That Old Cape Magic
by Richard Russo
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Book Reviews of That Old Cape Magic
Book Review: One man struggles to cope
Summary: 4 Stars
Richard Russo made his mark in the literary world with his books Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs. His newest novel, That Old Cape Magic, is about a middle-aged man that is having a difficult time coping with reality. Yet, while Jack Griffin is having trouble letting go of the past, the present is filled with slapstick-type comedy that Mr. Russo delivers with impeccable timing. And this, gives the reader a future filled with searches into their own life, lighten with comedy. It really was an enjoyment to read.
Well, let's get a little more in depth, shall we? As I mentioned prior, Jack Griffin, is the focal point of the story. He is a well-respected professor going through a mid-life crisis. At 55, he just lost his dad and will soon lose his daughter (she is getting married) this forces Jack to rethink his life. Most of the book is flashbacks from Jack's life. Jack's childhood was filled with despair. His parents were highly trained and brilliant professors, but their attitudes forced them to work demeaning jobs, well below their status.
As such, they also had a difficult time coping with reality. Always believing "the grass was greener on the other side" This leads to the title of the book. During the family's summer vacations, they would sing Frank Sinatra's song, That Old Black Magic, but since they vacationed in Cape Cod, they changed it to, That Old Cape Magic. This is key. The story begins with Jack driving over the same bridge his family crossed during those trips, singing that old tune, preparing to scatter his father's ashes on his way to his daughter's best friends' wedding.
The book's timeline is just about a year, and that year is packed full of wonderfully described locals, off-beat humor, soul searching, two weddings, incredible dialog, well-developed characters, and a plotline that delves the reader into their own search for answers. The book is good. Real good. But I could only give it 4-stars because it just doesn't quite live up to some of Russo's earlier works. Much like Jack and Joy Griffin, you can look at it two ways. Jack would say, this book deserves to be judged on its own merit. Joy would say, the author has raised the bar with his previous works and while good, That Old Cape Magic, falls just under that bar.
Book Review: That Old Russo Magic
Summary: 4 Stars
Richard Russo's last book was "Bridge of Sighs", but THAT title might aptly describe THIS book as well. The bridge, in this case, is a metaphorical one; the bridge between extended youth and middle age. And the sighs? That begs a question Russo himself asks: "Did the fact they weren't young anymore mean they had to be prematurely old? Did they have to be so settled? Wasn't that the same thing as "settling?"
Jack Griffin is the man at this bridge; a 50-something man who has been driving around for nearly a year with his father's ashes in an urn in his car trunk and the snobby and outright narcissistic voices of his parents in his head. He's already done everything he's supposed to do: leave a glamorous screenwriting L.A. job behind, take a position at a New England college his parents aspired to, marry a beautiful woman named Joy (no accident of naming) and have a beautiful and kind-hearted daughter. But lately, "Joy" has slipped farther and farther away. And Griffin is coming to grips with the fact that he just may be congenitally unhappy.
As Griffin prepares to attend his beloved daughter's wedding in Maine, he must face the unraveling of his own marriage. He must wrestle with questions of how he has come to be the husband and father he is instead of the one he meant to be. And he must examine how we create our own falsehoods. How we grow up and become capable of telling our parents "it's okay for you to be dead now because I think I'm going to be okay." How we determine when it's necessary to let go and when it's worth it to fight with everything we've got.
One senses that this is a more personal book for Richard Russo with a great deal of rueful understanding. It's not a perfect book; the ending dissolves into slapstick hilarity that contrasts with the more thoughtful tone of the first two-thirds. It's also a little too pat. And when Russo writes, in Part Two "how quickly it had all fallen apart", he's right; the dissolution of Jack Griffin's life seems way too quick.
But ultimately, the book is hopeful: as Russo writes, "There was nothing further to do but hope that chance, not known for compassion, would intervene in his undeserving favor." In Russo's fatalistic world, sometimes chance DOES intervene, and sometimes we, ourselves, intervene to form our own more joyful ending.
Book Review: A Comfortable Interlude
Summary: 4 Stars
What do you do if you have just written the master piece of your career and it is time to write something new?
If you are Richard Russo and have just turned out "The Bridge of Sighs", you write the very enjoyable "That Old Cape Magic".
It seemed to me to be "a pause that refreshes" not as emotionally hefty as "Bridge" but humorous, fun and satisfying, none the less. Professor Russo brings back many of the familiar themes that he handles with his usual wit and grace - intergenerational conflict and love, the intricacies of being (and staying married), the coast of Maine and, my favorite, the wonderful idiosyncratic haughtiness of the denizens of our nation's college English departments ( a bit of the fun of "Straight Man" seeps in here).
Structurally, the events of the book are set around two East Coast weddings - about a year apart. First is the wedding of an old friend of the daughter of our protagonist (Griffin - former screenwriter gone college professor) and then, under much changed circumstances, Griffin's daughter herself is married.
A good part of the book is devoted to Griffin's current, past and imagined dialogues with his parents - particularly his mother. Only very slowly does Griffin come to understand that despite limited contact as an adult and many miles between them, he has not really escaped his parents. Their influence on his life has been more profound than he has understood.
Professor Russo's usual good pacing of his stories and the smallish size of this book make it a relatively quick and easy read (my advice is to parcel it out to prolong the enjoyment).
I would have liked to know more about some of the characters. Tommy who has an emotional importance in the book is drawn but not filled in. Also, if I have one significant criticism, it is that not enough attention is paid to Joy and what she is thinking in this one year interlude. The story of relationships and what has gone wrong (or right) is almost always a two sided adventure. Professor Russo accomplished this kind of balance in "Sighs" where he wrote his strongest female characters - Sally and Tessa. It is not present in "Cape".
Notwithstanding this observation, I truly recommend this book to all of Professor Russo's fans and new readers of his work as well.
Book Review: That old Russo magic
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Russo continues to delight. And it's not just me. Jack Griffin, torn between his inability to articulate his love for his wife and his inability to understand his love for his parents, attends two weddings. Between the two weddings we are treated to Russo's jaded view of academic life. His parents, boorish English professor snobs, criticize the world, their only son, and, most of all, the Mid(expletive deleted)west. Their only comfort comes from annual summer vacations in Cape Cod. And each year, crossing the bridge to the cape, they sing a muddled version of "That old black magic." And even on vacation, they can't be happy. They criticize their neighbors, their own poor digs, and the fact that they have to return to their seemingly miserable life as accomplished academics at a state university in Indiana.
One summer, Griffin uses his parents' coldness to find escape with neighbors, forging what is perhaps his only true friendship as a twelve-year old. Those two weeks become the basis for a lingering melodrama, a point of contention between Griffin and his aged mother, and the basis for one satisfying yet financially unrewarding published story about that summer.
As a screen writer, Griffin was never that good and always a disappointment to his parents. They could not stomach people without a graduate degree, without Ivy League degrees. Attending film school, Griffin distances himself professionally and geographically from his parents, finds love in Los Angeles, and then finds himself drawn back to his parents' profession. So he sells the house in California, profiting from a loan he did not want to take from his father-in-law, and then finds himself psychologically indebted to his wife's family, a family that seems to have all the love and happiness that his lacks, and a family that he can't stand, if only for those long drives to visit them every other month.
A casual encounter in a restaurant at the first wedding becomes a plot twist for the second wedding. The same restaurant also introduces us to an interesting if tangential character, Sunny Kim. And one year later, an unexpected return to the same restaurant provides the basis for the final twist in the story and a happy, quite predictable ending.
Funny, colorful, intricate and intimate, "Cape" adds another high mark to the Russo report card.
Book Review: A middle aged man's angst
Summary: 5 Stars
Considering all that women have to go through in middle age, should we care about a middle aged man's angst? Well, Richard Russo does in his new book, That Old Cape Magic. His main character has angst out the ying yang. His name is Jack Griffin and is married to Joy and they have a daughter, Laura. And Jack has one hell of a set of parents. College professors as snobby and uppity as one can be without having any money. They always vacation on the Cape. When they're crossing the Sagamore Bridge, they begin to sing "That old cape magic" to the tune of "that old black magic". They always looked for a summer home but found them to be either "wouldn't take it as a gift" or "can't afford it!" Joy comes from a large, loving family where all of the children's' names begin with "J". Jack can't stand them and they can't stand him. Jack never lets Joy and Laura have anything at all to do with his parents. Then Laura's best friend gets married and then Laura is to get married, and the marriage that Jack and Joy have cobbled together, gets uncobbled, or as Griffin puts it, "that he and Joy were now out of plumb". They had a bubble in their marital foundation and the skyscraper was beginning to come down. Jack's craft is screenwriting. At times, Griffin tells his story as a screen play. "(Griffin)Husband (petulant), Proof you love our daughter. (Joy)Wife: I do love our daughter. (Griffin)Husband (bitter)" etc etc. It's a great technique.The crux of the story is really Jack's relationship with his parents. Are his parents really monsters and despicable? How much of a reflection is he of them?I love Russo's writing style. Sometimes his compound sentences can get to you but look what he is able to convey in this sentence. "Where Cape Cod somehow managed to give the impression that July lasted all year, Maine reminded you, even in lush late spring, of its long, harsh winters, of snowdrifts that rotted baseboards and splintered latticework, of relentless winds that howled in the eaves and scoured paint, leaving gutters rusted with white salt. Even the people looked scoured..." The pace of the book reminds me of an old locomotive leaving the station. Takes a while to get a head of steam up and then full blast until the next station where it again slows down.