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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010166926 | PR6113.C48 S65 2006 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
Searching... | 30000010166862 | PR6113.C48 S65 2006 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
David Carter cannot help but wish for more: that his wife Eleanor would be the sparkling Scottish girl he once found so irresistible; that his job as a museum curator could live up to the promise it once held; that his daughter's arrival could have brought he and Eleanor closer. But a few careless words spoken by his mother's friend Julia have left David restless with the knowledge that his whole life has been constructed around a lie. Struggling to make sense of his past through an archive of letters, photos and artifacts, David searches for meaning and truth, but the story always comes back to him and Eleanor, to their quiet attempts to hold together something they began before they could even understand what it was.
Reviews 3
Publisher's Weekly Review
David Carter grows up happy in post-WWII Coventry, England, where he combs bomb sites for things to collect and dreams of one day running his own museum. He lands a job at a local museum and, at age 22, learns from a mentally ill family friend that he was adopted as an infant. Irate and bewildered, David struggles to comprehend "how such a lie had been incorporated into official history" as he begins his adult life. His marriage to Eleanor provides some direction, but the couple is often rudderless, and McGregor (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things) charts with a calculated dreariness David's frustrated attempts to locate his birth mother, Eleanor's terrible depressions, their professional letdowns, a few moments of happiness and the way "it wasn't what they'd imagined, this life." Once retired, David is introduced to the Internet, which yields a promising lead in his quest to find his birth mother. Melancholy permeates every page; readers looking for an earnest downer can't go wrong. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
As in his award-winning debut novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2003), McGregor's follow-up work is a celebration of an ordinary life. Each chapter carries a heading, much like a description in a museum catalog, of a relic, such as a tobacco tin or a pair of children's striped gloves. These items hold personal meaning for the novel's central character, David Carter, acting both as a reflection of his lifelong interest in collecting artifacts and as prompts for a series of nonchronological memories. The novel gradually builds an intimate portrait of his childhood; his long marriage to Eleanor, who suffers from a debilitating depression and is estranged from her family; and the small triumphs and dissatisfactions of his career as a museum curator. The defining moment comes when, at age 22, David accidentally learns that he was adopted and sets out to find his biological mother. The search for home and for connection lies at the center of this slow, cadenced novel, which invests one man's day-to-day life with remarkable dignity. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The questionable reality and emotional truth behind artifacts propel this story of a British man's search for his past. David Carter, a museum curator fascinated with history and objects, discovers in his mid-twenties that he is an adopted orphan and becomes consumed with discovering his birth parents. The narrative traces the events of his life, re-created around descriptions of objects he and family members have preserved. While researching in Aberdeen, Scotland, he meets and falls in love with Eleanor, who is determined, despite her working-class family's lack of support, to graduate from college. Readers follow their married years as they raise a daughter and cope with Eleanor's depressions and David's relations with a female coworker. It is only after their daughter leaves for college that David and Eleanor track down a woman in Ireland who may be David's birth mother. In this elegantly written novel, McGregor (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things) focuses on the interpersonal and the emotional, successfully dramatizing the impact of events on people's lives. Recommended for larger fiction collections. Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
