Keep the Change - Hardcover

McGuane, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395488877 ISBN 13: 9780395488874

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1989

Synopsis

An American odyssey - one man's picaresque quest for his roots and his rightful inheritance, involving sex, slapstick violence and romance. The author's previous novels include "The Sporting Club" and "The Bushwacked Piano", and he has also written a collection of short stories.

About this title

Reviews

If McGuane's reputation as one of America's most clearsighted, acutely observant writers was in any doubt during the five-year pause since his last novel, his newest work should confirm his status and win him new admirers. Rangy and generous but also intensely personal, his narrative tracks Joe Starling from his father's Montana ranch to a lazy life in Key West and then back again, as he decides to approach middle age by examining the relationships and ties of his youth. Starling is a blocked painter and a reluctant cowboy; smart and lonely, he struggles to find purpose and maintain honor, not always successfully. Complicating matters are family ghosts (some alive, some not), financial crises and, above all, the two women in his life--one a boyhood love now married to his rival, the other a self-described "trashy-mouth Cuban who doesn't appreciate him" but does love him. McGuane makes what could have been an indecipherable personal quest into a vivid, even suspenseful story, in language that seems to have been stripped clean of excess, reduced to only the most evocative descriptions and accurate emotions. Even for a writer of his standing, a novel as unfaltering as this one is a rarity. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Joe Starling leaves his family's Montana ranch as a teenager, attending Yale and later becoming a successful painter in New York. Now in a state of emotional and spiritual disarray, he returns, hoping to lay claim to the run-down ranch and "find a restored coordination for his life" in the old values of hard work and closeness to the land. But his romantic notions run aground on the realities of the modern West: He ultimately loses the ranch to his mad Uncle Smitty's scheming and discovers the duplicity of the seemingly innocent Ellen, the ranch owner's daughter he romanced one summer and now longs to return to. Satire and sadness mingle in this low-key, yet resonant, novel as Joe learns the truth of an old American proverb: You can't go home again.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395488877
• ISBN 13: 9780395488874
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230