A Dangerous Age: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Ellen Gilchrist (Author)
Key Phrases: sweat tent, blessing ceremony, Dangerous Age, Mary Lily, Little Sun (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In the latest from Gilchrist—who won the National Book Award for the 1984 story collection Victory over Japan—the grand Raleigh, N.C., wedding between Winifred Winnie Hand Abadie and Charles Kane is canceled when Charles perishes in the World Trade Center attacks. Winnie becomes despondent, and well-intentioned cousin Louise Hand Healy, a producer of TV documentaries, goads her to move in with her in Washington, D.C. Another cousin, Olivia Hand, is deeply committed to her job as editor of a Tulsa, Okla., newspaper and is torn between two men she loves. Gilchrist shifts uneasily among the three women's perspectives, and between the first and third person. The political commitment underscoring the novel, particularly in Olivia's scathing antiwar editorials, is deeply felt, and a nice twist is introduced when, on September 12, Charles's twin cousins, Carl and Brian, join the Marines. Gilchrist never quite brings the three female leads into narrative harmony, but she makes the age's dangers palpable. (May)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Beloved southern fiction writer Gilchrist returns with her first novel since Sarah Conley (1997), and the legion of fans who appreciate her propensity for using recurrent characters will enjoy the reappearance of the extensive Hand family of North Carolina and Oklahoma. The focus is on three cousins, women, who face making greatly important career and personal—marital—choices against the ubiquitous, unavoidable backdrop of the Iraq War and the terrorist conditions prevalent in the post-9/11 world. Gilchrist brings these three characters into full individual realization while simultaneously  connecting them to the bigger pattern that is their shared family history and also to the even bigger national event that fractured lives. The novel’s opening event, a wedding, which was to gather all the Hands together, is canceled when the bridegroom perishes in the collapse of the World Trade Center only three months before the nuptials were scheduled to take place. The ripple effect of this family tragedy, and the continued impact of the war in Iraq, on the three cousins’ lives gives this novel a humanity easily embraced by the reader. Gilchrist’s trademark supple prose and droll sense of humor are on full display. --Brad Hooper

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (May 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565125428
• ISBN-13: 978-1565125421
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #263,678 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a little heavy-handed, May 9, 2008

By	Pricey "exlibrarian" (Maine) - See all my reviews

I have been a big fan of Ellen Gilchrist for 25 years, I've read and enjoyed all her books but I found this one a big disappointment. To me, it seemed like a political polemic thinly disguised as a novel. We want to read about how the political climate affects the lives of the characters or how they feel about what's happening, not read page after page of their political views. Not much character development or plot, lots of proselytizing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Novel That Is Saved By the Writing, August 14, 2008

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

I discovered Ellen Gilchrist in 1984 on NPR, was fascinated with her accent and loved her commemtaries. I remember reading LAND OF DREAMY DREAMS, THE ANNUNCIATION and VICTORY OVER JAPAN and being taken by her writing, particularly her short stories. Then she dropped off the radio and I stopping reading her, a little like someone waking up one day and remembering that he used to eat at a favorite restaurant but no longer does, for no particular reason. Now Ms. Gilchrist has written a novel, her first in several years. I bought it after being drawn in by its first few pages that I have reread three times now and find them just as wonderful as upon first reading. The short novel begins with the plans for a society wedding of Winifred Hand Abadie and Charles Christian Kane to have taken place on December 21, 2001 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The
wedding party would be composed of friends and family in their thirties and from the upper middle class. Then Ms. Gilchrist writes in clear prose that appears effortless: "Except the wedding never took place because Charles Kane perished on September 11, 2001, along with three thousand other perfectly lovely, helpless human beings. He had been in the first tower of the World Trade Center, on the fifteenth floor, with two other young brokers, trying to set up a deal to build a new tennis club in Raleigh."

Like the restaurant we revisit-- to continue my trite metaphor-- Ms. Gilchrist isn't as good in this novel as I remembered, and I cannot explain exactly why. She writes about three women in the Hand family, Winifred, Louise and Olivia. The narrative jumps back and forth. I thought at first the story would be Louise's since it begins with her as first person narrator. Then the third person narrator takes over-- at least for a few pages-- with most of the book being about Olivia, who writes for a newspaper in Tulsa. Women in their thirties marry men in their twenties-- which should come as no surprise to Gilchrist fans-- usually after they have managed to get themselves with child without much effort on anyone's part. The men are gung-ho about the military. The day after Charles' funeral on 10 January 2002 ("it is extremely hard to have a funeral when you don't have anything to bury"), his identical twin cousins joined the Marines. Although Olivia's husband Bobby, is called up to active duty when his reserve unit is activated rather than volunteering, he still essentially believes in his leaders and is proud to be an American. The women can be just as patriotic if from a distance. Winifred signs a letter to Olivia as "Your flag-waver cousin, Winifred" but makes love to Brian on three-hundred-dollar "450-count percale sheets rinsed in lavender" on a nine-hundred-dollar mattress. Apparently she took seriously the President's exhortation to support our troops by going shopping. Olivia, on the other hand, acknowledges that "the South and Midwest always fought the wars, farm boys and high school athletes, poor boys and sons [unlike the volunteering twins of course] whose folks worked for a living, the sons and daughters of the beautiful small towns of America. That's who went to war and that's who shed the blood." One of the best parts about this uneven novel is Olivia's newspaper columns.

Ms. Gilchrist strews quotations from Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Albert Einstein et al. throughout this story and admonishes the reader, through the voice of Olivia, to have our children memorize poetry, an idea I couldn't agree with more. In the end though this novel is not greater than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, for whatever else may not work perfectly in this novel, Ms. Gilchrist's transparent prose does. It is as beautiful as that of any other contemporary American author's and a joy to read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Dry Wit , June 26, 2008

By	Mary Lins (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ellen Gilchrist's latest novel "A Dangerous Age" was made especially enjoyable to me because of her dry wit. I laughed out loud several times, and while there is certainly tragedy in this novel, it is by no means a "tragic novel".

In the character of Olivia (arguably the main character) we explore how opinions and convictions can change once you have some "skin in the game". I didn't feel that Olivia's questions about the war in Iraq were a political statement by Gilchrist, but rather a mirror of the uncertainty that many of us feel. What is right? Do I even know? CAN I even know? Those are legitimate, often unanswerable, questions.

"A Dangerous Age" was a quick, interesting and enjoyable read.