Larry's Party (Hardcover)

by Carol Shields (Author)
Key Phrases: maze design, floral arts, hedge maze, Larry Weller, Bill Herschel, Oak Park (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Larry Weller is a regular guy, or so Carol Shields has him think. When we first meet him in 1977 Winnipeg at age 26, he's pondering the pluses of Harris tweed, still living at home, and realizing he's in love with his girlfriend, Dorrie, a flinty car saleswoman. Larry is proud of his job at Flowerfolks, even though he fell into floral design by accident, and if his relationship with his parents isn't perfect, it's not too bad, either. (Stu and Flo Weller may have less page-time in Larry's Party, but they are hugely memorable. He is a master upholsterer, happiest when working; she is a woman ruined by nervous guilt, having inadvertently killed off her mother-in-law with some improperly preserved green beans.)

Carol Shields has said that she had "always been struck by the fact that in most novels people aren't working." Though her hero climbs the floral managerial trellis for 17 years and finds more rhapsody in work than marriage, Larry and Dorrie's honeymoon in England points him toward what will be his true vocation--mazes. These living constructs turn him into a thinker, a man of imagination, and the author's descriptions are quietly spectacular as well as effortlessly sweet. Larry wonders at their "teasing elegance and circularity ... a snail, a scribble, a doodle on the earth's skin with no other directed purpose but to wind its sinuous way around itself." Just as Larry changes with the times--each elliptical chapter ages him by one or two years--so does his art. In 1990, he designs a maze in which you can't really lose yourself. In 1997, the McCord Maze "is intended to mirror the descent into unconscious sleep, followed by a slow awakening." Larry, too, has a slow awakening, taking several false turns before reaching midlife. As the novel closes, with a bravura dinner party scene, he may finally be at ease in the world. But his creator knows that he is only halfway there, and still has to negotiate his way from the center of the maze to its exit.

From Library Journal
Pulitzer Prize winner Shields (The Stone Diaries, Viking, 1994) follows 20 years of Larry Weller's life, culminating in an unforgettable party. Larry goes from work as an ordinary man, a floral designer, to become a noted architect of garden mazes. Like the mazes he designs, his life becomes increasingly complex?a symbol of what it is like to be a Caucasian male in the late 20th century. His interactions with his parents, his sister, the two women who (consecutively) marry and divorce him, and his son are paralleled by the additional textures and colors he builds into the hedges he designs. The chapters gradually reveal the threads of the protagonist's identity. This well-written, satisfying novel is replete with telling metaphors, memorable phrases, and gentle satire. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.
-?Ann Irvine, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Md.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670873926
• ISBN-13: 978-0670873920
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,058,496 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem, emotionally and stylistically., September 10, 2001

By	Doug Baldwin (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Larry's Party (Paperback)

Like so many of us, Larry Weller finds himself, on occasion, lost. Is that why he is drawn to the arcane profession of maze-making? Or is his fascination with mazes a reflection of his deepening intellect and development as a man?

In the course of fifteen carefully observed chapters, Carol Shields examines the maze-like Life of Larry. Each chapter is like a short film in which Shields refocuses her lens on a specific aspect of Larry's life: "Larry's Words," "Larry's Love," "Larry's Kid," etc. The end result is an in-depth portrait of a multi-dimensional guy, a compendium of details that elevates the seemingly ordinary Larry into someone utterly unique. She follows him through college (actually a trade school for florists), through the courtship of his first wife, through disillusionments and deaths, and finally to the party of the title, in which many of his life's loose ends are resolved.

This is deep, smart, resonant writing, a subtly cajoling book that satisfies and delights.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars unique read, April 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Larry's Party (Paperback)

In Carol Shield's novel, Larry's Party, each chapter is divided into chronological periods in the main character, Larry's life. What Shields shares with the readers in this book are not the main events in Larry's life, but instead are sketches of numerous (seemingly insignificant) occurences that shape the character's life. From the outside, Larry appears to lead a normal, mundane life. Once the reader is allowed into Larry's private thoughts, however, the ordinary dilemmas and difficulties this man faces form into an immensely complex character. "And he's tired- tired of his name, tired of being a man, tired of the ghostly self he's chained to and compelled to drag around." Shields writes each sentence in almost a poetic manner. "He would fall alseep, finally, to the rhythm of those strange voices: Stu and Dot Weller, his silent poetic parents, coming awake in the soundwaves of their own muffled words, made gracefully by what they chose to say in the long darkness." Shields chooses extraordinary words and phrases to best portray the deep and sometimes hidden meanings. The wording and language Shields uses throughout the novel grow increasingly brash and crude. She writes in a pattern that describes every character in a journalistic way each time they are mentioned. "Dorrie, his first wife... Larry, from Winnipeg." This way of labeling becomes redundant and unnecessary. Shields tends to write each of the milestones of Larry's life in one brief sentence, while she goes into great detail and depth with the daily, routine events. It would be easy to assume that such deep analyzing of one certain character would be dull and without a driven plot, but Larry's Party draws in and captivates the reader. The characters do not grow tiresome because the further one gets into the novel, the more the characters reach out and become more relatable to the reader.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A story of a life lived and observed, June 11, 2003

By	Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Larry's Party (Paperback)

Carol Shields has a way of writing about the ordinary that elevates it to the sublime. We follow Larry, an ordinary guy, through his life through jumps in time of several years at a leap. Through the chapters, we follow him through a callow youth, through a first marriage and parenthood, divorce, his parents and sister's relationships with him and each other, remarriage and re-divorce, and most central to the book, his mundane job and rise to stellar status in his field of maze designer, of all things. But of course the maze is a metaphor for the complexities of life, trying to find ones way in the world. The dinner party at the end is clearly meant to represent the 'goal,' the center of the maze, but it's left to the readers to decide if Larry is likely to find his way out again.
A lovely tour de force.