Word: wellerli
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...Carol Shields, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for The Stone Diaries, ever tires of writing fiction, she should consider taking up biography. Her newest novel, Larry's Party, paints a subtle portrait of Larry Weller by taking, as the book jacket states, "a CAT scan of his life." If Shields can make a fictional character seem so alive, she could do wonders with an actual human being...
...Larry Weller first appears as a 26-year-old walking along a Winnipeg street, "walking straight toward the next thing that was going to happen to him." He lives at home with his parents; he has fallen into a steady job as a florist; he has acquired a serious girlfriend. Something significant happens to Larry, quite quickly; his girlfriend, Dorrie, becomes pregnant. Larry proposes, and things start happening to him with increasing frequency...
...book jacket would suggest that by chronicling Larry Weller's life from 1977 to 1997, Shields has captured the essence of Man during each of these decades as well. Apart from one reference to hair length in the 70s, several references to unemployment in the 80s and 90s, and an incongruous, forced discussion of men in the 90s at the dinner party, time scarcely seems to pass at all. Larry and his family age and change, but their essence remains the same. Larry the successful maze designer is not much different from Larry the florist. Shields has created remarkably balanced...
Except for the disappointing last chapter, Larry's Party is an exceptionally good read. The self-contained nature of the individual chapters make it student-friendly--it's easy to pick back up after you've put it down for a while. Larry Weller is an interesting thinker, for an ordinary guy, and his internal thoughts and comments are thoughts and comments are thought-provoking and fascinating. His worries and insecurities seem familiar. Larry's a sort of Everyman, only better...
...Stone Diaries (1995), Carol Shields takes on the burden of eliciting interest in a rather unprepossessing hero. Larry's Party (Viking; 339 pages; $23.95) offers 15 chapters, each of which has the stand-alone feel of a short story, excerpting details from the imagined life of one Larry Weller...