From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Begun in 1981, this slender, unpretentious, lyrical and deeply moving novel by the president emeritus of Amherst College was more than two decades in the making. The year is 1987, and octogenarian Robert MacIver is alone, in failing health and debilitated with grief over his wife's recent death, hiding out in the dead of winter in a remote, unheated Cape Cod house "older than the Republic." Shocked into confronting the seriousness of his plight when the timbers of the front porch collapse under his weight, he retreats back inside the house and realizes that he wants to live out his remaining days—however few in number—with dignity. Thus resolved, he formulates his Ten Commandments for Old Men Waiting, the seventh of which is "Work every morning." And so he decides to write a short story about an infantry company in "No Man's Land" in WWI, which will draw on the interviews he conducted with victims of poison gas that he used for his first book, the well-received oral history
Voices Through the Smoke. Pouncey's novel thus becomes a story within a novel; and MacIver's story is elegantly juxtaposed with his memories from his own long life. Pouncey's first book is proof that sometimes greatness comes slowly and in small packages.
Agent, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
To "take back his life until he could give it away on an acceptable basis," a retired historian begins to write a novel about WWI, thus triggering reflections of his life, several wars, his late wife, and the meaning of existence. Within this framework, Peter Pouncey, a distinguished academic essaying fiction for the first time in his long career, crafts a compact work of eloquent simplicity, gentle humor, grace, and depth. Narrator Simon Vance plays none of these values, choosing instead to affect a pseudo-poetic declamation that has nothing to do with what he is reading. Y.R. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
