Set in the fictional seaside town of St. Bostolphs, Massachusetts, we meet the Wapshot family. Written with such flair, we get to know many of the Wapshots at a deep level and wonder if we haven’t met them all personally at some of our own family gatherings.The Wapshots face birth and death, financial crises and recoveries, sexual abstinence and experimentation and deal with the matters of life in their individual manners.The eldest son of Leander, Moses is most like his father and travels to Washington, DC to prove himself to his Aunt Honora. Things don’t go quite as he planned and he ends up in a dilapidated castle of a distant cousin where he meets his somewhat unstable, future wife, Melissa Scaddon.Moses brother, Coverly, feels he does not measure up to his father’s expectations and questions his future and sexual identity. It’s believed that Coverly’s character was autobiographical. Coverly sets off to New York to satisfy his Aunt Honora and fails a battery of personality tests given during a job prospect from a husband of a cousin. He studies and becomes a civil servant traveling far and away from his comfort zone. He meets his future wife, Betsey MacCaffery, they marry, she has a miscarriage, they separate, they reunite and have a family expected, son.Rosalie Young enters the Wapshot’s home after a fatal accident takes the life of her date and leaves her in need of care. Mrs. Wapshot takes her under her wing and enjoys nursing her back to health. Rosalie and Moses begin an affair, witnessed first hand by Aunt Honora (you really need to read the book!), who orders the sons out into the world to prove their mettle with the threat of withholding the family’s financial support. Rosalie eventually leaves with her condescending parents and rebukes Mrs. Wapshot after she makes a unfavorable remark about Rosalie’s mother. I really wanted to get to know more of this character, but her departure was fitting with the flow of the story.There were many more quite interesting characters; Aunt Honora, an opinionated spinster, Reba Heaslip, a local anti-vivisectionist, Justina Scaddon, an eccentric control freak. Cheever managed to make each so familiar in just a few short paragraphs.Quotes:Sometimes, walking on a beach and when there is no house near, we smell late in the day, on the east wind, lemons, wood smoke, roses and dust; the fragrance of some large house that we must have visited as children, our memories are so dim and pleasant–some place where we wanted to remain and couldn’t–and the farm had come to seem like this for Rosalie.Her life had been virtuous, her dedication to innocence had been unswerving and she had been rewarded with a vision of life that seemed as unsubstantial as a paper match in a fairly windy place.The only thing I found a tad cumbersome were the chapters that captured diary entries. While trying to convey what a person may have actually written in such a journal, it just fell a little flat and took away from the book’s overall continuity.How could anyone not enjoy spending time with Mr. Cheever. I’d love to listen to him spin some yarns sitting on a beach with the glorious sound of waves lapping the shore.My rating for The Wapshot Chronicle is a 9 out of 10.
Have you ever met someone who is particularly striking or beautiful but when you pick apart all their features they don't add up to your definition of attractiveness. Maybe their lips are thin and you associate that with being cruel. Maybe their nose is off-center or their eyes too close. Pointy chin, rough skin, thick shins--it shouldn't add up but it does. Tne Wapshot Chronicle was a glorious read, but if you analyze all its separte pieces it doesn't seem as if it should. Set in a Massachusetts fishing village, the book tells the stories of the eccentric Wapshot family. The description of the back of my copy calls the book, "Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque ..." I was expecting a farcical read but Cheever goes so deep; you barely realize he's taking you there. A chapter that examines Coverly Wapshot's possible homosexuality is filled with yearning and pain as he looks into "... the dark plains of American sexual eperience where the bison still roam." Cheever's strength as a short story writer are in evidence, which is why The Wapshot Chronicle isn't just an overarching tale, but a series of individual stories. Some might see this as a flaw. Characters are introduced and dropped. One chapter might be following one theme with a distinct writing style and suddenly you are inside the voice of Leander Wapshot who tells his story in short phrases meant to be his memoir. Cheever's free use of adjectives would be damned by most writing teachers and the changes in point-of-view would be equally frowned upon. There are sudden shifts in direction. At the end of the book, there is a scene of destruction following which the characters are suddenly back on track, as if Cheever got himself into a tight space and didn't know how to get to the end without destroying what came before. But because Cheever is not a writing workshop student, his lack of concern for rules makes for an exuberant read. His words flow and break over you because of their rhythm or because his vocabulary is so rich. Even the most minor characters are described with full attention. A stranger who has fallen off her horse is imagined by Moses Wapshot as "... pasty and round and worn it seemed with such anxieties as cooking, catching trains and buying useful presents at Christmas ..." A art appraiser who has a bit part at the very end receives ten lines of description including, "He must have been fifty--the bags under his eyes couldn't have been formed in a shorter time." It is for passages like this, though, that The Wapshot Chronicles is worth reading. Leander has gone to the beach, hoping for solitude but finds two "old ladies who were discussing canned goods and the ingratitude of daughers-in-law while the surf spoke in loud voices of wrecks and voyages and the likeness of things; for the dead fish was striped like a cat and the sky was striped like a fish and the conch was whorled like an ear and the beach was ribbed like a dog's mouth and the movables in the surf splintered and crashed like the walls of Jericho." Cheever's words vibrate and tremble like Jericho but they never fall down.
What do You think about The Wapshot Chronicle (2011)?
John Cheever's The Wapshot Chronicle, was, for me, an unfortunately underwhelming novel that was beautifully crafted. It was filled with rounded characters, a wonderful and sometimes-not-so sublime plot and filled with elegant Chekhovian descriptions of scenery that were quite picturesque. Yet, there was no knockout punch or wow factor that got a hold of me. The Wapshot Chronicle was, and I hate to say it, mediocre in its conveyance of mediocrity, softened only by occasional winsome humor that lifted me out of the dark dredges and questionable edginess of the character's personal behavior, confusion and other assorted problems. It was so reminiscent to me of the Pulitzer Prize-winng novel by Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries, another work that evokes similar feelings of mediocrity to me. While the writing in these two novels is both superb and one hundred percent pitch-perfect, there was just too much of the hum drum that overwhelmed whatever positives the author's were trying to let their readers in on. Yes, there is truth in the ordinary, and there is also remarkable extraordinariness. Some of the harshest yet most eloquent truths can come out of the Shileds and Cheevers of this world, but the primary works which have elevated them to the highest levels of global literary esteem, for me, miss the mark. Perhaps I am missing the point, for while I was not excessively excited about these two works in particular, I was absolutely in love with Penelope Mortimer's The Pumpkin Eater, a literary work and underrated classic of its time that is still in the tradition of Cheever's The Wapshot Chronicle and of The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. The beginning of Cheever's novel starts off in the fictitious seaside village of St. Botolphs, Massachusetts, an inspired landscape from Cheever's own upbringing. Here, readers are introduced to the unique (putting it mildly) Wapshot clan: Captain Leander Washpot, his son Moses and his other son Coverly (and Coverly does cover some personal things about himself). Also introduced is Aunt Honora. They all have their own demons and are flawed to the bone due to their demons. Yet, they try to find their way the best way they know how. They are redeeming characters, just broken, fighting the world against them, and that is admirable. If you know anything about John Cheever and his personal life, The Wapshot Chronicle may not be such a surprising work, a book that did win the 1958 National Book Award. But for those who haven't read anything by him, I would probably start off with The Short Stories of John Cheever, works that are truly classic and digestible, perhaps because they are short and not depressingly drawn out as The Wapshot Chronicle regrettably is. Any novice writer world certainly gain much from Cheever's shorter works and perhaps from the novels Falconer and Bullet Park. While I hope my review does not deter some readers from picking up The Wapshot Chroinicle or forgoing John Cheever as an author altogether, I'd probably get this book from the library and save myself a couple of bucks.
—Christian Engler
This was the first Cheever book I"ve read and I don't think it'll be my last. I'm so glad my book club opened my eyes to him. Like others, I did not think his exploration of the WASPy world of New England would appeal to me. However, he uses this very distinct setting to tell a story that is quite universal. It is about human nature and human relationships. It is about families, brotherhood, growing old, sexual boundaries, gender and societal expectations. It is about growing up and growing apart. It is a tale about what it is to be human. The fact that I, a South Asian female 30-something New Yorker could find this novel about a WASPy New England so relatable and MOVING is a testament to the power and skill of Mr. Cheever's storytelling.In addition to the story, Cheever's writing is vivid and complex. His sentences are long and winding, full of complex layers of images, feelings, and reflections. I found myself satisfying lost in them. Simply put, I loved this book.
—Malati
Cheever, based on my reading of this book, was one of the authors questioning the American Dream that was prevalent after 1945. What is this dream & will you be happy would be a decent premise for this novel.The farm outside Boston with its simple & idyllic lifestyle is juxtapositioned against the big bad cities & world of New York, Washington & new housing developments. While the home life doesn't change much, everywhere else is. The wonderful bitchy description of where all the wedding invitations end up - the addresses are correct, but time have changed & the old families are no longer able to support the great houses & they have moved away, to be replaced by various societies, old people's homes and so on.The characters are overall, well fleshed out, altho I felt Moses & Coverly a bit thin. However, the mastery of character building shows in Cheever's women. Both wives are seriously flawed, and the older women are strong, intellectually independent and manipulative.I saw the suburban scenes as contemporary tragedy. Betsy's attempts in friendship end disastrously with the successful friends, hiding a broken marriage & life. In fact, all through this novel, the secrets and lies that people hide & give a false, fake facade for the world, is common for the young people to live their daily lives. The elderly people in this book have finally shaken off this game & are more raw & blunt in their behaviour.Initially, I found the book slow going but I am glad I plowed through those 1st 50 pages. I also think those that grew up in the eastern seaboard, or knew family from there, will appreciate the subtleties that abound much more than this foreigner.I have decided to move immediately onto the Wapshot Scandal, as I think they behave very much like Lawrence's The Rainbow & Women In love - a continuum of a greater novel.
—Dillwynia Peter
