Sheltered lives - Hardcover

Milburn, Frank

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385190093 ISBN 13: 9780385190091

Publisher: Doubleday, 1986

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

This effective indictment of the superfluous rituals and genteel veneer maintained by an affluent Long Island family in the early 1960s focuses primarily on David Winant, whose clan is engaged in banking. Stability eludes young David, who survives Vietnam, only to be devastated by his relatives' pain. His mother, a chronic inebriate, incessantly chatters about social trivia; his detached, sanctimonious father continues an extramarital affair while ignoring the disarray at home; Emily, David's sister, takes refuge at a Virginia prep school, where she and some other moneyed misfits indulge in prostitution. Impotent to help his kin, David also finds he can neither easily regain his former girlfriend nor sustain a relationship with an Army buddy's widow. Finally, the father's rancor towards Emily brings about a catastrophe that threatens to obliterate whatever cohesiveness this embattled family still shares. Milburn expertly uses straightforward writing spiced with sarcasm ("his mother had spent a lot of time in storage during David's wonder years") to depict the unfocused, squandered lives of these morally destitute people.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

The author of The Interloper (1983) now offers a brief novel consisting of character sketches and vignettes. In 1965, David Wingant returns from Vietnam to his gentry-like background in Long Island to find little surface change but many undercurrents. His beloved sister Emily has exiled herself to school; his alcoholic mother is about to go back into the hospital; his former lover, Elise, has found someone else; and his father is probably continuing his affair with Elise's mother. A brief encounter with the wife of his dead buddy leads nowhere; his sister commits suicide; and ultimately David and Elise resume their affair while father talks of selling the estate. The writing is really quite good, and in David's mother the author has created a superb character. There is a noble fragility here that will be appreciated by readers of noncommercial novels. Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0385190093
• ISBN 13: 9780385190091
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 183