Central Square: A Novel - Hardcover

Packer, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555972772 ISBN 13: 9781555972776

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 1998

Synopsis

When Joe arrives in Boston and is mistaken for African-- rather than African American-- he quickly discovers that letting the illusion stand generates magic. A job, a place to live, even a kind of deference he's never known before are suddenly casually endowed upon him, a man who surely must have a closer connection to life's hidden possibilities.

Central Square bustles with the complexities and contradictions of today's urban existence as it tells what happens when the enigmatic Joe meets up with several other disparate characters. There is Paula, the social worker whose loneliness is intensified with each sad story she hears; Eric, the writer who struggles in a world that ignores his work and whose wife has abandoned him for pregnancy; the mysterious community group that has posted titillating "feel-good" signs around the city.

As characters collide with circumstances, and each other, George Packer's bold novel explores the conflict between personal desires and social constraints, and the unattainable balance between private life and the life of a community. Unafraid to expose the difficult truths about contemporary society, Central Square asks how we can find something decent to which to commit our lives.

About this title

About the Author

George Packer has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa, a carpenter in Boston, and a writing instructor at Harvard, Bennington, and Emerson. He is the author of The Village of Waiting, a memoir about his Peace Corps years, and the novel The Half Man. He now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

From the Back Cover

"Central Square confirms again that George Packer is one of the great young talents of American fiction. This beautifully wrought novel, about a city, a love affair, and the perpetual American hope for renewal, makes high art-- and compelling drama-- from the follies and compromises that attend all of those things."--Scott Turow

"Central Square is a novel about the moral life, yet is devoid of moralizing; a novel about the politics of class, gender, race and culture, yet is free of cant. Few writers have portrayed the contemporary, urban scene-- or the struggles of lovers-- with such honesty, feeling, and wisdom."--James Carroll

"Central Square is an exhilarating, thoroughly contemporary novel. Packer's vivid characters struggle with the large questions of late twentieth century urban life. Whatever the outcome for them, his readers are the clear winners."--Margot Livesey

"George Packer is one of the best: graceful stylist, brilliant observer, committed moralist. He paints a cultural and social landscape of remarkable breadth and acuity, grand and intimate at the same time. This engrossing novel is Dickensian in its scope, a work of true ambition and accomplishment."--Christopher Tilghman

From the Inside Flap

When Joe arrives in Boston and is mistaken for African-- rather than African American-- he quickly discovers that letting the illusion stand generates magic. A job, a place to live, even a kind of deference he's never known before are suddenly casually endowed upon him, a man who surely must have a closer connection to life's hidden possibilities.

Central Square bustles with the complexities and contradictions of today's urban existence as it tells what happens when the enigmatic Joe meets up with several other disparate characters. There is Paula, the social worker whose loneliness is intensified with each sad story she hears; Eric, the writer who struggles in a world that ignores his work and whose wife has abandoned him for pregnancy; the mysterious community group that has posted titillating "feel-good" signs around the city.

As characters collide with circumstances, and each other, George Packer's bold novel explores the conflict between personal desires and social constraints, and the unattainable balance between private life and the life of a community. Unafraid to expose the difficult truths about contemporary society, Central Square asks how we can find something decent to which to commit our lives.

George Packer has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa, a carpenter in Boston, and a writing instructor at Harvard, Bennington, and Emerson. He is the author of The Village of Waiting, a memoir about his Peace Corps years, and the novel The Half Man. He now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

It is Cambridge, Mass., in November, when "the sky turns leaden and the clocks have been set back, the larger body dies and the idea of the city becomes a memory, an accident of warm weather." Into the Central Square of this hauntingly rendered hibernal wasteland, Packer (The Village of Waiting; The Half Man) leads four characters: Joe Amouzou, a black American who, returning from a year's stint in Africa, fakes an identity as an African magician and finds, to his own amazement, a surge of power in the disguise; Eric Barnes, a 37-year-old novelist in danger of being dropped from his publishing house for insufficient sales; his pregnant wife, Jane, whom Eric feels is too obsessed with the child in her womb; and Paula Vorhees, the classic other woman who hates the stereotype?she's 30, single, a therapist at loose ends. The affair between Eric and Paula endures for the space of a winter month, until Jane discovers it. In the meantime, Joe is becoming involved, almost unwittingly, with a local grassroots organization run by Paula's unctuous boss. Packer has a good feel for the sunlight-deficient lives of a typical New England winter, but the novel is more than a few deft portraits of selected urban existences. It is a graceful meditation on the moral longing and often doomed effort that go into reinventing oneself.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the tradition of the Victorian triple-decker, this novel of manners portrays the anxieties of its time through a dramatic plot and characters both representative of the social structure and believable as individuals. The time is now; the setting is an eclectic area in downtown Boston, beautifully described. Enter Joe, fleeing a mix of problems and crimes. Posing as an African refugee and healer, he becomes entwined in a number of lives that are already complicated enough. Eric, a writer, fears he has lost his gift. He has little time for his wife, Jane, the family's main breadwinner, who is experiencing her first pregnancy at 38. Therapist Paula doubts that she can help either her poverty-level clients or her alcoholic mother. The intersection of the lives of these and other troubled souls have tragicomic consequences of pain, disillusionment, and, finally, some small hope for finding a reasonable balance between private life and community. Packer, whose first novel, Half Man (LJ 10/15/91), received a mixed critical reception, makes a strong comeback here.AStarr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555972772
• ISBN 13: 9781555972776
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360