The Blue Hour - Softcover

Evans, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565121244 ISBN 13: 9781565121249

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1995

Synopsis

What is the Blue Hour? It's when Father Doesn't Know Best, it's the morning after "Queen for a Day." It's when meltdown threatens a 1950s nuclear family in Meander, Illinois. It's 1959, as America gets ready to say goodbye to Mamie Eisenhower and hello to Jackie Kennedy. In this stunning debut, Elizabeth Evans shines the soft light of dusk on a 1950s family's journey from unquestioning innocence into tragic loss. "Very much a Great American Novel . . . one of those rare novels one finishes with the sense of having needed to read it."--Washington Post Book World.

About this title

About the Author:

Elizabeth Evans teaches in the University of Arizona's English Department.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A first novel with a particularly chilling take on the theme of suburban wholesomeness run amok. When the Powell family moved to Meander, Ill., in 1959, their peaceful domesticity became a nightmare that 10-year- old Penny had predicted but could not prevent. Now an adult with children of her own, Penny relates the story of her family's tragic year in Meander with the insight she had as a precocious child. Bob and Dotty Powell made an auspicious start by moving into the grand house that had formerly belonged to Chan Bishop, Meander's wealthiest citizen and playboy. But keeping up with the neighbors required an outlay of cash that Bob couldn't afford, especially when he discovered that his partner, Archie, was stealing from him. Bob never told Dotty the extent of their impending financial disaster, and she happily--if awkwardly--slipped into her new lifestyle, transforming herself from rube to socialite. Meanwhile, while Penny's teenage sister Nancy was becoming an anorexic, Penny hoarded money and food in an effort to save them all from the doom she sensed was imminent. Penny, obsessed with the story of how Chan's wife had deserted him, thought that if Chan's wife came back, her own family would be safe. And she was right, in a way, because Chan's loneliness, like Archie's dishonesty, would play a part in the Powells' decline. Yet the Powells' marriage had never been idyllic. Bob failed constantly in an effort to gain his father's approval and belittled Dotty to aggrandize himself, while she was forever frustrated in her domestic role and angry that she'd been denied a medical career. Penny discovers years later that it was neither the money nor Meander that was responsible for her family's undoing: It was Bob and Dotty themselves--their flawed relationship, their unresolved problems. The story moves along like a car accelerating toward a cliff, pulling the reader over with a heart-stopping--but satisfying--crash. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1565121244
• ISBN 13: 9781565121249
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 347