. Book of the Month

I had read John Cheever's short stories. They reminded me a bit of Raymond Carver's. Carver is my favourite. Cheever and Carver were alcoholics together at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1973.

I didn't know Cheever also wrote novels, but I do now.


The Wapshot Chronicle was his first, and it starts off more like a bunch of short stories than a novel. The beginning 60 pages are not unlike last month's Book of the Month - they create and populate the world, and there's a whole load of begetting going on. Some seemingly important characters have entire chapters devoted to them, then they disappear, never to be seen again.

I'm not sure why that didn't annoy me. Maybe it's because I read most of the book while I was on holiday - a good chunk of it while I was hiding out in Chelsea Market waiting for the rain to stop.


When it does finally focus, Wapshot is mostly about two brothers growing up and going off into the world to discover life and love and all that. It's tragic and comic. There is a general tone of melancholy about it. The language is wonderful. It's hard to stop reading even when the weather clears up.

The only thing I did not love were the number of "wildly eccentric" characters. Being a grumpy old bastard, I have a hard time with eccentrics. I think that's why I don't enjoy Dickens.

Cheever wrote a sequel - The Wapshot Scandal. I might read it.

I still prefer the short stories though.

You?

Next month we will be reading New York Times bestseller "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave.