Starting Out in the Evening

Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: Started out sappy, but soon grew into a beautiful journey into the lives of an aging writer and the two younger women who influenced him. Full of ruminations about values and the people and ideas that sustain one. Easy to read within a day or two and to lose oneselves into a captivating story.

Rating:
Summary: a good book, light reading with depth`
Review: Themes: stages of life: youth, middle age, old age; realizing your life's work will most likely be forgotten;New York intellectual life in past and present(forgotten literary heroes of Schiller's generation vs. new type of literary heroes of Heather's generation); parent/adult child relationship; intellectual (Schiller, Heather, Casey) vs. nonintellectual (Ariel). Style of writing is easy to understand, not ponderous, not Henry Jame-like in style at all. There some passages late in the book that are written in the sytle of Henry James and provide a contrast to the much easier to read style of this book. The book is written in third person subjective. Each chapter is written from the perspective of one of the four main characters. The chapters are short, so the shifting of perspective from one character's perceptions and frame of reference to another's occurs frequently. Morton handles the four distinct voices well. It's an involving, smart book, but terribly easy to forget. It's a little too dignified and reserved. Many questions the reader will have are left unanswered. I have to say though, it's a tasteful, subtle book that contains much wisdom, acutely observed human behavior.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful story of life, love and passion
Review: This book sat on my bookshelf for nearly five years, and I cannot believe I allowed it to. It is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. It is deep and sentimental in topic, and yet it reads like a fast paced novel.

The characters are intense and mulit-dimensional: Leonard Schiller, a seventy something writer who's life has been dedicated to his art; Ariel, his forty year old daughter in search of her life's meaning and someone to father a child; and Heather, a twenty something aspiring writer and critic who decides to write a master's thesis on Schiller's work.

The relationship of the two women will Schiller is incredibly portrayed, as with Ariel Schiller is a loving and nurturing man, and with Heather, his passions are reignited and she makes him feel young. Also interesting is the way Heather and Ariel portray Schiller, and also the way these two women change as Schiller's life circumstances change.

The parallels drawn between the three characters is fascinating, especially since each person is so different, and at such a different place in life. Ironically, even though each feels so different from the other, when the older two are compared to Heather in their memories, it seems they are more similar then they think.

At the end of this beautiful book, one cannot help but wonder what happens to the characters. Schiller's life goal at the end is to complete his final novel, and I so wish he were a real person so that I could read it. He is a beautiful charcter that brings memories of Morrie Schwartz from Tuesdays With Morrie.

If you are looking for a touching, moving, beautifully written book, don't wait any longer. Pick this book up and you will not put it down. Even when you are finished, the characters live on.