Harry and Catherine: A Love Story - Softcover

Busch, Frederick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393320766 ISBN 13: 9780393320763

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Synopsis

"For years Frederick Busch has been at work on one of the most impressive bodies of American fiction."―Reynolds Price

Here is that rarest and most satisfying of books: a grown-up love story. Harry and Catherine have been falling in and out of love for many years. She is divorced, determinedly raising two sons, and running a small gallery in upstate New York. He is an ex-newspaperman, a wistful drifter, now assistant to a New York senator. After a long separation, Harry is assigned to find out whether a new shopping mall in Catherine's neighborhood will desecrate an historic black cemetery. Catherine is living with another man, a contractor for the mall who finds both his financial interests and his relationship with Catherine threatened by Harry. With penetrating acuity and generosity of spirit, one of our finest writers brings us what David Bradley calls "a book people will love and be proud of loving." "Unsuppressed emotion, painful honesty . . . all of it in the most lively and supple language anyone is writing today."―Rosellen Brown

About this title

About the Author:

Frederick Busch (1941–2006) was the recipient of many honors, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, a National Jewish Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award. The prolific author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, Busch is renowned for his writing’s emotional nuance and minimal, plainspoken style. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lived most of his life in upstate New York, where he worked for forty years as a professor at Colgate University.

From Publishers Weekly:

A highly intelligent writer with romance in his soul, Busch ( Absent Friends ) here depicts middle-aged love between two beguiling characters. Off-and-on lovers for more than a dozen years, the eponymous protagonists reencounter each other when Harry, former idealistic journalist turned press-aide hack to a liberal senator, journeys to a small community in upstate New York to investigate rumors that a local developer plans to pave over an old cemetery for runaway slaves in order to create a mall parking lot. That the contractor just happens to be Catherine's current lover is an ironic wrinkle that plagues Harry's conscience--but not too much. Fiercely independent since her divorce, Catherine has done a fine job of raising her two sons; now she is not sure that she wants to share her life with either of her suitors. Busch's ease and joy in accreting descriptive detail into a scene rich in metaphor (as when Harry and Catherine prepare her garden for the winter) is somewhat vitiated by his tendency to overdo introspection and stint on action. (His characters--including the men--also have an unfortunate tendency to giggle at dramatic moments.) But his sharp edge of humor, his skill with dialogue and his beautifully nuanced prose make Busch's novels as satisfying as the hearty meals his characters cook.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0393320766
• ISBN 13: 9780393320763
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306