Larry's Party: A Novel [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Larry Weller is a regular guy, or so Carol Shields has him think. When we first meet him in 1977 Winnipeg at age 26, he's pondering the pluses of Harris tweed, still living at home, and realizing he's in love with his girlfriend, Dorrie, a flinty car saleswoman. Larry is proud of his job at Flowerfolks, even though he fell into floral design by accident, and if his relationship with his parents isn't perfect, it's not too bad, either. (Stu and Flo Weller may have less page-time in Larry's Party, but they are hugely memorable. He is a master upholsterer, happiest when working; she is a woman ruined by nervous guilt, having inadvertently killed off her mother-in-law with some improperly preserved green beans.)

Carol Shields has said that she had "always been struck by the fact that in most novels people aren't working." Though her hero climbs the floral managerial trellis for 17 years and finds more rhapsody in work than marriage, Larry and Dorrie's honeymoon in England points him toward what will be his true vocation--mazes. These living constructs turn him into a thinker, a man of imagination, and the author's descriptions are quietly spectacular as well as effortlessly sweet. Larry wonders at their "teasing elegance and circularity ... a snail, a scribble, a doodle on the earth's skin with no other directed purpose but to wind its sinuous way around itself." Just as Larry changes with the times--each elliptical chapter ages him by one or two years--so does his art. In 1990, he designs a maze in which you can't really lose yourself. In 1997, the McCord Maze "is intended to mirror the descent into unconscious sleep, followed by a slow awakening." Larry, too, has a slow awakening, taking several false turns before reaching midlife. As the novel closes, with a bravura dinner party scene, he may finally be at ease in the world. But his creator knows that he is only halfway there, and still has to negotiate his way from the center of the maze to its exit. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Shields (winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Stone Diaries, LJ 5/15/96) narrated the abridged version of her novel (Audio Reviews, LJ 11/1/97), while here another woman reads Harry Weller's uneventful life. Alyssa Bresnahan gives a perceptive characterization of this 20th-century Everyman. Although the story describes Harry's everyday life in intimate detail, even to the number of fillings in his teeth and shoes in his closet, it is his work that is the heart of the book. Harry designs mazes for gardens; they are his passion as well as his profession. They are, in his words, "refuges from confusion, an orderly path for the persevering." Even Harry's life is consistent. As if in a maze, he follows sharp turns and false trails until he emerges triumphant in the center. It is then, in 1997, that Harry Weller?age 47?gives a party to celebrate his birthday, brilliantly described by Shields in a manner worthy of Virginia Woolf. A memorable experience. Recommended.?Jo Carr, Sarasota, FL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Shields won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for her last novel, The Stone Diaries (1994), an imaginative portrait of a remarkable woman. Now she presents her readers with every bit as intuitive and inventive a book, but this time, she portrays a remarkable man, the often inarticulate, ever kind Larry Weller. Shields is in regal control of her prose from its overall structure to the beat of each sentence, the rightness of each word, and the precision of each emotion and thought, but such formal perfection does not preclude deep feeling: this is a story of breathtaking sweetness. When we first meet Larry, the only child of a couple haunted by his mother's accidental role in her mother-in-law's death, he is 26, living in his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, pleased with his work as a floral designer, and not quite ready to admit that he is in love with his girlfriend, Dorrie. He never gets the chance to freely decide because Dorrie gets pregnant and they get married. His parents send them to England on their honeymoon, and Larry experiences crucial but unhelpful revelations about the nature of love, and, more constructively, stumbles upon a passion that becomes his life's work: the design of hedge mazes. The maze slowly emerges as the novel's underlying form as well as its reigning metaphor as Larry follows all the blind pathways dictated by his well-intentioned heart over the course of two tricky marriages, the raising of his son, and his slow acceptance of self, age, and mortality. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

A meticulous coming-of-(middle)-age novel by Pulitzer Prize- winner Shields (The Stone Diaries, 1993, etc.), who seems to have mastered the art of understatement without falling into the bottomless pit of obscurity. Larry Weller, the son of English immigrants, is brought to Winnipeg while still in his mother's womb. He grows up to become a floral arranger and landscape gardener. As the story opens in 1977, Larry is 26, living at home and dating Dorrie, whom he eventually marries. The book progresses episodically across the next 20 years, each chapter self-contained enough to work as an independent story but connected to the ones that precede and follow it by the narrative of Larry's life, which runs through them like the string holding together a necklace of pearls. Thus, while the focus of each chapter is minuscule--a tweed jacket picked up by mistake in a restaurant, for example, or a trip to the airport to meet a small child--the cumulative effect is one of exceptional clarity and depth of emotion, since the larger environment that surrounds ordinary daily routines becomes better defined and more obvious as the story progresses. The unhappy circumstances that led to the Wellers' emigration, the failure of Larry's marriage to Dorrie, the trials of his second marriage, and the development of his career as a landscaper are all described through flashback. Each part is carefully related to the central metaphor of the garden mazes that Larry becomes expert at designing. The climactic chapter, in which the characters of Larry's labyrinthine and exceedingly complicated life come together at a party, is a blatantly contrived device--but successful in spite of its transparency. Very fine and real: Shields writes with the rare self- assurance of one who from the first knows where her characters are going and what will become of them once they arrive, and--rarer still--manages not to bend them out of shape along the way. (Book- of-the-Month Club selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

'A brilliant fictional reflection on what it may be like to be a man in the late 20th-century.' Penelope Lively, Independent 'Altogether a cause for celebration.' Anita Brookner, Spectator 'There is a moving sensation that somehow leaves one grappling for the single word to describe it. Poignant? Touching? Oh you know, the real thing.' Harpers and Queen 'No more richly satisfying novel, to my knowledge, has been published this year!Shields demonstrates once again her extreme mastery of emotional geometry.' Sunday Telegraph 'This is, like all of Shields's work, filled with warmth and understanding.' The Times 'Exhilarating.' Sunday Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

The new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'The Stone Diaries'. Larry's Party is about being a man in this part of the twentieth century, when so many supports have been removed, and covers the life of its protagonist, Larry, between the ages of 27 and 47, from 1977 to 1997, and illustrates how men have had to change; it looks at how you define masculinity in the post-feminist world. Two strands run through the book: work and goodness. The chapters are at once independent of each other and yet connected, with titles like: Larry's Friends, Larry's Look, Larry's Kid, Larry's Folks, Larry's Love, Larry's Penis, Larry's Speech, Men called Larry, Larry's Alternate, Larry's Party, Larry's Real Life Life, Larry So Far, Old Larry. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

The winner of the 1998 Orange Prize for fiction, Larry’s Party is an unforgettable novel about an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator’s perception, irony and wit. A landscaper, Larry Weller adapts to society’s changing expectations for men until his deepening passion for garden mazes brings his search for himself to a satisfying end. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Carol Shields is American born, spent three years in Manchester in the 60s, but now lives in Canada. Married with five children. Her first novel was published in 1990. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Chapter One

Fifteen Minutes in the Life of Larry Weller

1977

By mistake Larry Weller took someone else’s Harris tweed jacket instead of his own, and it wasn't until he jammed his hand in the pocket that he knew something was wrong.

His hand was traveling straight into a silky void. His five fingers pushed down, looking for the balled-up Kleenex from his own familiar worn-out pocket, the nickels and dimes, the ticket receipts from all the movies he and Dorrie had been seeing lately. Also those hard little bits of lint, like meteor grip, that never seem to lose themselves once they've worked into the seams.

This pocket -- today’s pocket -- was different. Clean, a slippery valley. The stitches he touched at the bottom weren't his stitches. His fingertips glided now on a sweet little sea of lining. He grabbed for the buttons. Leather, the real thing. And something else -- the sleeves were a good half inch longer than they should have been.

This jacket was twice the value of his own. The texture, the seams. You could see it got sent all the time to the cleaners. Another thing, you could tell by the way the shoulders sprang out that this jacket got parked on a thick wooden hanger at night. Above a row of polished shoes. Refilling its tweedy warp and woof with oxygenated air.

He should have run back to the coffee shop to see if his own jacket was still scrunched there on the back of his chair, but it was already quarter to six, and Dorrie was expecting him at six sharp, and it was rush hour and he wasn't anywhere near the bus stop.

And -- the thought came to him -- what’s the point? A jacket’s a jacket. A person who patronized a place like Café Capri is almost asking to get his jacket copped. This way all that’s happened is a kind of exchange.

Forget the bus, he decided. He'd walk. He'd stroll. In his hot new Harris tweed apparel. He'd push his shoulders along, letting them roll loose in their sockets. Forward with the right shoulder, bam, then the left shoulder coming up from behind. He'd let his arms swing wide. Fan his fingers out. Here comes the Big Guy, watch out for the Big Guy.

The sleeves rubbed light across the back of his hands, scratchy but not too scratchy.

And then he saw that the cuff buttons were leather too, a smaller-size version of the main buttons, but the same design, a sort of cross-pattern like a pecan pit cut in quarters, only the slices overlapped this little bit. You could feel the raised design with you finger, the way the four quadrants of leather crossed over and over each other, their edges cut wavy on the inside margin. These waves intersected in the middle, dived down there in a dark center and disappeared. A black hole in the button universe. Zero.

Quadrant was a word Larry hadn't even thought of for about ten years, not since geometry class, grade eleven.

The color of the jacket was mixed shades of brown, a strong background of freckled tobacco tones with subtle orange flecks. Very subtle. No one would say: hey, here comes this person with orange flecks distributed across his jacket. You'd have to be an inch away before you took in those flecks.

Orange wasn't Larry’s favorite color, at least not in the clothing line. He remembered He'd had orange swim trunks back in high school, MacDonald Secondary, probably about two sizes too big, since he was always worrying at that time in his life about his bulge showing, which was exactly the opposite of most guys, who made a big point of showing what they had. Modesty ran in his family, his mum, his dad, his sister, Midge, and once modesty gets into your veins you're stuck with it. Dorrie, on the other hand, doesn't even shut the bathroom door when she’s in there, going. A different kind of family altogether.

He'd had orange socks once too, neon orange. That didn't last too long. Pretty soon he was back to white socks. Sports socks. You got a choice between a red stripe around the top, a blue stripe, or no stripe at all. Even geeks like Larry and his friend Bill Herschel, who didn't go in for sports, they still wore those thick cotton sports socks every single day. You bought them three in a pack and they lasted about a week before they fell into holes. You always thought, hey, what a bargain, three pairs of socks at this fantastic price!

White socks went on for a long time in Larry’s life. A whole era.

Usually he didn't button a jacket, but it just came to him as he was walking along that he wanted to do up one of those leather buttons, the middle one. It felt good, not too tight over the gut. The guy must be about his own size, 40 medium, which is lucky for him. If, for example, He'd picked up Larry’s old jacket, he could throw it in the garbage tomorrow, but at least he wasn't walking around Winnipeg with just his shirt on his back. The nights got cool this time of year. Rain was forecast too.

A lot of people don't know that Harris tweed is virtually waterproof. You'd think cloth this thick and woolly would soak up water like a sponge, but, in actual fact, rain slides right off the surface. This was explained to Larry by a knowledgeable old guy who worked in menswear at Hector’s. That would be, what, nine, ten years ago, before Hector’s went out of business. Larry could tell that this wasn't just a sales pitch. The guy -- he wore a lapel button that said “Salesman of the Year” -- talked about how the sheep they've got over there are covered with special long oily hair that repels water. This made sense to Larry, a sheep standing out in the rain day and night. That was his protection.

Dorrie kept wanting him to buy a khaki trenchcoat, but he doesn't need one, not with his Harris tweed. You don't want bulk when you're walking along. He walks a lot. It’s when he does his thinking. He hums his thoughts out on the air like music; they've got a disco beat; My name is Larry Weller. I'm a floral designer, twenty-six years old, and I'm walking down Notre Dame Avenue, in the city of Winnipeg, in the country of Canada, in the month of April, in the year 1977, and I'm thinking hard. About being hungry, about being late, about having sex later on tonight. About how great I feel in this other guy’s Harris tweed jacket.


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Pulitzer winner Shields spins the saga of an ordinary guy during thirty ordinary years, with neither the guy nor the times proving so ordinary. It's kind of Jude the Obscure for BoomersÐat least that's how it seems as interpreted by narrator Bresnahan. She adopts an unhurried tone of fatalistic melancholy over-punctuated with pregnant pauses. Each sentence, each phrase she treats as a pearl of significance. And there are a heck of a lot of phrases in this tome. The exercise would soon pall were it not for her pleasant, contemporary sound and sensitivity to textual nuances. Larry and his gift for designing garden mazes grow on one. Slowly. Very slowly. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.