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Letter from Point Clear: A Novel
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Product Description
When they receive Bonnie’s letter announcing her marriage, Ellen and Morris head for Alabama, believing they must extricate their troublesome sister from her latest mistake. To their surprise, they find that Bonnie’s charismatic young husband, Pastor, has already saved her from her self-destructive ways, and Bonnie is now nearly three months pregnant. But Bonnie has only recently informed Pastor that Morris is gay, and Pastor quickly undertakes a campaign to “save” him as well . . .
With grace, warmth, and humor, Dennis McFarland reveals the common ground shared by these flawed yet captivating characters—setting them all, and the reader with them, on an unlikely course toward redemption.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #619424 in Books
- Published on: 2007-08-07
- Released on: 2007-08-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
An absorbing, resonant domestic drama, McFarland's latest follows the dysfunctional Owen family's reunion in Point Clear, Ala., 10 months after the death of the family's alcoholic patriarch, Roy. Of the three adult children, Ellen, a published poet, is separated from her husband for the summer and caring for their young son, Willie. With her high-strung, opinionated brother, Morris, and Richard, Morris's partner of 14 years, Ellen and Willie travel to the family's Point Clear estate, where the youngest, Bonnie, has been living since abandoning a floundering Manhattan theatrical career to care for ailing Roy. The occasion is Bonnie's quickie marriage to a young, dashing evangelical preacher named Pastor Vandorpe, who credits himself with having saved Bonnie. Bonnie is pregnant and, she tells an incredulous Ellen, happy. The addition of Pastor's pious parents powers a destructive tension, with everyone locking horns over homosexuality, gay marriage, religion and property ownership. A strained family dinner denouement ignites a clash pitting Ellen and Morris against an ex-gay minister invited to save Morris. Can a crisis of faith be far behind? Though McFarland (Prince Edward, etc.) imparts a religious message that feels heavy-handed in spots, his ability to tap the hearts and minds of his carefully considered characters adds up to an evocative novel. (Aug.)
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From Booklist
In his latest novel, McFarland returns to a favored theme of a family ravaged by tragedy, only in this case it would seem the tragedy is one of their own making. Safely ensconced in their respective New England homes, siblings Ellen and Morris Owen learn of their younger sister's impetuous marriage to an evangelical minister actually named Pastor Vandorpe, and that the couple are now residing in the family mansion along the Alabama coast. Assuming that, like her drug abuse and failed acting career, this is yet another one of Bonnie's reckless forays into self-destruction, Ellen and Morris rush home to assess the situation for themselves. They find Bonnie calm, happy, and several months pregnant, but as the pastor spends more time with the brother-in-law he just found out is gay, his ministerial duty to correct the error of Morris' ways threatens to unravel his marriage, if not his psyche. Portraying each conversation and every encounter as an emotional minefield, McFarland is at the peak of his psychological prowess. Haggas, Carol
Review
Customer Reviews
Simple, Sweet.
A lovely character piece that won't reinvent the novel, but does charm with it's simplicity. When Morris and Ellen receive a letter from their estranged sister Bonnie, they are moved into action. It seems the theatrical sibling has gotten married to a young minister and they are now living in the house the children have grown up in. With both parents being dead, Morris and Ellen head off to Alabama with the intent of meeting this man they're sure is going to take advantage of their sisters financial means, while also finally addressing whether they're ready to let their childhood home go.Morris has his own issues with his sister marrying a minister since he's been married to a man for the past fifteen years. McFarland's writing is fluid and beautiful, and many times it feesl like you're watching a play. I confess I kept waiting for something momentous to happen, but didn't feel disappointed in any way that something didn't. Ultimately reading this felt like peering through a keyhole into some other people's lives.
Characters Deserved Better
Discriptions are accurate and vivid, characters are well-developed, well created and well drawn, but the story was lacking, sometimes predictable, sometimes a stretch. The characters, so well drawn, so real and so alluring, deserved a better, more believable, less predictable, story.
Went into this book with high hopes, but mostly felt disappointment. The characters clunked along in a predictable story with an attempt at a surprising ending. The whole thing fell kind of flat.
Thanks, Dennis
If you, as I do, adore domestic realism spiced with dry wit, oblique cultural references, exchanges that don't require authorial intrusion as to meaning, all taking place within marriage and/or four walls of a house, look no further. This is literary fiction at its best: a story based on the characters, not on their actions. Morris is petualant and petty, Ellen is distant and unnecessarily unfulfilled, and Bonnie is rash and probably spoiled, but I'd like to hang out with all of them. You can have your circus stories and your chick lit, I'll take Letter From Point Clear. And check out Tessa Hadley's The Master Bedroom or Accidents In The Home.
