Word: plumbered
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...Angeles in 1954. United signed up a stable of contractors to do the jobs funneled to them through the club, now has 400 to handle an average 200 calls for service a week. The home-repair clubs handle all the paperwork, send bills to customers, skim 10% of the plumber's or painter's fee in exchange for giving him the job. The customer who joins the club (for about $5 to $15 a year) thus can pay for all his repairs in one monthly bill. The home-repair club is no quick road to riches (clubs...
...Best Reading The Human Season, by Edward Lewis Wallant. The grief of a 59-year-old plumber over the sudden death of his wife is the unlikely subject of this remarkably skillful first novel. With telling economy, Author Wallant suggests the climate of a marriage, the texture of sorrow without sentimentality and the twisting agony of an agnostic Job who cannot tame his rage with resignation...
...appearance of a new writer whose viewpoint is mature and who knows how to say exactly what he means is something of a literary event. Author Wallant. 34, is such a writer. His first book deals skillfully with an unlikely subject-the grief of a 59-year-old plumber after the sudden death of his wife...
Brief, well-structured and without bravura effects, Wallant's novel compresses whole chapters about the sorrowing man and his marriage into a few sentences. Plumber Joe Berman, the hero, packs a quarter-century into a single moment of nostalgia as he daydreams about his wife on their 25th anniversary: "He knew the little collapses of her body, the age-ugly folds and wrinkles, and he loved and revered her all the more for the neat, attractive exterior she was still capable of. He was her proud ally in the public appearance...
...observations untainted by sentimentality, Wallant follows every step of Berman's descent into melancholia. His eye and ear, as he tells of Berman's deterioration, are so good that time after time readers may experience the discomforting shock of self surprised. At first the plumber's grief seems simple-inward weeping set off by a breath of perfume from a bathroom cabinet, or the sudden spaciousness of his bed. Then, wallowing in his sadness, Berman turns on everyone who offers comfort. Even his married daughter, who tries to mother him, is stung by his quick, aimless angers...