Synopsis
George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home. He begins a search for his own identity that takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of expatriates; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. At last Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.
"If there stills lingers and doubt as to Wolfe's right to a place among the immortals of American letters, this work should dispel it."
—Cleveland News"Wolfe wrote as one inspired. No one of his generation had his command of language, his passion, his energy."
—The New Yorker"You Can't Go Home Again will stand apart from everything else that he wrote because this is the book of a man who had come to terms with himself, who has something profoundly important to say."
—New York Times Book Review
Donald Adams
It is also one of the finest pieves of writing that Wolfe ever accomplished. It is a fitting conclution to a book which has the air of nobility about it. This is the story of a man who found himself, in relation to life, in relation to his time.-- Books of the Century; New York Times review, September 1940