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In the Meantime
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Product Description
Product Description
" From the intimacy of small town America to big city life, from World War II to 9/11, In the Meantime vividly encapsulates an unforgettable era. On a hot summer's day in 1931, three five-year-olds meet on a dusty street in a small Midwestern town, beginning a friendship that will last all their lives. Kathryn, the oldest in an ever-expanding family, is bright and earnest, and thinks she wants to become a nurse. Starling is an only child with an absent father. He doesn't yet know that he is of mixed race-he doesn't even know what that means-all he knows is that when he grows up he will be a star. Luke doesn't know what he wants, except for his older brother not to be dead. Together they experience the joys and pains of childhood, although the anxieties of puberty and awakening sexuality nearly destroy their three-way friendship forever. Reaching adulthood after World War II, they follow their dreams to New York City, where they discover that not even Manhattan is free of racism and prejudice. Through the years of their ever-entwined adult lives some dreams are realized while others grow dim, but one constant remains: their bond of friendship. At the book's end, some seventy years after it began, only one of them remains to tell the story of their lives, and of what happened…in the meantime. About the Author Robin Lippincott is the author of two previous novels and a collection of short stories. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, Fence, The New York Times Book Review, The Literary Review, and many other journals, as well as several anthologies, and he has been awarded fellowships to Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. He teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Spalding University and at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
76 of 80 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
What saves Robin Lippincott's prose from being merely beautiful, merely decorative, is its strong emotional undertow. I felt it from the first page of In the Meantime, a kind of ache of tenderness that swelled and ebbed and swelled again throughout the book; you get carried along on the feeling as though it's literally a wave, and it keeps you turning the pages without noticing the time. A lot happens in this book: it covers 70 years in the lives (and after-lives) of its three central characters, who meet at the age of five in a small Midwestern town, where they forge an ineradicable bond, and head for New York together as soon as they can escape; there they suffer all the ordinary -- as well as some extraordinary -- sorrows and disillusionments of coming up against their own and the world's limitations. In the case of the most dazzling and fragile figure here, those sorrows and disillusionments are made more intense by how much he once wanted from life, and believed would be his by right. But although the story itself is rich, and there is plenty to grip you in the events depicted, it really is Lippincott's prose, his voice as narrator, that sets it apart. It is difficult to describe that voice without resorting to contradictions. Though it is certainly sorrowful, the love he so evidently feels for his characters, and a powerful sense of joy -- he can celebrate the small pleasures of life in a way that makes it possible for the reader, too, to exult in them -- make this book anything but depressing. You close it rejoicing.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm no literary critic, but the structure of this book appears so self-consciously contrived that it might easily be the result of a writing assignment. This alone wouldn't necessarily damn the product, but in my view it quickly loses its way and fizzles out. I really liked the first sixty pages, which are written in a simple and yet lyrical style that conveys an increasing pace as the children grow up and approach adulthood. But then it's as if a different author takes over. The rest of the book is an accelerating catalogue of the three friends' increasingly divergent adult lives, and it is written in a style that barely resembles those early chapters. The significances of plot seem heavy-handed to the end (when they become downright crass) and from here on the book is, honestly, quite dull. I'd like to think that in skim-reading the latter two-thirds at an increasingly-impatient rate I was somehow connecting with the author's message, but it's hardly a recommendation.
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I really struggled with this book. The first few chapters felt like the author had eaten a dictionary and tried to get as many long words in one sentence as possible. The description of the characters and the way they came together you seemed to think that it was going to be a good read, but nothing really happened and as other reviewers have said previously, seemed to peter out.
There are certainly better reads out there, so I would recommend you move onto the next one.
There are certainly better reads out there, so I would recommend you move onto the next one.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
promising beginning but loses its way
I loved the style of the first few chapters and then it petered out and I was soon a bit bored. I kept waiting for something to happen and read far more of it than I would have as... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Fiona Slessor
in the meantime
This book didn't quite live up to the preview, whilst it did note the historical events happening around the characters it didn't make the most of these within the story. Read more
Published 3 months ago by jandap
In the meantime... find another book
I have so many problems with this book that I cannot even begin to list them all. Mainly though it is the characters as children, they are supposed to be five but they think, act... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. Wesley H. Winegarden
Turgid and Dire
This is really poor - couldn't get more than a quarter of the way through it - I really don't care what happens in the rest of the book. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. V. Summers
If this is the synopsis, I would like to read the finished book
Imagine sitting with a well meaning friend who has just seen a really, really good movie. She tells you all about the plot and what happens to the characters. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Shiraz!
Not sure..
I have to agree with the last two reviewers. The book read like an extended essay 'Describe the friendships, hopes and desires of 3 people from childhood to old age'. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Gertie
Started well but then .....
I totally lost interest in this book less than half way through. The beginning was really good but the pace suddenly slowed down and I couldn't see the point of the story. Read more
Published 4 months ago by E. Roberts
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