Evening (1998) by Susan Minot

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

Evening (1998)

by Susan Minot

Newport, Maine

Maine: 24/24

   Surprise!  I forgot to read this book from Maine!  In her 1998 New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani called this book "stunning".  It's a very Virginia Woolf type affair: Ann Grant Lord is dying of cancer in her Maine summer home and as she drifts in and out of consciousness she spends the most time not remembering any of her three husbands or four children but rather a doomed love affair with a young daughter at a wedding near her home in Maine.  Kakutani points out something that was very much on my mind at times, "At times, Ms. Minot's efforts to capture Ann's state of mind fall into mannerism -- several passages written in run-together sentences read like poor imitations of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in "Ulysses".  

  I had that exact thought!  Now that I have my subscription status with the New York Times squared away I like to check to see what they had to say about these 1001 Novels authors- it is very much a situation where I expect every single one of these 1001 Novels titles to have a corresponding New York Times review.   Evening also spawned a movie version in 2007 with Meryl Streep and Vanessa Redgrave (27% certified rotten).   FWIW, Evening is the hit of the Minot Bibliography- it has a couple hundred Amazon reviews and her other books have under a hundred for the most part.   

   Heart breaking? Beautiful? Heart breakingly beautiful? OK I guess so 1998 New York Times but I can hear the regrets of an aging white woman every time I call my Mom- I'm not looking for that in fiction or literature.