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So Long at the Fair (Paperback)

by Christina Schwarz (Author)

3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (Jul 14 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307275493
ISBN-13: 978-0307275493
Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 2.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 227 g

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #701,081 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

“A complex journey into lovers' hearts and minds. . . . So Long at the Fair is a thriller and a mystery as well as character-driven literary fiction."
—Los Angeles Times

"Christina Schwarz's multilayered storytelling makes this novel spellbinding."
—People

“Schwarz has a gift for telling a suspenseful tale. Both the fate of the marriage in peril and the unfolding of the decades-old drama drive the reader forward. . . . Satisfying.”
—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“The book's pacing races. . . . When you read the last page, you will want to start over, to see the clues you missed and appreciate Schwarz's delicate weaving of family histories that leave legacies of guilt and revenge.”
—USA Today

Product Description

Is it possible to be in love with two women at the same time? This is a question Jon has been asking himself frequently these days. He's loved his wife Ginny since the days when a chance encounter in the halls of their high school would leave him unable to speak. But recently Jon has found himself bewitched by Freddi, his colleague at the ad agency, where late-night brainstorming sessions devolve into giggles and sexual attraction.

As Jon's guilt becomes all-consuming and Ginny inches closer discovery, a secret kept for thirty years threatens any hope of salvation. Weaving together past and present in a small Midwestern town, Schwarz beautifully conjures the emotional labyrinth of a marriage on the brink of collapse, and a history of love and revenge.

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt

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3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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3.0 out of 5 stars A Marriage in Trouble, Sep 5 2008

By	Luanne Ollivier - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: So Long at the Fair: A Novel (Hardcover)

Christina Schwarz's latest takes place in small town Wisconsin. This is also the setting for her Oprah tagged, best selling novel Drowning Ruth.

The entire novel takes place over the course of one day. Jon is having an affair with Freddi, a woman her works with. His wife of many years, Ginny, senses that something is a bit off, but chooses to ignore her feelings. This is the day that Jon decides to end either his marriage or his affair.

Scattered throughout the book are chapters from the past. Ginny and Jon live in the same town they grew up in . Their families live there as well. These past chapters slowly expose secrets over the course of the book that are affecting the present. I did find this a bit distracting as I had to flip back and forth to make sure I was tracking the backstory correctly. The characters from the past are introduced into the present, but you really have to be on your toes to catch who's who.

Schwarz's fort� is the exploration of relationships. Her dialogues expertly expose the hidden feelings, desires and failures of her characters. Her descriptions of both people and settings draw strong pictures. So Long at the Fair ends ambiguously. Each reader will draw their own conclusion. I did find the cover art ambigous as well. After reading the book, I found the title to be a bit of an uninspired afterthought as well.

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4.0 out of 5 stars "If he was in trouble it would be Ginny he'd call out for", Jul 10 2008

By	Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: So Long at the Fair: A Novel (Hardcover)

Jon, who works at an advertising agency has been married to Ginny, a landscape artist, for almost twenty years. He loves his wife, but theirs has become a predictable marriage, with Ginny constantly obsessed with her ability to get pregnant and the hope that a child will perhaps provide the panacea to all of their troubles. Although Ginny had once suffered a terrible accident, the doctors assured her that one day she would be able to have children. This knowledge, however does little to appease her sense of insecurity in herself and in Jon's commitment to her and in her marriage.

Jon thinks Ginny is overreacting to the assumed prospects of having a child and although he readily admits to marrying for love and loyalty, enjoying a more than comfortable middle-class life, he's recently fallen into an affair with his work partner Freddi. As the novel opens, Jon is frantically soaking up Freddi's seductive emails, furtively sneaking behind his wife's back, the thoughts of Freddi's sharpness and softness always present in his consciousness.

For her part, Freddi is in thrall to Jon's charisma. Although she's content to stay the mistress and the other woman, she still holds a glimmer of hope that only she is his "real love. " When Jon conceives of the plan to spend the day with Ginny at Summerfest, a local county fair, in the hope they can revisit a scene from their youth, a time they'd been so vigorously happy, Ginny responds by telling him she's booked up with appointments. It is this reaction that once again leaves Jon feeling unmoored. A basically good man, Jon resolves to finish it with Freddi, he loves Ginny and the thought of losing her fills him with a dark and breathless panic, but it doesn't stop him from wanting to feel connected to his early sexual impulses through his affair with Freddi.

Central to Schwartz's story are the subtle shifts and changes that occur in the relationships between these three people, reflected in Ginny's reluctance to confront the truth even as she remains ignorant of Jon's philandering; and Jon as he frantically hides behind the growing problems of his marriage; and Freddi, her resentment at the situation rising like a "geyser in her chest" as she realizes she cannot count on anything from Jon, least of all a lifetime of commitment. And she's always conscious of the fact that Jon's debt to Ginny never seems to diminish.

A number of secondary characters circle this threesome sometimes offering advice and consolation and at other times judgment. Jon's best friend and work buddy, Mark Kaiser offers a measure of moral stability, while Jon is forced to close his eyes against the memory of disgust he constantly feels is emanating from his friend. There's also Ethan who harbors a dangerous obsession for Freddi, originating from when they met in his first year of law school. Ethan spends his days obsessing and stalking his muse, constantly battling the unbearable feeling that Freddi is pulling away from him, and "that her eyes and thoughts are somewhere else."

Interspersing the present with the past, in what comes across as one of the more confusing subplots, Schwartz creates a back story of Jon's mother, Marie and her affair with Walter Fleisher, a developer who now owns the Meadowwood Golf Course and wants to employ Ginny to landscape the meadows surrounding the course. It is the events that took place in 1963 that allow Marie to keep alive an ember of hatred and a bitter sense of regret at what she'd once done willingly and what Walter had done to her. Certainly Ginny can't believe the fact that Marie had been once attracted to Walter Fleischer and that she'd actually cheated on her husband.

Regardless of the convoluted structure around which the novel circles, the issues of marital fidelity dominate this story and are undeniably compelling as Schwartz digs deep into her characters' tortured inner lives. Straying from voyeurism into betrayal and also into self-delusion, these people - in both the 1963 and the present - confront the heavy burdens of marriage with its complex fabric of understandings and misunderstandings, of its dependable support and its casual betrayal. Ultimately it is Jon's carelessness that physically and metaphorically scars both he and Ginny even as he eventually comes to acknowledge his one true love in an unexpectedly violent climax. Although while not without its structural faults, So Long At The Fair is exquisitely written and offers up some sharp observations on human nature even as it exposes the complicated layers that come to make up contemporary personal relationships. Mike Leonard July 08.

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