The Burgess Boys: A Novel [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00B4DQW68 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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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 listeners long after the ausiobook is over. 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.
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- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 13 hours and 29 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: March 26, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00B4DQW68
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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