One of the ideas at the core of Richard Russo’s latest novel, “That Old Cape Magic” ($25.95), is that happiness is “a place you could visit but never own.”
For Jack Griffin’s miserable, ever-bickering parents, that place is Cape Cod. It is also the place to which he returns years later to attend the wedding that opens this tale, his father’s ashes in the trunk of his car, where they’ve ridden next to the spare tire for over a year.
Griffin, aging literature professor and writer of bad movies, is a man haunted by his past, and his return to the Cape stirs up a tempest of memories of childhood summers spent there and his parents’ joyless presence in his life.
It also sparks a reassessment of his own marriage, unfulfilling despite the fact that it has gone according to the plan he and his wife crafted together when they honeymooned there 30 years earlier.
Much like he can’t bring himself to scatter his father’s ashes, Griffin can’t find a way to appreciate the life he has, which by all accounts is the one he wanted.
“Late middle age, he was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming,” Russo writes.
In “That Old Cape Magic,” Russo’s fans will see familiar themes from his earlier books. His protagonists are frequently put-upon and self-absorbed, male victims of their own inaction as well as the sometimes egotistic needs of their wives and kin.
Griffin fits the bill, but unfortunately, he comes off as too wimpy and self-pitying to be truly likable.
Russo’s specialty seems to be in illustrating the common “quiet desperation” once famously identified by Thoreau, and the ordinary man’s halting struggle against it. Readers will be able to relate to the conflict, but Griffin’s sad-sack demeanor may deter some from rooting for him as much as they might.
That’s not to say that there isn’t much to like about the novel. Russo is an apt and sensitive storyteller, and his prose is generously sprinkled with insights into everyday life.
There are also some laugh-out-loud moments, particularly regarding Griffin’s dunderheaded brothers-in-law and his own hypercritical academic snob of a mother.
Russo won a well-earned Pulitzer Prize in 2002 with his brilliant mini-epic, “Empire Falls.” “That Old Cape Magic” fails to measure up to that lofty standard, but is an enjoyable read nonetheless.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
