th centuries and spelling out in shattering detail how little changed their social relations are, Boyle gives the American Dream a good dope slap. Anyone who finds this book boring or hard to follow needs to stop watching so much television and get an attention span.

Boyle was one angry young writer and I think his venom has ebbed somewhat over the years, which is a good thing for him personally, but might cost his writing. I stopped reading him at _Road to Wellville_, which I thought was silly, but after hearing a recent interview with him about _Riven Rock_, I may try to catch up.

I think that _World's End_ is his best book because it is about his hometown. Maybe he has lived in southern California long enough now to write about that area and its people just as well.