| 9781476710457 |
| 1476710457 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Summary
Summary
From the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of The Dive From Clausen's Pier , a sweeping, masterful new novel that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family, over the course of five decades.
Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high.
Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family's future. One by one, the siblings take turns telling the story--Robert, a doctor like their father; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; Ryan, a schoolteacher; and James, the malcontent, the problem child, the only one who hasn't settled down--their narratives interwoven with portraits of the family at crucial points in their history.
Reviewers have praised Ann Packer's "brilliant ear for character" ( The New York Times Book Review ), her "naturalist's vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented" ( The New Yorker ), and the "utterly lifelike quality of her book's everyday detail" ( The New York Times ). Her talents are on dazzling display in The Children's Crusade , an extraordinary study in character, a rare and wise examination of the legacy of early life on adult children attempting to create successful families and identities of their own. This is Ann Packer's most deeply affecting book yet.
Author Notes
Ann Packer is the acclaimed author of two collections of short fiction, Swim Back to Me and Mendocino and Other Stories , and two bestselling novels, Songs Without Words and The Dive from Clausen's Pier , which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award, among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies, and her novels have been published around the world. She lives in San Carlos, California.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1954, pediatrician Bill Blair buys three acres of land in California and marries his girlfriend, Penny. They have four children. Dissatisfied as a housewife and mother, Penny moves into the shed, becomes an artist, and eventually abandons the family. The children grow up but still bear the emotional scars and resentments of childhood, which come to the fore when the youngest wants to sell their childhood home. This novel presents a challenge for audio: its chapters jump around among different time periods nonchronologically, and different chapters are told from different points of view-some are written in the omniscient third person, and others are told in first person from the grown children's perspectives. Even with different actors for each first-person character, the story is hard to follow. The narrators all read with expression, but none makes any effort to differentiate the characters' voices at all, save for a slightly higher pitch for female characters. So in scenes of all the adult children arguing, it's difficult to keep track of who is saying what, especially since three of the four main characters have names beginning with R. This is one book that's better fit for print. A Scribner hardcover. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Told in the most elegant prose, this extraordinarily compassionate tale, set in the Bay Area and spanning 30 years, follows a doctor, his wife, and their four children. Bill Blair is a gifted healer and near-perfect role model who worries that his wife Penny's unhappiness will traumatize their children. With the birth of their fourth child, Penny is suddenly deeply unhappy with her domestic role and opts to turn their garden shed into an art studio, where she spends most of her time. The children, meanwhile, feel her absence deeply and try to lure her back into the fold, with mixed results. Years later, three of the children still reside near their family home: headstrong Robert is, like his father, a doctor; Rebecca, always so helpful as a child, is a psychiatrist; and dreamy, sensitive Ryan is a schoolteacher. But when rootless James, the youngest and always the problem child, suddenly turns up, the family is thrown into disarray and must find a way to recalibrate old dynamics. Packer fully captures the intimacy of this family's life and, by extension, the way the children's interactions impact their adult lives. A masterful portrait of indelible family bonds.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Starred Review. The critically acclaimed Packer (The Dive from Clausen's Pier) has written an engrossing story of the Blair family, their secrets, wounds, and struggles for second chances. In 1954, Bill Blair, starting his career as a physician, buys wooded property in the hills near Palo Alto, CA, to build a house and start a family. Sadly, in fewer than ten years, his wife, Penny, always moody and distracted, has distanced herself from Bill and their four children: brilliant Robert, headstrong Rebecca, dreamy Ryan, and wild child James. She moves into an outbuilding/pottery studio but soon leaves for an artists' community in Taos. Eventually, three of the children marry and follow respectable careers, all living near the family home occupied by their father until his death. Bill leaves the house to the children, stipulating that if they sell, they need approval of one other sibling and Penny. Then James, still the rude impetuous problem child and sporadically in touch over the years, shows up needing money. The resulting conflict stirs up heart-wrenching memories and resentments. VERDICT Packer offers a flawless, compassionate portrayal of each family member at both their best and worst and shows what a strong hold the past has on the present. Literary fiction at its finest; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/13/14.]-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
