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Product Description
For William Kennedy fans, Albany conjures up a tapestry of great beauty and complexity in which the lives of an Irish American family are woven. Earlier Albany novels, including Ironweed, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, whetted our appetites. Now Very Old Bones treats us to one last look at the odd and turbulent Phelans, circa 1958. Stretching the boundaries of life as the Phelans know it, this powerful work flows back and forth in time, riding on the melody of its language. Its great theme is the promise of redemption for those who seek it.
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tobiejonzarelli (USA: MA) (2007/07/12):
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The fifth novel in Pulitzer Prize winner Kennedy's Albany cycle finds him back in form with a complex but beautifully shaped saga revolving around the elderly artist Peter Phelan's unveiling of a series of paintings based on a family tragedy. BOMC and QPB alternates in cloth. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Library Journal
"The past is the present," says O'Neill's Mary Tyrone in Long Days Journey Into Night , a theory that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kennedy adheres to. In relating "this cautionary tale of diseased self contemplation," the author uses Orson Purcell, the bastard son of artist Peter Phelan, to carry on his Roman fleuve of Albany, New York's Phelan clan. Building his tale around a family gathering in 1958, Purcell relates his own life story as well as episodes in the history of each family member, both living and dead, who struggle to overcome their collective and individual pasts to embrace a brighter future. Though not a genuine masterpiece like Ironweed ( LJ 12/1/82), this book is still moving, sometimes bleak and difficult but often humorous, much like the lives of the Phelans themselves. The Phelans can claim a place beside O'Neill's Tyrones and Steinbeck's Joads as one of the premier families of American literature who endure and, one hopes, prevail. If you think the great books are no longer being written, reading William Kennedy will change your mind. Highly recommended.
- Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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