AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: The Last to Go: A Novel by Rand Richards Cooper ISBN: 0-380-70862-0 Publisher: Harpercollins Pub. Date: 01 May, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: Flawed family chronicle
Comment: It's a collection of stories about the family of a Connecticut neurosurgeon. It can't quite make up its mind (or Cooper couldn't) whether it's a novel or a collection of stand-alone but interconnected short stories. If you read it straight through some of the stories are repetitious. He has a recurrent theme of people forming relatioships that fail.
I kept making comparisons and they were all just a little unfavorable. "The Corrections" came to mind, of course. Franzen used the multiple points of view of family members but had an unifying plot that kept us turning the pages. "Comfort Zones" by Pamela Donoghue did a better job of linking stories about a family. Cheever does better on depicting Connecticut prosperous suburbanites. Janet Evanovich does better on depicting smalltown ethnic blue-collar hardscrabble, which brings me to the lack of humor. Cooper seldom cracks a smile. His one attempt at Yiddish oysterism fails. Updike in "S" did a hilarious job on the arrogant philadering doctor. (It's notable that these days Arrowsmith has become Babitt. The medical profession has now declined so far in literary esteem that it's become a paradigm for greedy unimaginative careerism. Cooper uses this three times).
He's a talented writer who lacks, in this book, a certain spark of originality. The spark does emerge (if that's not a mixed metaphor) at times in his later collection of short stories. There's been nothing since. We can still have hope.