The Bostons

By Carolyn Cooke

Book Overview

Carolyn Cooke's stories have been featured in several volumes of PRIZE STORIES: THE O. HENRY AWARDS and THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. Her highly anticipated debut collection tells hilarious and often savage truths about people struggling within the confines of history, society, and class.
Mr. Sargent, the aging Brahmin aesthete of the title story, scribbles his epiphanies on cocktail napkins and covers them up with his drinks. A Maine innkeeper shoots his wife, who remains bitterly loyal to him until the death of their son. A whole family conspires to keep the birth of yet another dirt-poor relation a secret from his grandmother. On the icy cobblestone streets of Boston and the rockbound coast of Maine, these vividly realized characters try to reconcile habits of obedience and self-reliance with the urgent desire to capture the wild core of life. The result is an explosion of exquisitely tuned voices, as authentic as they are unforgettable.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618017682
• ISBN13: 9780618017683
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Very enjoyable

I enjoyed this book. The stories were unpredictable, the characters tragic and interesting. Each story had a concrete thread that tied it to at least one other story. Some connections between stories were compelling, while others, it seemed to me, were more tangential, sometimes too stretched to claim a serious underpinning. It is very possible I missed some underlying associations that others will appreciate more.

Sordidly Loveable

I read The Bostons in one gulp and just entered fully into the stories; it was totally mind blowing. The details are so amazing and vivid, the characters are really colorful and sordidly loveable, and I really love the way the plots interconnect - it was like a really awesome soap opera, and I just kept waiting to see what characters would pop up and to find out what they are doing now... and their lives are just all so full of intrigue, scandal, and clinging to the last remnants of their fallen nobility - it's just really great.