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Overview
""The winter of the year my father carried a gun for his own protection was the coldest on record in Chicago." So begins Ward Just's An Unfinished Season, the winter in question a postwar moment of the 1950s when the modern world lay just over the horizon. It was a time of rabid anticommunism, worker unrest, and government corruption. Even the small-town family could not escape the nationwide suspicion and dread of "the enemy within."" In rural Quarterday, on the far margin of Chicago's North Shore, nineteen-year-old Wilson Ravan watches as his father's life unravels. Teddy Ravan - gruff, unapproachable, secure in his knowledge of the world - is confronting a strike and even death threats from union members who work at his printing business. Wilson, in the summer before college, finds himself straddling three worlds when he takes a job at a newspaper: the newsroom where working-class reporters find class struggle at the heart of every issue, the glittering North Shore debutante parties where he spends his nights, and the growing cold war between his parents at home. These worlds collide when he falls in love with the headstrong daughter of a renowned psychiatrist with a frightful past in World War II. Tragedy strikes her family, and the revelation of secrets calls into question everything Wilson once believed.Synopsis
Set in Eisenhower-era Chicago, An Unfinished Season brilliantly evokes a city, an epoch, and a shift in ideals through the closely observed story of nineteen-year-old Wilson Ravan. In his summer before college, Wils finds himself straddling three worlds: the working-class newsroom where he's landed a coveted job as a rookie reporter, the whirl of glittering North Shore debutante parties where he spends his nights, and the growing cold war between his parents at home. With unparalleled grace, Ward Just brings Wils's circle to radiant life. Through his finely wrought portraits of a father and son, young lovers, and newsroom dramas, Just also stirringly depicts an American poltical era.
Ward Just is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the National book Award finalist Echo House and An Unfinished Season, winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award. In a career that began as a war correspondent for Newsweek and the Washington Post, Just has lived and written in half a dozen countries, including Britain, France, and Vietnam. His characters often lead public lives as politicians, civil servants, soldiers, artists, and writers. It is the tension between public duty and private conscience that animates much of his fiction, including Forgetfulness. Just and his wife, Sarah Catchpole, divide their time between Martha’s Vineyard and Paris.
The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley
Every once in a while -- not often, for sure -- an author does a reviewer a favor and writes a book with such elegance, élan and acuity that the only way to review it -- to give readers some sense of the pleasures that await them in it -- is to quote from it, at length and with gratitude. John Gregory Dunne did that a couple of months ago with another novel about the heartland, Nothing Lost; now Ward Just does it with An Unfinished Season. A beautiful, wise book.
Editorials
Jonathan Yardley
Every once in a while -- not often, for sure -- an author does a reviewer a favor and writes a book with such elegance, élan and acuity that the only way to review it -- to give readers some sense of the pleasures that await them in it -- is to quote from it, at length and with gratitude. John Gregory Dunne did that a couple of months ago with another novel about the heartland, Nothing Lost; now Ward Just does it with An Unfinished Season. A beautiful, wise book.— The Washington Post
Kathy Balog
Identity, the force that defines and often misidentifies us, is at the heart of Ward Just's stunning and complex new novel, An Unfinished Season … It is the language that delivers added weight to the novel's enduring truism: the price we pay for the identity we embrace in ourselves or impose upon others.— USA Today
Publishers Weekly
Providing further evidence of the fine line between being a dorky loser and a pop-culture superhero (William Hung, anyone?), this is Hyman's attempt to turn his failures at love, life and employment into a cash cow. What's in it for readers? "Well, very little," admits Hyman, a Manhattan writer and occasional stand-up comedian, but it "beats a kick in the teeth, or being shipped off to fight in Iraq." A metrosexual, Hyman reminds us, is a straight guy in touch with his feminine side, one who appreciates "expensive home furnishings, good grooming, and heirloom tomatoes." Actually, Hyman comes off as an everyman probing the outer edges of modern, mainstream, urban existence, and his essays recount his exploits with startling, often hilarious results. He recalls his appointment with Hans, a gay masseur whose hands get a little too close "to the unauthorized no-man's-land," and an aborted attempt at a manage a trois that ends up having "all the erotic panache of a Three Stooges episode." Another chapter tells of Hyman's night on the town wearing leather pants, which prompts the astute observation, "sometimes the idea of something is better than the thing itself." Hyman's stories have funny setups, and his conversational, easy-to-read prose carries a weird poignancy. Agent, Jennifer Unter. (On sale July 7) Forecast: Ads in alternative weeklies and an author tour to metrosexual hubs (e.g., New York City, Boston, San Francisco) could help this latest real-life lad lit sell. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.Library Journal
Why does the world need a book about a finicky straight man who's often mistaken for gay and who loves not only himself but also sleek stereo equipment, name-dropping, and sharp clothing? Hyman, who has written for a number of publications, admits that there has been no pressing need for a book about his life and provides his own first review, calling this work "a pompous exercise in self-aggrandizement that tries too hard to be funny." Particularly in the introduction, and occasionally in the essays, Hyman indeed tries too hard to be funny, but the book is far from self-aggrandizing. He writes about being unemployed, computer dating, Brazilian bikini waxes, leather pants, metrosexuality in general, and how to blow up a relationship with someone you love. His genuine sense of loss over this last part informs much of the book and makes the title worthy of a purchase; for larger public libraries.-Audrey Snowden, Brewer, ME Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
Winsome, amusing, and intelligent debut collection of essays by a slacker cursed with taste, mildly astounded that a Queer Eye-influenced world has caught up with him. Journalist and occasional stand-up comic Hyman reflects on how one's lifestyle choices or aesthetic preferences can result in greater challenges or disappointments-in his case, the incongruity of loving the finer things and yearning for high society while failing to escape the impoverished and lonely life of a New York writer. Of his purported "metrosexual" tendencies, he notes that "a straight man cannot exhibit good taste in design or home furnishings, or the competence to dress himself" without being frequently mistaken for gay. (He shrewdly tags the mainstream fixation upon so-called metrosexuals as a marketing ploy akin to the Gen-X craze of the early 1990s.) Hapless but well appointed, Hyman portrays with the right mix of self-deprecation and acute observation his adventures in incompetence: a failed menage a trois, a disastrous drug-fueled Oaxacan road trip, Internet liaisons with women prone to first-date vomiting. Other essays utilize fairly ordinary set-ups as a springboard for Hyman's self-portrait as a confused yet resolute Everyman. "Law School Dropout" depicts his flight from a "mecca for conformity [that] offers vocational training more than it does intellectual challenge." In "The Seven Habits of Highly Laid-off People," he takes an archly humorous look at the white-collar chaos fomented by the 2001 recession. Hyman writes with surprising tenderness about the vicissitudes of contemporary dating, as in "The Wedding Swinger" or "The Penultimate Girlfriend," with whom his moment flamed out too quickly. And hedoesn't neglect topics specific to the true metrosexual experience, such as high-end shirts and Brazilian bikini waxes. His work may appeal to fans of David Sedaris, but Hyman has more in common with such Manhattan chroniclers of the louche life as Jonathan Ames and Thomas Beller. Though not without the occasional easy joke or sappy tangent, more thoughtful and artfully written than its sell-by-today title implies. Film rights to Miramax; first printing of 100,000. Agent: Jennifer Unter/RLR AssociatesFrom the Publisher
"One of Just's best works: stuffed with surprises, sparkling with insights." Kirkus Reviews, Starred“He steeps his sentences in the rhythms of 1950s jazz .the result is Just’s most trenchant read to date ” The Village Voice