Love and Obits - Hardcover

Bradley, John Ed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805016805 ISBN 13: 9780805016802

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1992

Synopsis

A chestnut-haired widow helps Joseph Burke recover from a series of blows after his wife leaves him, his boss at the newspaper demotes him to writing obituaries, his mother is killed in a car accident, and he moves in with his depressed father

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Reviews

Bradley's third novel, following the well-regarded Tupelo Nights , follows the trajectory of newspaperman Joseph Burke. Once a promising reporter for a D.C. daily, Joseph has gone into freefall since a gossip columnist reported that he was sleeping with a source, the wife of a prominent U.S. senator. As a result, he is now ensconced in the paper's obituary department, a journalistic graveyard in every sense. Joseph's love life is no less discouraging than the state of his career, although he is so good-looking that several of the female characters in the book call him beautiful. Moreover, his father, Woody, has been feigning paralysis since the auto accident that killed Joseph's mother and injured him. Bradley's prose is angular and mannered, his characters never really find distinctive voices, and the plot meanders more than a little. Yet there is something genuinely moving about Burke's befuddlement and his eventual resurrection through the love he finds with the widow of one of his obituary subjects. Moreover, the warmth characterizing both the relationships among Burke and his best friends on the paper--the chief obit writer, who is a compulsive eater, and a reckless photographer who may be HIV-positive--and his dealings with his crusty, funny father carry the reader to the very satisfying conclusion. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Joseph Burke is a Washington, D.C., newspaperman stuck back writing obits, an eternal penance for a years-earlier indiscretion with the wife of a senator he was profiling for the magazine section, a mistake that unfortunately hit the gossip columns. Divorced, living with his father Woody in a decrepit neighborhood (Woody's in a wheelchair, claiming not to be able to walk after an auto accident that killed his wife and Joseph's mother), Joseph's going nowhere fast. But then the new widow of a renowned Capitol restaurateur crosses paths with him (even in death Burke finds connection with his female sources)--and there's hope. Bradley (Tupelo Nights, 1988; The Best There Ever Was, 1990) plays an often reckless game of chicken with sentimentality--which half the time makes him fun to read. The women here all are cartoons, excessively puffed out with either adorable or viperish personalities; and the men--father Woody, Joseph's best pals and co-workers Mac and Alfred, the corrupt editor-in-chief of the paper--sometimes seem mere vehicles for wry comebacks and oblique philosophizing. But the book also, in its relaxed and looping way, paints an endearing portrait of very unendearing Washington, and is imbued with the anxieties (and even, amazingly, comedies) of AIDS- era sex and romance. Very much a mixed-bag, then: a series of long shaggy-dog stories, some first-rate. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

His newspaper career is in decline, his marriage dissolved, his mother dead and his father partially paralyzed in a car accident, but Joseph Burke still has his looks, though his life is a shambles. Relegated to "Death Row" (the Siberia of the Wash ington Herald newsroom) because he slept with a source who was the wife of a distinguished senator, Burke, at 33, writes nothing but obituaries. Will his father, who's smitten with a married Salvadoran nurse, walk again? Will love blossom with Laura, lovely widow of a prominent restaurateur whose obit he wrote? And just how closely does art follow life in this third novel ( Tupelo Nights, LJ 5/1/88; The Best There Ever Was, LJ /9/1/90) by former Washington Post staff writer Bradley? Despite some engaging moments in this offbeat story, Burke is not a character one cares much about, and capital intrigue is not enough to carry it.
-Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805016805
• ISBN 13: 9780805016802
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276