The Burgess Boys: A Novel [Kindle Edition] Author: Elizabeth Strout | Language: English | ISBN:
B009MYAWIA | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Burgess Boys: A Novel Free PDF
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The Washington Post • NPR • Good Housekeeping
Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” wrote The New Yorker on the publication of her Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge. The San Francisco Chronicle praised Strout’s “magnificent gift for humanizing characters.” Now the acclaimed author returns with a stunning novel as powerful and moving as any work in contemporary literature.
Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.
With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, Elizabeth Strout has brought to life two deeply human protagonists whose struggles and triumphs will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page. Tender, tough-minded, loving, and deeply illuminating about the ties that bind us to family and home, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout’s newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.
Praise for The Burgess Boys
“What truly makes Strout exceptional . . . is the perfect balance she achieves between the tides of story and depths of feeling.”—Chicago Tribune
“Strout’s prose propels the story forward with moments of startlingly poetic clarity.”—The New Yorker
“Elizabeth Strout’s first two books, Abide with Me and Amy and Isabelle, were highly thought of, and her third, Olive Kitteridge, won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. But The Burgess Boys, her most recent novel, is her best yet.”—The Boston Globe
“A portrait of an American community in turmoil that’s as ambitious as Philip Roth’s American Pastoral but more intimate in tone.”—Time
“[Strout’s] extraordinary narrative gifts are evident again. . . . At times [The Burgess Boys is] almost effortlessly fluid, with superbly rendered dialogue, sudden and unexpected bolts of humor and . . . startling riffs of gripping emotion.”—Associated Press
“[Strout] is at her masterful best when conjuring the two Burgess boys. . . . Scenes between them ring so true.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“No one should be surprised by the poignancy and emotional vigor of Elizabeth Strout’s new novel. But the broad social and political range of The Burgess Boys shows just how impressively this extraordinary writer continues to develop.”—The Washington Post
From the Hardcover edition. Direct download links available for The Burgess Boys: A Novel Free PDF
- File Size: 1301 KB
- Print Length: 337 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1400067685
- Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (March 26, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B009MYAWIA
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,229 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #18
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Sagas - #56
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Sagas - #66
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Saga
- #18
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Sagas - #56
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Sagas - #66
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Saga
At the risk of being very unpopular among all my fellow reviewers who adore Elizabeth Strout and love her new novel, THE BURGESS BOYS, I'm afraid I am going to have to take the middle road in my evaluation of it.
Totally predictable and, for this reviewer anyway, utterly boring, it's difficult for me to say to whom this novel would appeal most. My best guess is those readers who enjoy latent, passive prose.
An apt adjective for Strout's style in THE BURGESS BOYS is subdued. She has a knack for ordinary realism and capturing her characters' quirky and forbearing New England relationships but there is always an underlying hopelessness beneath the surface which disheartened me.
Although Strout's prose is quite lovely, the story is a spirit-sapping slog through sodden, dysfunctional family melodrama that simply works too hard to say something profound. There is a statement proclaimed at one point, that "Everyone's happy. Freedom from white guilt makes everyone happy" but the irony is no one is ever really happy. The prevailing mood of depression and the overriding sense of alienation and loneliness only kept me at arm's length from the heart and soul of the primary characters: the Burgess siblings - Jimmy, Bobby and Susan, their spouses and ex-spouses, and Susan's troubled son, Zach.
Unfortunately for this reader, Strout's characterizations could not pull me into the world she attempted to create for them. Rather than being multi-dimensional characters of depth they are sadly stuck in stereotypes.
Strout is subtle in showing how empty and pointless the lives of her characters are but their desolation and abject loneliness are never lifted. Their story just plods heavily, anticlimactically along.
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