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Summary
Summary
In his first novel since his best-sellingNothing but Blue Skies, and thirty-three years afterThe Sporting Clubestablished his reputation, Thomas McGuane's trademark combination of high wit, low behavior, and hard-won wisdom has never been on sharper--or, ultimately, more moving--display. This is the story of the Whitelaws, a family whose values are as far-flung as the territory they helped settle, and whose most recent generations have pioneered the landscape of dysfunction. The patriarch, Sunny Jim, exerts his perverse control even posthumously, by means of a last will and testament that binds the family fortune (a bottling franchise) to a marriage that ought, by general assent, to be rent asunder. The charms of this particular son-in-law, lately released from prison, are potent if short-lived; Evelyn Whitelaw, his estranged wife, is quite literally bedeviled by them. And as her mother and sister court this twisted inheritance, her own yearnings point toward a way of life once habitual on these western plains but now embodied only by Bill Champion, the family's ranch foreman and Evelyn's one true compass. A novel charged with the relentless and often contradictory claims of blood, money, history, and love,The Cadence of Grassis at once a masterpiece of savage comedy and an elegy for what has been lost. Long one of our most compelling novelists, Thomas McGuane has written the most ambitious book of his singularly distinguished career.
Author Notes
Thomas McGuane was born in Wyandotte, Michigan on December 11, 1939. He received a B.A. in English from Michigan State University in 1962 and a M.F.A. from Yale University in 1965. His first novel, The Sporting Club, was published in 1969. His other works include Ninety-Two in the Shade, Nothing but Blue Skies, Keep the Change, Panama, and Nobody's Angel. His novel, The Bushwhacked Piano, received the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award for a Work of Fiction in 1971. He was also co-editor of The Best American Sports Writing. He authored screenplays for Rancho Deluxe (1973), The Missouri Breaks (1976), and 92 in the Shade (1975).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
McGuane has gone from Florida to Montana novelist, but his most famous novels still date from the beginning of his career. His latest has the hip feel of Panama, without the drugs and hallucinations. Sunny Jim Whitelaw is dead, but he continues to cast a shadow over his family's life. His will requires that his daughter Evelyn patch up her relationship with her no-good husband, Paul"if she doesn't, the ownership and profits of Sunny Jim's Montana bottling plant will be lost. Though Evelyn's sister, Natalie, has had quality sex with Paul, she urges her sister to stay married for the good of the family; she herself is itching to divorce her dull husband Stuart. Handsome, treacherous Paul, ( infernal, as his parole officer/lover thinks of him) is barely a year out of prison when Sunny Jim dies and the Whitelaw family and all its wealth seems about to wind up in his lap. The prospect of this is bad enough, but Evelyn and Natalie also have to deal with the revelation that Bill Champion, Sunny Jim's old rancher/partner, means more to their mother, Alice, than they ever suspected. As a friend of Natalie's puts it, the times had turned against good-hearted party girls. The times have changed for small Montana ranchers like Bill Champion, too, whose involvement in one of Paul's deals is, predictably, a recipe for disaster. McGuane tells this story of the fall, or at least slump, of the house of Whitelaw in his trademark style, a balladic ramble through the consciousnesses of Evelyn, Natalie, Stuart and Paul. On the surface, McGuane's prose is all moral unflappability, but underneath there's clearly a nostalgia for a less self-indulgent culture, one in which people kept to their (preferably stoic) codes. (May) Forecast: This novel will be eagerly awaited by McGuane fans, who have had to content themselves in recent years with the author's nonfiction (The Longest Silence, etc.). Expect it to sell out its 60,000 first printing. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Novelist and essay-writer McGuane (Nothing But Blue Skies, 1992; The Longest Silence, 1999; etc.) assembles a large cast for a small but satisfying story about crazies, their keepers, and their victims in his beloved and beguiling Montana. Through his nastily manipulative last will and testament, the late Sunny Jim Whitelaw continues to torment the family he drove round the bend. In order to cash out of the pop-bottling business Jim's son-in-law Paul Crusoe is speedily running into the ground, Whitelaw's will requires his hard-riding daughter Evelyn to end her separation from the sexy but wildly unsteady Paul. Failing that reconciliation, the heirs will all be required to live off the shrinking soda-pop profits that Paul seems hell-bent on eliminating altogether. There is considerable pressure on Evelyn from sister Natalie, who needs plenty of cash if she is to shuck her nerdy but managerially competent husband Stuart, and from Jim's widow Alice, who wants to go on an Alaskan cruise and then live a nice life now that her tomcatting husband is safely buried. But Evelyn is already leading a nice life, thank you. Regardless of her marriage, the will cuts her into her father's ranch where she takes lessons in horsemanship, cattle management, and rustic stoicism from manager and WWII sailor Bill Champion. And, no matter how good in bed Paul may be, Evelyn sees no point in taking back a man who is carrying on with his probate officer. Paul's probation follows a term in the state pen awarded for manslaughter when a drunk Sunny Jim ran into a motorcyclist and Paul politely took the rap, even though his father-in-law had stolen his kidney. These awfully stretched story lines wander perilously close to Florida baroque, but McGuane always knows when to back off and bring in the horses, snow, scenery, and brief moments of sanity to show the real and deeply appealing selves of Evelyn and her manly rancher role model Bill and all that excellent Big Sky country. Exhilarating: like a good run in bad weather. First printing of 60,000
Booklist Review
McGuane has enjoyed a long-standing reputation for writing muscular, inventive novels, including Nothingbut Blue Skies(1992). His latest falls perfectly in line behind its fine predecessors, telling a multidimensional story that, although full of family secrets and plot surprises, does not pull any punches or play any cheap tricks. It's an honest drama about what happens when, even after an old man dies, his power of manipulation still exerts influence over his widow and grown children. When Sunny Jim Whitelaw, owner of a bottling plant in Montana, gives up the ghost, his will, much to his family's shock, stipulates that if his older daughter, Evelyn, and her estranged husband, Paul, reconcile, then the profits from the plant will be shared by his widow and both his daughters. On the other hand, if Evelyn and Paul decide against reconciliation, then the three women face financial problems. As the late Sunny Jim's family decides how to respond to his directions from the grave, McGuane tests the fiber of domestic relationships, his wise findings served up in his typical straightforward style and with touches of humor. Readers will find here a novel of rich, vivid moments that ease seamlessly into a deeply textured tapestry. In a larger sphere, these individuals' experiences are simply a single moment in the universal and eternal rhythms of life that keep time under the big Montana sky by the cadence of grass. Brad Hooper.
Library Journal Review
Ten years after the best-selling Nothing but Blue Skies, McGuane introduces a tough old coot whose will links the family fortune to what is definitely a marriage of inconvenience. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.