It was certainly a very enjoyable read, no great adventure but beautifully drawn characters. Straight out of the frustrated mid-west came Patty and Walter and their trials and tribulations. Patty, the never-quite-made-it college basketball star, who escapes from a sucessful Jewish New York family, becomes a housewife, then depressive; and Walter, her nerdy, environmentalist and steady-as-a-rock husband, always in the shadow of his best friend; carpenter and almost-failed-rockstar Richard. It tells the story of their university days together and their troubled marriage, the wars they seem unable to prevent breaking out around their family, parents, children and siblings. It is told in a sometimes bewildering variations of time frames, jumping backward and forward, but ever moving forward.
Each character seems to be a classic, maybe stereotypical version of the American psyche. Redneck racists, rural poor alcoholics, earnest Democrats, grasping Republicans, corrupt corporations, fanatical students. They are all here in a mix that encompasses the last forty years of the American Dream together with all its disappointments. It does go wider than being just the American novel, it relates to so many of us. It reeks of inter-generational ambition, disappointment and disapproval. It is the story of a family, it could equally apply to the lives of so many of us. With a bit of tweaking, I can have great empathy for Walter, a troubled soul with his heart in the right place, but possibly the only character who could be liked.
Well - is it the Great American Novel? No- its too good for that!
