Declare Books As The Burgess Boys
| Original Title: | The Burgess Boys |
| ISBN: | 1400067685 (ISBN13: 9781400067688) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Women's Prize for Fiction Nominee for Longlist (2014), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2013) |
Elizabeth Strout
Hardcover | Pages: 320 pages Rating: 3.57 | 54671 Users | 6056 Reviews
Present Containing Books The Burgess Boys
| Title | : | The Burgess Boys |
| Author | : | Elizabeth Strout |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 320 pages |
| Published | : | March 26th 2013 by Random House |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Contemporary. Literary Fiction |
Relation Concering Books The Burgess Boys
Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, Elizabeth Strout has brought to life two deeply human protagonists whose struggles and triumphs will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page. Tender, tough-minded, loving, and deeply illuminating about the ties that bind us to family and home, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout's newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.
Rating Containing Books The Burgess Boys
Ratings: 3.57 From 54671 Users | 6056 ReviewsArticle Containing Books The Burgess Boys
cue the music to the Brady Bunch theme songHere's the story,Of a lonely lady,Who was bringing up her very lonely son.He threw a pig's head in church,Just for the heck of it,Then he was on the run.Here's the story,Of the lady's brothers,Who were scheming, competing, cheating on their own.They were two men,Telling lies together, but they were soon both alone.Till the one day when the truth came to the surface,and they knew that these were much more than ploys.That this group,Was really quiteA few years ago I was looking to supplement non-fiction readers about the French and Somali communities in an intro-to-college "College and Community" class with a short fiction read about the region or state. I'd used Sex, Drugs & Blueberries the year before, but it was sad (and I agreed it was) for looking-for-hope students to see that nothing bad ended or good came of it (a life lesson, itself!) in Crash Berry's dismal presentation of the lives of some young adults in Northern Maine.
Elizabeth Strout has written another novel about Maine and its people, but unlike Olive Kittredge, which is more episodic, The Burgess Boys is a tightly woven novel about a family, its secrets, and how the guilt of one brother has defined his life, as well as that of his twin sister, their older brother, their spouses, and their children. It also traces downward spirals--some expected, some not--and the possibility (and limits) of change and redemption. Shirley Falls, Maine, home to many
Take a dysfunctional family, raised in a small town in Maine by a mother who liked to yell quite a bit, and who raised some unlikable children, and one would usually have a novel no one would want to read. In Strout's daft hands, however, she is able to peel away the layers and make the reader want to take a second look. She gives us something, a reason maybe, and allows us to look deep inside these people and find what it is that makes them so unlikable. Once she accomplishes that, the reader
It would be difficult to top Olive Kitteredge, and indeed this novel did not. While the writing itself is lovely, I had three real problems with The Burgess Boys that made it hard for me to love: (1) the incident at the heart of the novel--a teenage boy throws a pig's head into a Somali mosque in small-town Maine--is really just an excuse to look at the relationships between the people in that boy's family (his mother and two uncles, the "Boys" of the title). In one way, that's OK (the book is
Elizabeth Strout has yet again shown why she is such an accomplished writer, though I think she is really a grand "storyteller". The Burgess Boys gives us some sad and unlikable characters and pulls us into their story. For better or worse, we want to see how they turn out. Her stories aren't full of suspense, twist and turns, hot romance or action packed. They are the stories of real people living real lives. The boys are as different as night and day, and the memories and roles that have
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