An Evening Of Long Goodbyes (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
Thirteen of my friends have read Skippy Dies with a consensus average rating of 4.5 stars. Two friends read An Evening of Long Goodbyes and gave it, on average, 2.5. This says two things: 1) I have clever, discerning friends, and 2) Paul Murray got better -- appreciably so, in fact. There may have been hints of the greatness to come in Skippy, but this, his first attempt, was honestly pretty uneven. Charles and his sister Bel are twenty-somethings living in the well-to-do part of Dublin. She is an aspiring actress and he is a man of leisure with an undue sense of entitlement. And wouldn’t you know, conflict somehow ensues. It was not a sustainable lifestyle: Charles had put a big dent in the previously impressive wine cellar, finances don’t just take care of themselves, and the grand old manor was becoming perceptibly less grand. Their father had passed away a few years before and their mother had been away for health reasons. They had a Bosnian refugee who did housekeeping, but her foothold in the real world was not enough to do them much good. Charles, the oblivious cad, was laughably bad. He might have been funnier still had there been any aspect of subtlety in the humor. Of course there’s a great tradition of “toff as twit” in Isles writing (think Bertie Wooster or certain Monty Python sketches), and I appreciated the attempt to accrue more, but can’t say that it was a complete success. I think the problem stemmed from inconsistency in the cluelessness. Charles narrated, which was for the most part a job well done, rife with affectation and flair. He even succeeded in telling jokes on himself (mistaken interpretations of responses to his buffoonery) without knowing they were jokes. My problem was in how he could display compelling insights into personalities at one moment and then be so callow and imperceptive the next.What I will give credit for is the narrative voice, at least when it was at its pompous and descriptive best. Here are two examples: [...] I was subjected to what he referred to, seemingly without irony, as his 'music'. Sometimes it sounded like a huge metal something -- a tank, maybe, or an enormous set of cutlery -- falling down an infinite staircase; sometimes it sounded like a hundred thousand Nazis, goosestepping through the Place de la Republique; the general idea seemed to be to capture the sound of civilization collapsing [...] [...] her expression with every passing second becoming more remote, like a Cinderella who has outstayed her time to see not only her carriage change back to a pumpkin, but Prince Charming's suitcase fall open and a whole horde of glass slippers fall across the floor [...]There was an element of French farce to this -- and believe me, I counted off for it -- but it also had a few weightier themes that, in part, helped to compensate. One message, if you’ll excuse my reductive shorthand, is that a friend in need is a friend indeed. This wasn’t always so obvious to Charles, unless he was the friend in need. Another prime character, Frank, who was a big lunk of a guy, rough around the edges, and Bel’s boyfriend for a time, was Charles’s polar opposite. That may not have made Frank persona grata at the country club, but it did give him street smarts, empathy for the luckless and a certain personal dynamism. Seeing the contrasts between the two was one of the better parts of the book. Redemptions were wobbly, though, and the book generally hinged on what humor there was to be had.On its own merits, this gets maybe 3 stars. If we allow the lexically impossible and compare it to the incomparable (that is, Skippy Dies), it’s more like 2 stars. Ah, what the heck -- after a trip to Erin and succumbing to its rhetorical charms, let’s stick with 3.
The Shortest Ian Graye Review in the CosmosBog Irish Lad Lit takes a turn for the better.But Wait There’s More!Yeats meets “Ulysses” meets “The Cherry Orchard”.YeatsPaul Murray quotes Yeats liberally throughout.I don’t know Yeats well enough to comment on the significance of his poetry to the themes of this novel.That would require research rather than "sprezzatura". (1)"Ulysses"There is a subtle affinity with James Joyce’s “Ulysses”.Just watch me make my case.There are 18 Episodes in “Ulysses” and 15 in “An Evening of Long Goodbyes” (“AEOLG”). Put this difference down to the new Irish economy.Both novels are set in Dublin (Aha, got you there!).“Ulysses” is set in one 24 hour period. “AEOLG” is not.Both novels allude extensively to mythology, “Ulysses” to classical mythology and “AEOLG” to Hollywood legend (in particular, that of the actress Gene Tierney).The comically self-absorbed protagonist, Charles Hythloday, could be a latterday wastrel version of Stephen Dedalus.The novel could almost be entitled "A Portrait of the Bullshit Artist as a Young Man" or "A Portrait of a Young Man as a Bullshit Artist ".Both novels concern a return to house and family, i.e., a return home (for a house is not necessarily a home).OK, that’s about all I can come up with, without having to think about it."The Cherry Orchard"Paul Murray refers extensively to this play throughout the novel.It is the favourite play of Charles’ sister, Bel, although she stuffed up her lines in a student production.The novel concerns an ancestral home, Amaurot (you could call it the House of Hythloday), that is insolvent and under threat of foreclosure.The home is a symbol of the oppression of the family and the expectations of each generation for those that follow.In a sense, a toxic home gives rise to a toxic family.At a personal level, a family that was once apparently independently wealthy has to accommodate the new economy and the need to make new money. One generation can only achieve its potential by breaking free of the bonds of the previous one, even if it has to commit its own follies to acquire wisdom.Sprezzatura(1) According to Wiki:"Sprezzatura is ‘a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it’."It is the ability of the courtier to display ‘an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them’."[It is] ‘a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance’."This reviewer will keep these characteristics in mind for the term of his natural life, in case they come in handy.It’s Not Over Until the Fat Boy SlimsBeneath this fat boy of a novel is a slim athletic figure who knows his chops.It comes across as all Lad Lit, but then reveals something more significant underneath.Paul Murray writes with “sprezzatura”, so much so that it’s easy to infer that nothing much is going on beneath the surface.I almost gave up on the novel numerous times, until I got to the last 100 pages, when I decided I was almost at the bottom of the slippery slide, so I might as well stay on and finish the ride.I’m glad I did. I’m also glad I read it before “Skippy Dies”.
What do You think about An Evening Of Long Goodbyes (2005)?
Charles Hythloday is a pampered, sheltered, idle, heir to a fortune. He thinks he is incredibly insightful and capable, but lacks a complete understanding of almost anything. As you start the book, you think Charles has a keen wit, and deep insight, about everything except himself. As the book progresses, you begin to like him more, but discover he is also completely clueless about everything and everyone around him. Throughout it, Charles maintains an impeccable sense of self-worth.The story starts out a P.G.Wodehouse type story, lampooning the rich. It turns more serious in the second half. You see the dot.com boom effects on Ireland all too clearly, delve into the social gulf between the upper and working classes, learn a lot about dog racing, and even see what kind of jobs Charles takes.. Actually, I really liked the parts about dog racing, and now understand its appeal.It is billed as a comedy, but it more of a slow upwelling comedy, rather than a laugh out loud kind of comedy.This a delightful book by the author of "Skippy Dies", with some emotional punch by the end. It does not rise to quite the level of excellence of "Skippy Dies", which you should definitely read if you like this one at all.
—Sam
"An Evening of Long Goodbyes" is that rare character-driven novel rich in wit and humor accompanied by periods of endearing poignancy and an engaging story line. Paul Murray can really write and his themes seem to come from his own experience in Ireland as a TCD man and impoverished as an English tutor, like Joyce, in Barcelona to blend his life among both the upper and working classes. Charles is a man born into the upper-class of Dublin in a family whose financial fortunes are currently in a state of rapid decline. Charles has a fond sensibility and even an obsession for the troubled actress, Gene Tierney. His father is enriched until his death as a wealthy inventor of make-up and perfumes which transform women by virtue of their masks into daunting figures of power. Consequently, after living a life of ease Charles is compelled to see what it's like to struggle economically just to survive. The twists and turns of life in reversals of fortune inevitably seem to bring out the true character of a person in that s/he either rises or falls after a series of catastrophes like a kind of Irish Job amid the height of the economy of the Celtic Tiger. In the case of Charles we are pulling for him to get his life together to become a real human being with a grown-up sense of responsibility to his family and friends who desperately need his support. Murray writes effortlessly and convincingly in both high and low society settings. The best parts of the novel for me turn up when Charles is paired against his social antithesis, Frank, who deals in the low-end salvage business: he's a tough guy with a big heart. The interplay between these two polar opposites synthesized some high caliber, comic wit. Other characters emerge as undocumented aliens living in Ireland as refugees of the Croatian War. The dialogue is stunning in its verisimilitude both high and low. Murray states that as a Dubliner he was influenced by Joyce and Beckett: how could he not be? The influence of Beckett is easy to see as the main character is overwhelmed on many occasions by disasters shot like lightning bolts from the gods and by epic self-inflicted wounds. His hardships prove instructive and his transformation through his suffering fortify his character until we ache for him as one disaster after another befalls him like a script from Beckett and the theater of the absurd. When confronted with the beastly hardships of life, Charles longs just to escape into a romantic ideal but life won't let him linger long in this treacherous self-imposed place of false refuge. Existence is constantly dragging him outside his refuge to get knocked down, beat-up, mugged, struck by explosion so that he wanders bruised and bandaged and about the head like a mummy to be chastened for his inability to deal with harsh reality. Charles is the first-cousin of every protagonist of the novels of that other Irish genius, JP Donleavy. Murray presents us with two endings focused upon the fate of his actress sister, Bel, including one "with the endless dreams of seaweed braided arms, the countless glimpses of her in clouds, billboards, the faces of strangers... where people disappear only to reappear elsewhere, with French accents and false mustaches, where everything is constantly changing and nobody ever dies." He evokes in a dream the living persona of Yeats who is liberally quoted throughout the novel. There is high intelligence in the writing of this first novel and great craftsmanship, which strongly suggest that Murray may well enjoy a prolific future as a novelist. I certainly hope so: this novel was a real joy to read and leaves me eager to explore his other work.
—David Lentz
Murray is a fantastic writer, and this first novel of his is an incredible accomplishment--made me laugh, cry, all that. The thing is...I read it after I read his second novel, "Skippy Dies," which is just about one of the best novels I've ever read (made me both laugh and cry harder). So I think reading "An Evening of Long Goodbyes" made me both more charitable toward Murray but also a little disappointed that his first novel isn't as good as his second. No real surprise there, though. This novel is told entirely in the perspective of Charles Hythloday, a spoiled 24-year old who wants to recreate the world of living as a gentleman, without having to work or really do anything at all. He is, in a word, insufferable. That makes the first hundred or so pages of the book a little tedious as his ignorance is both hilarious and annoying. Then things turn serious, but there are so many turns and little pieces that the plot feels like so many frayed bits of string keeping together a tattered clothesline. But still, the ending was heartbreaking, surprisingly so. Do I recommend this book? I recommend you read "Skippy Dies" first, decide if you love Murray as much as I do, and read this next to keep your spirits up until he published a third novel.
—Jenna
