Lush Tale of Parents Captures Richness at Heart of Family
Winnipeg Free Press › August 18, 2009
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Summary
[John Lanchester] is a star writer with the London Review of Books, penning lengthy essays on everything from Google, and Wal-Mart to last year's World Cup of Soccer. At 45, he has published three works of fiction, debuting with 1996's The Debt To Pleasure, which have all garnered awards.
In Family Romance, Lanchester could seemingly not have less material to work with. He is an only child, so there is no competition among siblings, and no "Ben," for example, as in Thomas Wolfe's fictional autobiography Look Homeward Angel. Further, his father is a banker who laments his boring life.Lanchester ruminates on people's acceptance of boring jobs. "We fight for autonomy over so many areas of our lives -- for decency and democracy and freedom, for suffrage, for the right to have some say over our lives, some control -- and then in the central question of what we are to do with our days... we give all that freedom away in return for a paycheque."See the full content of this document
Extract
Lush Tale of Parents Captures Richness at Heart of Family
Family Romance
A Love StoryBy John LanchesterMcClelland & Stewart, 370 pages, $37Reviewed by Bill RedekopTHERE are a slew of books by children of celebrities revealing the private side of the...See the full content of this document
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