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Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives.
BookshelfMonstrosity: A dramatic incident provokes adult siblings to explore their lives and relationships in these moving and lyrical novels. While more about family than race, both books include thought-provoking meditations on the complexity of racial relations in 21st century America.… (mehr)
Das Buch schildert drei Geschwister, die neben ihrer gemeinsamen Kindheit durch ein gemeinsames tragisches Ereignis in ihrer Vergangenheit verbunden sind. Sie saßen in einem Auto, von dem ihr Vater tödlich überrollt wurde und es war wohl Bob, der den Gang gelöst hatte. Nun als Erwachsene, gehen die Geschwister nicht gerade zimperlich miteinander um, sie giften sich an und sie gehen einander auf die Nerven. Aber dann halten Sie doch wieder zusammen und lieben sich. Schonungslos zeigt die Autorin das Verhältnis von Geschwistern, das unbarmherzige und auch das liebevolle. Als Susans Sohn Zach in eine schwierige Situation gerät, helfen die Brüder der Schwester und dem Neffen. Die Geschichte ist durchaus spannend, auch wenn sie vielleicht etwas zu viel will. Zach hat einen Schweinskopf in eine Moschee geworfen. Es geht auch um das Thema Umgang mit Geflüchteten und mit unterschiedlichen Religionen. Was mir auch gut gefällt, ist, dass die Rolle der einzelnen innerhalb des Systems gut deutlich wird. Jim ist ja wirklich ein richtiger Unsympath, aber es wird auch klar, dass er nicht aus seiner Rolle kann und in dieser auch bedeutsam ist, als „Fixstern“ für seine Geschwister. Ähnlich ist es auch mit den anderen beiden. Was Strout wirklich kann, nämlich bis in die kleinste Nebenfigur glaubwürdige Charaktere zu schaffen, gelingt auch hier. Nur Zachs Läuterung läuft mir etwas zu glatt, immerhin war der Vater der Auslöser, dass er dann auch zur Lösung wird, finde ich nicht ganz glaubhaft. Der Schluss ist versöhnlich und insgesamt ist es ein schönes Buch. ( )
Aus dem Amerikanischen von Sabine Roth und Walter Ahlers. Shirley Falls ist eine typische Kleinstadt in Maine: hohe Arbeitslosigkeit, viele Alte, wenige Junge, wirtschaftlicher Niedergang, in neuester Zeit auch noch Aufnahmeort für muslimische Flüchtlinge aus Somalia. Als einzige der drei Burgess-Geschwister ist Susan hiergeblieben, ihr Mann hat sie schon lang verlassen, der 19-jährige Sohn Zachary wohnt bei ihr in dem eiskalten, ungemütlichen Häuschen. Als der verschlossene, einsame Junge eines Tages einen halb aufgetauten Schweinekopf in die behelfsmäßige Moschee rollen lässt, ist die kleine Gemeinde erschüttert. Ein rassistisches Verbrechen? Auf jeden Fall ein Skandal, mit dem Susan allein nicht fertig wird. Und so bittet sie ihre Brüder Jim und Bob um Hilfe, die als Anwälte in New York arbeiten. Nichts zieht sie mehr nach Shirley Falls zurück. Aber natürlich folgen sie dem Hilferuf der Schwester, nicht ahnend, dass ihre Rückkehr nach Maine ihr bisheriges Leben vollkommen umkrempeln wird..
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To my husband
Jim Tierney
Erste Worte
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My mother and I talked a lot about the Burgess Family. "The Burgess kids," she called them.
Zitate
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Back in New York, calling from my twenty-sixth-floor apartment one evening, watching through the window as dusk touched the city and lights emerged like fireflies in the fields of buildings spread out before me, I said, "Do you remember when Bob's mom sent him to a shrink? Kids talked about it on the playground. 'Bobby Burgess has to see a doctor for mentals.'" "Kids are awful," my mother said. "Honest to God."
We did this kind of thing, repeated the stuff we knew.
And so it began. Like a cat's cradle connecting my mother to me, and me to Shirley Falls, bits of gossip and news and memories about the Burgess kids supported us.
A short pause, and then Bob said, "Yeah," his voice dropping into an understanding so quick and entire–it was his strong point, Helen thought, his odd ability to fall feetfirst into the little pocket of someone else's world for those few seconds.
Traffic moved quickly and with a sense of community, as though all drivers were tenants in this fast forward-moving form.
For years Bob had lived with the shadow of his not-children appearing before him.
"Stay in the present," Elaine would say
Bob's ancient inner Bobness had returned.
"You know what Jimmy would say, don't you? He'd say there's no crying in baseball."
By the time the bail commissioner showed up, Bob's weariness seemed like a large wet coat he was wearing.
Zach came through the door, his face as white as paper.
"I thought, Jesus, if you can't speak the truth in a shrink's office, where can you?"
How could he describe what he felt? The unfurling of an ache so poignant it was almost erotic, this longing, the inner silent gasp as though in the face of something unutterably beautiful, the desire to put his head down on the big loose lap of this town, Shirley Falls.
He came to understand this had a danger altogether different from the dangers in the camp. Living in a world where constantly one turned and touched incomprehension–they did not comprehend, he did not comprehend–gave the air the lift of uncertainty and this seemed to wear away something in him, always he felt unsure of what he wanted, what he thought, even what he felt.
They were not from Maine, Susan remembered that, and they had seemed–filing into a pew each Christmas Sunday service–as exquisite as a flock of foreign birds.
The thick sugary pull of life had gone.
The Burgess boys rode up the turnpike as twilight arrived. It arrived gently, the sky remaining a soft blue as the trees along either side of the unfolding pavement darkened.
What was this thing that Jimmy had? The intangible, compelling part of Jimmy? It's that he showed no fear, Bob realized. He never had. And people hated fear. People hated fear more than anything.
You couldn't fake it. It showed in the glance of an eye, in the way you entered a room, walked up the steps to a bandstand.
Always on the exit ramp, Susan had once said of Jim.
"Work toward something. That's how it's done. You belong to society, you give to society."
A silence sat in the room that felt so momentarily present and pulsating Bob didn't dare disturb it by raising his glass.
The key to contentment was to never ask why; she had learned that long ago.
she learned–freshly, scorchingly–of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into some large and private club that she had not known existed. Women who miscarried. Society did not care much for them. It really didn't. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently. People outside the club said, "You'll have another one."
The snow sparkled, and the river sparkled, as though diamonds had been openhandedly flung throughout the air.
A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others.
Margaret Estaver's office looked like Margaret. Unorganized, and gentle, and welcoming.
But by October there were many days when the swell of rightness, loose-limbedness, and gentle gravity came to him.
So she lay awake at night and at times there was a curious peacefulness to this, the darkness warm as though the deep violet duvet held its color unseen, wrapping around Pam some soothing aspect of her youth, as her mind wandered over a life that felt puzzlingly long; she experienced a quiet surprise that so many lifetimes could be fit into one.
No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.
Memory. Open-palmed it passed before her scenes, and then would close, taking away the beginning, the end, the framework these scenes existed within.
And it was too late. No wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.
This tiny piece of knowledge was nothing more than a dust particle hanging in the air.
Shame, bone-deep, tightened his arms.
Helen, feeling this was contained in the face of her sister-in-law, thought the word Rube, and then felt very tired deep down inside herself. She did not want to think that, or be that way, and she thought it was awful such a word came to her, and no sooner did she think that than to her horror she thought the word Nigger, which had sometimes happened to her before, Nigger, nigger, as though her mind had Tourette's syndrome and these terrible things went uncontrollably through it.
His first instinct was to get up and close the door, and the very nature of the complaint made this woman dangerous. She could have been sitting there quietly holding an automatic machine gun in her lap; to be alone with her would be like handing her another magazine of bullets.
She said kindly, "I think there is no perfect way to live,"
Everyone on the train seemed innocent and dear to him, their eyes unfocused with morning reveries that were theirs alone, perhaps words spoken to them earlier, or words they dreamed of speaking; some read newspapers, many listened through earbuds to their own soundtrack, but most stared absently as Bob did–and he was moved by the singularity and mystery of each person he saw.
Her face had the naked look of someone whose glasses were removed
"What am I going to do, Bob? I have no family." "You have family," Bob said. "You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane."
Letzte Worte
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When Bob fell asleep on Susan's couch he held in his hands - held on to it all night - his phone, set on vibrate, in case Jim needed him, but the phone remained unmoving and unblinking and it stayed that way as the first pale light crept unapologetically beneath the blinds.
Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives.
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In einer Kleinstadt in Maine zu leben, mag romantisch klingen, aber die Wirklichkeit sieht meist anders aus. Die Brüder Jim und Bob Burgess sind deswegen so bald wie möglich nach New York gezogen. Als ihre Schwester Susan, die zu Hause geblieben ist, ihre Hilfe braucht, kehren ihre Brüder widerstrebend in die Heimatstadt zurück. Mit ungeahnter Macht holt sie dort jedoch die Vergangenheit wieder ein. Eine aufwühlende Familiengeschichte, vollkommen unsentimental und dabei tief berührend, eine echte Strout eben.