Orrie's Story: A Novel - Hardcover

Berger, Thomas

3.6

45 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316092207 ISBN 13: 9780316092203

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1990

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In a modern-day reworking of the Oresteian trilogy, war hero Auggie returns home only to be murdered by his wife and her lover, his own son Orrie

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About the Author:

Thomas Berger was the author of many novels, including Meeting Evil,Regiment of Women,Neighbors, andThe Feud, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. HisLittle Big Manis known throughout the world. He lived in upstate New York and passed away in 2014.

From Publishers Weekly:

Weak vision appears to be Berger's ( Little Big Man ; the Reinhart series) hamartia in this muddled modernized take on the Oresteia. A pun-happy narrative casts Agamemnon as small-town loser Augie Mencken, returning home after WW II decorated and distinguished. His harpy wife (Clytemn-) Esther and her lover E.G. (Aegisthus) have other than a hero's welcome planned: murder is in store. Esther despises Augie for his spinelessness and blames him for their daughter's having run away, but E.G., also Augie's cousin, has a generations-old score to settle--an improperly large share of an inheritance allowed Augie's father, not E.G.'s, to establish a local five-and-dime. Such penny-ante feuding characterizes the novel; after a blackly humorous beginning that both reveals to the reader that Augie's wartime exploits are entirely fictitious and contains an obligatory botched-murder scene, Berger's tone wavers drastically and his comedy dissolves. He plugs Augie's children into their roles as Orestes, Electra and Iphigenia; throws in the Furies and Apollo as courtroom lawyers; and makes a reference or two to Oedipus; but the classical Greek roots here are otherwise barren.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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