Love and Work

By Reynolds Price

Book Overview

Thomas Ebhorn, writer, husband and son, journeys through a maze of self-realization and despair when the death of his mother leads him to reexamine his past, present, and future This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345349954
• ISBN13: 9780345349958
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 149 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Drowning in self-centered endeavors

There is no question that Reynolds Price is a superb craftsman, one of the best. His writing is powerful and lyrical at the same time. But in this short novel I felt at times overpowered by the writing itself and thought the story was crumbling beneath the mighty word craft. The novel is in four sections with each section lasting only a short period of time. Tom Eborn, a rather cold and distant writer, learns that his mother has died; when this doesn't interrupt his work, his wife Jane criticizes his seeming lack of feelings. Later, while investigating a break-in at his parents' house, he encounters his parents' ghosts and experiences the strong love that they had for each other: he has his work but they had each other. Price's stylized writing makes this already cold-hearted main character even more icy and walled in. The theme is an interesting one, however, and is a good reminder how people can sometimes implode from the "things" they choose to do and allow to consume them while shutting out the love-sustaining outside world.