In the Meantime - Softcover

Lippincott, Robin

3.19 out of 5 stars

161 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612182445 ISBN 13: 9781612182445

Publisher: AmazonEncore, 2011

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From the intimacy of small town America to big city life, from World War II to 9/11, In the Meantime vividly encapsulates an unforgettable era.On a hot summer's day in 1931, three five-year-olds meet on a dusty street in a small Midwestern town, beginning a friendship that will last all their lives. Kathryn, the oldest in an ever-expanding family, is bright and earnest, and thinks she wants to become a nurse. Starling is an only child with an absent father. He doesn't yet know that he is of mixed race-he doesn't even know what that means-all he knows is that when he grows up he will be a star. Luke doesn't know what he wants, except for his older brother not to be dead.Together they experience the joys and pains of childhood, although the anxieties of puberty and awakening sexuality nearly destroy their three-way friendship forever. Reaching adulthood after World War II, they follow their dreams to New York City, where they discover that not even Manhattan is free of racism and prejudice.Through the years of their ever-entwined adult lives some dreams are realized while others grow dim, but one constant remains: their bond of friendship. At the book's end, some seventy years after it began, only one of them remains to tell the story of their lives, and of what happened...in the meantime.

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About the Author

Robin Lippincott is the author of two previous novels and a collection of short stories. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, Fence, The New York Times Book Review, The Literary Review, and many other journals, as well as several anthologies, and he has been awarded fellowships to Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. He teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Spalding University and at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

From Publishers Weekly

The third novel from Lippincott (Mr. Dalloway) offers a curious, bittersweet study of the more or less unremarkable lives of three fast friends. Kathryn, Luke and Starling meet as children in their anonymous Midwestern small town on a 1931 summer's day, and soon become closer than siblings. The three eventually fulfill a childhood dream, concocted by Kathryn, to move to Manhattan, where they share an apartment. There, Kathryn attends college; Luke works his way up from the mail room at a major publishing house; and Star pursues acting, only to find that being biracial keeps him from getting major roles. Lippincott uses a very Virginia Woolf–like free and direct style to hone in on his main characters, and to triangulate them. He takes the three through high school (including some clunky sexual encounters), then shifts to clipped year-by-year recountings of the 1950s. The latter chapters reveal their struggles to fit into the arts culture. Most successful is the concluding section, set on September 7, 2001, in which Kathryn poignantly reflects on her life. The book's pleasures outweigh the many moments of overreaching. (Oct.)
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