Boomfell - Hardcover

Hobbie, Douglas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805015345 ISBN 13: 9780805015348

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1991

Synopsis

Charlie Boomfell, an urgent compromiser, settles for a less-than-passionate existence with his wife Val--who has a special relationship with Boomfell's friend, Eliot Singer--while Eliot Singer experiences a passion that drives him mad

About this title

Reviews

Charlie Boomfell, a Massachusetts real estate agent, onetime college teacher and failed epic poet, suspects that life is a lonely journey into hopelessness, and marriage either a stupor or a form of sickness. Yet for all Charlie's moody ruminations, this cadenced and lusty first novel is exhilarating. Boomfell's wife, Valerie, makes a chance confession that she once had an affair with his ex-teaching colleague, Eliot Singer. Now a divorced, suicidal English professor in Toronto, Singer is going to pieces over a young woman who wants to abort their child-to-be. He suddenly turns up on the Boomfells' doorstep, throwing their household into emotional chaos as past affairs are remembered, old dreams and longings revived. The narrative is spiced with free-associational monologues which bring traumas to the surface and, fortunately, also advance the plot. The overall effect is celebratory, a hard-won reaffirmation of life's unmappable possibilities.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Civilized but not bloodless: a first novel that takes a discerning look at the discontents and gratifications of a middle-class New England couple pushing 40. Hobbie is excellent on the routines--domestic and civic--of his locale: a small, cultivated municipality with a dash of rusticity that has attracted a ``mix of young entrepreneurs, healers, artists and academics.'' That the period is pre- recession can be gathered from the fact that his hero, Charles Boomfell, a failed English prof and neglected poet, has gone into the real-estate business as a way to have a more substantial life. Boomfell is a good father to his two children and a good enough husband to Val in a marriage where passion has been superseded by ``utilitarian sex.'' Both strayed at one time, but not so seriously as to rock the domestic boat. In contrast, their friend Eliot Singer, a Milton scholar and successful academic, throws himself into a romance with enough passion to rock the QE II in dry dock. The chapters that convey in his own words his overwrought condition are moving but ultimately somewhat tiresome, as needy narcissist Eliot himself would likely be. Another contrast is young Californian bisexual April, who works for the household-help agency that Val runs and who becomes infatuated with her employer. Free spirits like April are hard to write about convincingly, but Hobbie brings it off. His greatest success, however, is his depiction of the dailiness of a marriage between two decent people who wish each other well but are somewhat out of sync and can't salve each other's psychic wounds. People who might have been caricatures in less skillful hands are made flesh and blood by an author who handles them with humor but never at a distance. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Charles Boomfell, failed writer and English professor, is drifting into middle age a compromised man. His dreams of artistic success have been dashed, and he has turned to real estate to complement the income of wife Val's successful cleaning business. Suddenly, Eliot Singer, a former friend and colleague, reappears after a seven-year absence. Once the careful, play-by-the-rules success Boomfell never was, Eliot is a changed man, forgoing caution for the passion of the moment. "Everyone says they have to make a living, when what they need to do is live a living," Singer explains. He becomes the catalyst that launches Boomfell on his own odyssey to discover what truly matters. While Hobbie's chronicling of the discontents of suburban, middle-class Bostonians may initially suggest comparisons to Updike, in the end, this compassionate and insightful first novel explores an emotional territory all its own.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805015345
• ISBN 13: 9780805015348
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 281