Gill Hornby
Family Fortunes
‘We think we know the ones we love’ is how Andrew Sean Greer opens this anatomy of an American marriage. The narrator is little Pearlie Cook, the wife of handsome Holland Cook. She is doing her darndest to create a happy home in 1950s San Francisco, where she lives beneath the fog that bedevilled the bay area back then. She is coping with the aftermath of the Second World War, and its heroes who have been returned to their families, feted but maimed. The beginnings of the Cold War swirl around her, with its terror of enemies everywhere. When she receives a visit from her husband’s old army friend, it is as if an earthquake has shaken her world.
Pearlie first met Holland back in Kentucky. They were childhood sweethearts whose relationship took an unusual turn when Holland’s mother hid him upstairs so that he could evade the draft. Pearlie was his only visitor. When he got so ill she feared
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553