From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Begun in 1981, this slender, unpretentious, lyrical and deeply moving novel by the president emeritus of Amherst College was more than two decades in the making. The year is 1987, and octogenarian Robert MacIver is alone, in failing health and debilitated with grief over his wife's recent death, hiding out in the dead of winter in a remote, unheated Cape Cod house "older than the Republic." Shocked into confronting the seriousness of his plight when the timbers of the front porch collapse under his weight, he retreats back inside the house and realizes that he wants to live out his remaining days—however few in number—with dignity. Thus resolved, he formulates his Ten Commandments for Old Men Waiting, the seventh of which is "Work every morning." And so he decides to write a short story about an infantry company in "No Man's Land" in WWI, which will draw on the interviews he conducted with victims of poison gas that he used for his first book, the well-received oral history
Voices Through the Smoke. Pouncey's novel thus becomes a story within a novel; and MacIver's story is elegantly juxtaposed with his memories from his own long life. Pouncey's first book is proof that sometimes greatness comes slowly and in small packages.
Agent, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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This first novel, written by a 67-year-old former classics professor, details the last days of historian, war veteran, and proud Scotsman Robert MacIver. Upon the death of his beloved wife, MacIver is at loose ends and in rapidly failing health. Rambling around his large old house on the Cape, he determines that he will meet his fate with dignity. Without a shred of self-pity, he formulates a set of rules to get by, including eating regular meals, keeping warm, and listening to music. He also sets about writing a fairly gripping story set during World War I about a group of conflicted soldiers. This story, in turn, acts as a conduit for his own memories--his experiences in combat, his great love affair with his wife, the death of their son in Vietnam, the rewards of their respective careers as a teacher and a painter. Although mortality is its central theme, this gracefully written novel is never depressing. With its expansive scope--war, work, love, loss--it is instead a beautiful testament to one man's resilient spirit.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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