How to use this Page

In this, the summer of my extensive, happy reading, I sit at long last with Richard Russo, who establishes himself as the perfect confidante from the first pages of That Old Cape Magic and never falters.  Russo is writing of marriage in Magic, and of the thwarting antecedents of parental influence and intrusion.  He is writing of the inability nearly all of us have to be the person we wish we could be (a theme that has repeatedly surfaced in this, the summer of my reading).  He is writing of academics and of ill-placed snobbery, of weddings, of daughters, of love's incalculable slipperiness, of Cape Cod, of Maine.  But mostly Russo is writing a terrific, well-paced story featuring Griffin, a man in the throes of a sad separation from his wife, Joy—a man who waits longer than men should wait to apologize for things unsaid and undone.  Can Griffin fix all that is broken within himself?  Can he grow up not being the very sort of people (for yes, it's like Griffin is at times two people) his most-confounding parents were?  Can he be himself, and not his legacy?

Magic is an amazingly well-made book.  No tangent is wasted, no storyline is developed simply to prove that Russo can.  Even the story within the story—a short piece that Griffin has been writing nearly his entire adult life—is telling and heartbreaking and abundantly alive.  It is also constructed, and Russo shows us how, embedding ideas in with his tale:

Stories worked much the same way, Griffin thought, shoving "The Summer of the Brownings" back into his satchel.  A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.

I loved this book, couldn't wait to get back to it even as chaos yearned to rule in my household.  I loved the ease of its telling, the wealth of Russo's empathetic imagination, the kindness Russo ultimately showed to his characters.  Russo made me laugh out loud.  Not many writers do.

Display Comments Add a Comment

It has become a holiday tradition on the OUPblog to ask our favorite people about their favorite books.  This year we asked authors to participate (OUP authors and non-OUP authors).  For the next two weeks we will be posting their responses which reflect a wide variety of tastes and interests, in fiction, non-fiction and children’s books.  Check back daily for new books to add to your 2010 reading lists.  If that isn’t enough to keep you busy next year check out all the great books we have discovered during past holiday seasons: 2006, 2007, 2008 (US), and 2008 (UK).

Elliott J. Gorn is Professor of History and American Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year That Made America’s Public Enemy Number One, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America and Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, among other books.

I’m a total sucker for Richard Russo. There is nothing fancy or trendy about his novels, just great prose, acute observation of what makes people tick, and some laughs along the way. His 1997 book Straight Man, for my money, is the best academic novel ever published. His early books like Nobody’s Fool and The Risk Pool were wonderful evocations of working class life. This year’s That Old Cape Magic, follows his more recent themes, like age and desire. Russo’s characters are always trying to make it through life unscathed, and of course they never succeed. You can’t read without an ache the description of Griffen (his main character) as a boy, the lonely son of two academics, discovering in a neighboring family a whole sensual and emotional world while on a Cape Cod vacation. Russo is always about the secrets we keep from ourselves coming back to haunt us decades later. I hoarded this book for a long plane ride, and it kept me flying hour after hour.

---

My favorite kid’s book of all time? The one I loved reading to my daughter, the one I always buy for friends is Munroe Leaf and Robert Lawson’s old classic The Story of Ferdinand, about a bull who is just not interested in his own fearsomeness. He is who he is, always a good lesson for kids. But I might not be a good person to ask

Add a Comment