- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Mariner Books; None edition (May 10 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0395981328
- ISBN-13: 978-0395981320
- Product Dimensions: 20.9 x 14.2 x 1.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
In his delicate and hilarious first novel, Porter Shreve paints a fast-moving tale about the grungy, romantic allure of newspaper work and the muddled conspiracy of nature and nurture in a young man's maturation. The Obituary Writer's narrator, Gordie Hatch, has papers in his blood: his late father was a crackerjack reporter, his mother a journalism-school secretary. His environment reeks of his avocation, too, from the bundled newspapers in his garage to his comforter, which bears old headlines like TITANIC SINKS, SACCO AND VANZETTI GUILTY, and LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPED. By age 8, Gordie is fully ready to grab the newspaperman's baton, or, more bluntly, to get a paper route. ("I grew up with a heightened sense of my own importance, which my mother encouraged," he says. Not least because she seems to have delivered far more papers than he.) In 1989, when he moves straight from J School into an entry-level position at the hallowed St. Louis Independent, Gordie experiences an eternal, embryonic sense of belonging within its perfectly stereotypical nerve center, one that might have housed his father.
Sometimes I'd swear I could sense him looking out through my eyes, a young reporter waiting for the flare in the sky that points to the great discovery. I'd stop at the rackety wire machines under the mural of Remington's Pony Express to scroll through the overnight news, then pick up a late edition from the stacks before taking the long, slow route to my desk.But Gordie knows he can't afford to move slowly. His beat, the obituary desk, is either a stepping stone for the gifted or a place to park damaged has-beens. When he makes three crucial judgment errors in succession, he is suddenly ensnared by a Southern femme fatale--who lures him into an exquisitely drawn world of highly un-newsworthy bank clerks, dog shows, and bumbling small-town artistes. A far cry from the collapse of European communism, which his luckier colleagues get to cover. Though the final third of The Obituary Writer veers into formulaic suspense-novel territory at times, Gordie always remains engagingly self-aware and the novel's denouement is well worth a bit of tough sledding. Will our hero realign himself with his destined path? How strong is fate, exactly? We cannot say, Gentle Reader. You must uncork this fine, funny novel for yourself. --Jean Lenihan
From Publishers Weekly
Balancing lies and reality is a complex pursuit in Shreve's first novel, a poignant coming-of-age story centering on an aspiring journalist, Gordon Hatch, eager to live up to the standard set by his late father, a renowned reporter who covered John F. Kennedy's assassination and its aftermath. Gordie, 22, is presently a lowly obituary writer, a job he takes seriously, preparing a file of "advancers," obituaries of elderly famous people. He gets a phone call, which might be his first scoop and lucky break, from Alicia Whiting, a young widow, who pulls Gordie into the heart of her own pathological identity crisis. While trying to hide the truth of his humble job at the St. Louis Independent from his mother, who constantly compares his career to that of his father, and from Alicia, who quickly becomes his lover, Gordie weaves a web of lies nearly impossible to escape. But Gordie's web is nowhere near as complex as Alicia's, and as he faces some shocking truths about his lover, and about his parents, Gordie has to reevaluate the importance of truth itself. Although the story raises compelling questions about honesty and friendship, Gordie's epiphanies lack power, often falling flat: when Gordie finally appreciates the loyalty and support of his mother and his former girlfriend, he says, "It dawned on me that my mother and Thea were good, that they had wanted to see me on my birthday." Lucidly demonstrating the widening gulf between Gordie and those who love him, Shreve then offers disappointingly little to bridge it, particularly since the lies and betrayals exposed are devastating, though the ultimate surprise, the lynchpin of the plot, lacks credibility. Yet unexpected twists, the deft buildup of suspense and a clever premise sustain the momentum. Agent, Joe Regal. Author tour. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty good start but doesn't deliver,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Obituary Writer (Paperback)
I found this book on the shelf of a used bookstore and was immediately intrigued. I identified with the main character of "The Obituary Writer", young aspiring journalist Gordie Hatch, following in the footsteps of his father - an accomplished newspaper man whose life and career were cut short. But after the first forty pages the story line turns predictable, the dialog clunky, and the characters fail to develop. Shreve is a talented writer that keeps you turning the pages but the novel never delivers to its potential. The novel is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and so my hopes were high. In the end I concluded that this was written more as a movie script than a serious novel. It was close, but no cigar.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Obituary Writer - Shreve,
By Chris MB "CMB" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Obituary Writer (Paperback)
Gordie Hatch is an obituary writer, a position he sees as the start of a great career in journalism, following in the footsteps of his father. Fortunately or unfortunately, Gordie finds he can't ignore his journalistic curiosity (or his hormones for that matter) when a mystery slowly begins to unravel around him. Its difficult to stress how wonderful this novel is. It has both humor and heart and left me speechless. Shreve is obviously a talent to watch. His characters were rich and well developed, the suspense subtle, and the end result was powerful. Not to be missed.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Love and Death: our favorite subjects!,
By
This review is from: The Obituary Writer (Paperback)
This is a nicely conceived and executed story, written with a perfect blend of narrative and dialogue. The first-person narrator, Gordie Hatch, is completely believable as a character, driven to journalistic success by a demanding mother cherishing memories of her dead husband -- himself a newspaper man. There are two simultaneous romantic threads, at least one mystery, and, of course (because it's about an obituary writer), plenty of death, albeit rendered in a mostly detached kind of way. The mystery is what kept me absorbed, and because it involves an attractive widow, it occasionally smacks of old-fashioned (read: tired) crime noir. Even as an over-used convention, however, Shreve makes it work in the context of his story, and I guess that ultimately is why I'd recommend it to others: it's an enjoyable story. One of the several surprise twists at the end rang a little false for me, and the widow's evolution as a character seemed at times fabricated for the sole purpose of arriving at this particular twist. Still, all in all, I'm glad I read it, and I would read more of Shreve's work.
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