Blue Calhoun

by Reynolds Price

Book Overview

"This starts with the happiest I ever was, though it brought down suffering on everybody near me. Short as it lasted and long ago, I've never laid it all out yet, not start to finish. But if I try and half succeed, you may wind up understanding things, choosing a better road for yourself and maybe not blaming the dead past but living for the here and now, each day a clean page."
April 28, 1956, was the day Blue Calhoun met a sixteen-year-old...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684867826
• ISBN13: 9780684867823
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Blue Calhoun: looking for forgiveness & understanding

This beautifully written epistolary novel presents a problem of purpose and intention on the part of its main character, Bluford Calhoun: why in the world is he writing this 373-page letter to his teenaged granddaughter in which he describes to her in excruciating detail the consuming attraction he had for Luna, a teenaged girl half his age, 30 years before? Indeed, he's looking for understanding and forgiveness for his horrid behavior, an adulterous affair that went on for a year and almost destroyed his marriage. That's obvious. Price also believed that family traits are often passed down through the generations, so perhaps Blue is trying to warn Lyn of this particular trait to help her not succumb to it herself (Lyn is an orphan and has been abused by her father). That's less obvious. Either way, it still stretches credulity that he would do it, for me anyway. But Price is such a wonderful writer that reading Blue's letter is a treat. Price's command of language is extraordinary, and he gives Blue a unique and lyrical narrative voice. Whether or not Blue's motives are achieved in writing his letter, the reader comes to know this infuriating yet somehow almost saintly man (he can be kind and caring and fair at times) in this compelling novel by Reynolds Price. I truly enjoyed it despite my own difficulty comprehending Blue's intentions.

A good hard read.

It's a rare book that can make you forgive a man who is committing unforgivable acts. For that reason I want to call this book the American Lolita. I know that Lolita is set in America, but it has a distinctly European sensibility, and Blue Calhoun's sensibility is purely American. Thematically, both books deal with the sexualization of girls and how that echoes through families and lives. But this book is not especially explicit. Blue is too careful with words to go there. It is a piningly romantic, erotically charged and heartbreaking story. It's on a par with Kate Vaiden, my other beloved Price book. Both books share a perfectly evoked time and place and a realistic way with Southern dialog, in that people talk over and around the real subject, maintaining their manners during emotionally charged exchanges. That delicacy keeps this book from ever dipping into the sordid, even as it deals with difficult subject matter.

Best book by Price I have read

This is probably the best of the 3 novels by Reynolds Price that I have read; I have read two others, "Roxanna Slade" and "The Promise of Rest" both of which I would also recommend highly. Price is an excellent prose stylist who is comfortable with the use of similes and metaphors. He writes in a lilting Southern style which is unique to him; his books are filled with family and food, friends, and (unfortunately)disease and death, and sex--all of the above are life-affirming qualities. "Blue Calhoun" concerns pedophilia, although perhaps this is a relative term. It concerns a strongly heterosexual relationship between a married adult male and a 16-year-old girl and its consequences for his family. Though she is not of "legal age" I don't suppose (I don't know) if legally this falls in the same illegality as the Catholic priests scandals. At any rate the book procedes at a sparkling pace,has some interesting characters, notably Blue's daughter, mother and wife in addition to Luna and Blue (who is an ex-alcoholic and musical instrument salesman), funny and sad at the same time, and I just liked it the best. If I were to recommend a book by Reynolds Price, it would be this one. I would like to also comment on the other two novels: "Roxanna Slade" is a more historic novel, dealing with an "ordinary" Southern woman who deals with bouts of depression coming of age in the early decades of the 20th Century. But this novel is not at all ordinary. The other novel,"The Promise Of Rest" is more contemporary and deals with the narrator's son, an architect in New York City, who returns home to the South where he dies of AIDS.

strong character development, a good read

A very disturbing account of pediphilia, incest, forgiveness, commitment and karmic justice. Blue Calhoun was the embodiment of the addictive personality; blessed by being surrounded by women of great strength and faith. His involement with a sixteen year old girl, lends an interesting perspective, when framed in the late 50's compared to how such relationships are viewed today. His continual relapsing, (whether involving drink or womanizing) followed by bouts of guilt, were entirely believable as this pathetic man attempted to live a life deserving of the women who loved him. I did find the ending disappointing. The karmic justice lost a good deal of credibility at the end of the book. A good read, I recommend to all who like a little weight with their summer read.