The Short History of a Prince - Softcover

Jane Hamilton

3.66

2,182 ratings by Goodreads

9780552998017: The Short History of a Prince

Softcover

ISBN 10: 055299801X ISBN 13: 9780552998017

Publisher: Black Swan, 1999

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As a teenager in Oak Ridge, Illinois, Walter McCloud is desperate for adventure, hoping for love and success as a dancer. "If life for Walter was composed in part of confusion, shame and deception, the ballet was order, dignity and forthright beauty." In 1995, at 38, nothing has turned out as he had expected. Having spent years working in a dollhouse shop in New York and engaging in that city's ready sexual excitement, Walter finally returns to his Midwestern roots, accepting a teaching job in Otten, Wisconsin--a place that might have little to recommend it save its proximity to his family's summer home. ("It had taken Walter several years to admit to himself that he couldn't go on indefinitely selling Lilliputian Coke bottles and microscopic toilet-roll dowels.") In this new community, he will have to keep his head down, a stance that has long suited him, because he prefers to hold one memory of lost intimacy and perfection in high, private relief.

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From the Publisher:

Readers love Hamilton not only for the beauty of her prose and the profundity of her story lines but also for her psychological precision and authorial benevolence. As she did in A Map of the World (1994), Hamilton once again knowingly evokes the timbre of midwestern life and the all but unbreachable insularity of families deeply rooted to the land, then examines the effects on such traditionally solid ground of atypical personalities and deep tragedy. Three sisters jointly own a big old house where everyone gathers for holidays and special events. Jeannie is a bit fey, Joyce quietly elegant, and Sue Rawson (always referred to by her full name) an ogre. Or so everyone believes except for Joyce's younger son, Walter McCloud- the prince of the title and the novel's smart, funny, and altruistic narrator- because it is his recalcitrant aunt, butch as she is who opens the world of ballet to her gay nephew, and he is forever grateful. Using holiday gatherings as touchstones, Hamilton tells Walter's story in two time frames; his high-school days in the early 1970s and the present. As a teenager, Walter falls in unrequited love with a fellow dancer named Mitch; forges a lifelong friendship with Mitch's girlfriend; realizes that he'll never make it as a professional dancer; and loses his older brother to cancer. As an adult nearing 40, Walter returns to Wisconsin after a lively but largely frivolous interlude in New York City, accepts a position teaching literature to artistically challenged high-school students, and seeks to heal old wounds. Such elements of plot are involving and resonant, but it is Hamilton's extraordinary insights into human nature that make this novel shine as she transforms ordinary occurrences- a conversation, a prank, a moment of intimacy- into nothing less than intimations of the divine.
-Booklist Upfront / January 1 & 15, 1998

Hamilton brings to her third novel the same qualities of emotional integrity and compassionate understanding that distinguished The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World....
-Publishers Weekly / December 22, 1997

A meditative, slow-moving and thoroughly absorbing family drama- about loving, losing, and holding on to all we can...this is a lyrical, bighearted novel that won't easily be forgotten.
-Kirkus Reviews / January 15, 1998

...Hamilton's forte- depicting adolesccents left not by villainy but by circumstance on the fringes of family life while they figure out ways to raise themselves- is at its most painful clarity in this novel. Highly recommended.
-Library Journal / February 1, 1998

From the Back Cover:

Praise for The Book of Ruth:

"Ms. Hamilton gives Ruth a humble dignity and allows her hope--but it's not a heavenly hope. It's a common one, caked with mud and held with gritted teeth. And it's probably the only kind that's worth reading about." --The New York Times Book Review

"A sly and wistful, if harrowing, human comedy. Hamilton is a new and original voice in fiction and one well worth listening to."
--The Boston Sunday Globe

"Hamilton's story builds to a shocking crescendo. Her small--town characters are as appealingly offbeat and brushed with grace as any found in Alice Hoffman's or Anne Tyler's novels."
--Glamour
Praise for A Map of the WorldM:

"It takes a writer of rare power and discipline to carry off an achievement like A Map of the World . Hamilton proves here that she is one of our best."
--Newsweek

"Ms. Hamilton has done a nimble job of showing us how precarious the illusion of safety and security really is."
--The New York Times

"Hamilton's chillingly accurate prose keeps her fine novel buoyant. She is superb in her observation of the natural world and in her examination of psychological nuance."
--The Washington Post

"Stunning prose and unforgettable characters . . . an enthralling tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying ways our lives can spin out of control. A+."
--Entertainment Weekly

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