The Practical Heart

By Allan Gurganus

Book Overview

In his fictional Falls, North Carolina-a watchful zone of stifling mores-Allan Gurganus's fond and comical characters risk everything to protect their improbable hopes from prejudice, poverty, betrayal. Seeking warmth and true connection, they shield themselves and loved ones while creating a rarely-glimpsed world of valor, minor grandeur, side-street heroics. Muriel Fraser, a poor Scottish-born spinster, is the subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait in the imagination of her devoted grand-nephew. Tad Worth, a young man dying of AIDS, finds ways to restore vitality to old friends and 18th-century houses. Overnight, one pillar of the community, accused of child molesting, becomes the village pariah. And Clyde Delman, ugliest if kindest man in Falls, finds the love of his eight-year-old son jeopardized when troubling family secrets arise. In each of these splendid complex tales, Allan Gurganus wrings truths-sometimes bruising, ofttimes warming-from human hearts as immense as they are local.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375727639
• ISBN13: 9780375727634
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Praise from an impractical heart...

Allan is what they call an "old soul"---someone whose compassion and wisdom seem beyond what we are capable of seeing and understanding, and make us wish to become finer and nobler induviduals. Unlike so many modern novelists, his work is void of condecension and cynicism. I hope he finds the man who 'is one too..." If not, here at least is one who understands...

The Best Book Gurganus Has Written

In this loving, startling book, Allan Gurganus has outdone himself. I don't know of anybody writing who takes more emotional risks and who seems to know more about how very much people offer each other and the universe. There are writers who can do big crises, and there are others who specialize in the world of the everyday; but nobody can do both this well. There's a suspense you feel. I loved "Oldest Living Confederate Widow" and "White People" and also "Plays Well". Don't know why the novella form seems to work best for his talents. But each one of the works is different in tone and outlook. Each seems to have been written by another kind of writer. But, when you finish "Saint Monster", the last of the short novels, the generosity of vision, the dark humor and lighly accepted tragedy, both breaks your heart and leaves you somehow happy. Can't explain it. Both. Woody Allen claims: Tragedy plus Time equals Comedy. In Gurganus's work, there's a willingness to let the story tell itself, to stay out of the characters' way. Not to be "Clever" or "show off", but to always brilliantly have the right word, the telling scene, the tone needed. I believe that Gurganus cares more about his people than anybody writing. He sees them, faults and all, until you feel ready to adopt him as your sponsor, or your god. This quiet funny book should win all the prizes. The day after I finished it, I looked around for something else good to read. Something somewhat like it. Then I just started The PRactical Heart again. You'll see what I mean. I think he has broken through to a different and a higher level of meaning and heart. The work is so lovingly shaped. It makes most everything else feel pulpy, like junk. This one will be read forever.