Don't be as unwise as I was. Never judge a book by its cover.

Especially when the cover doesn't accurately represent what the book has to offer. I decided to re-examine John Cheever, and the cover caught my eye. Big mistake!

The main focus of this novel is sexuality. The author was bisexual, and I fully understand that one's sexual identity was a topic of great interest to him. Halfway through the book, not yet realizing that ambivalent feelings about one's sexual identity is actually the central theme, I burst out, saying, "For God's sake, doesn't a person instinctively know when sex is good?" I'm simply the wrong reader for this book. It should be noted that the book examines men's bisexuality rather than women's.

I thought the book was about living near the sea, or about appreciating the aquatic environment, or about a fisherman's life, or something related to the sea! Just look at the cover! The book's description tells us that this is a family chronicle of the Wapshots living in St. Botolphs, a "quintessential Massachusetts fishing village". We're told there will be stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, a "venerable sea dog", but this is just the beginning of the story. The chapters alternate between Captain Wapshot's journal entries about his youth (written in staccato, abbreviated, incomplete sentences) and the coming-of-age experiences of his two sons. What is often a central element of coming-of-age stories? Of course, sex. Here, the author's own bisexual倾向 influences the telling. The youngest son, Coverly, is sixteen when the story begins. The older one, Moses, is in college. We follow the father and these two sons until they get married and have their own children. There is a question of inheritance.

Leander's eccentric aunt Honora has willed her money to Moses and Coverly, but only if they have children. She's the one with the money in the family. The two sons flee the village, one to NYC and the other to San Francisco, and then as far as islands in the Pacific. So just forget about that cover!

A secondary theme is estrangement; you can feel it in each character's loneliness, separateness, and inability to connect with others. (Sex is often used as a Band-Aid for a wound! Or a panacea to cure unease.) We readers observe from a distance, just as the novel's characters seem unable to reach out to each other. The result is an overall sense of sadness and despondency.

Finally, there is a message that the important things in life are "the ordinary things". This is conveyed by Leander in what he writes to his sons.

There are some beautiful lines. There is ironic, satirical humor. If you pay close attention, you'll realize that the author is actually joking with us quite often. Well, at least that's my interpretation.

The audiobook I listened to was narrated by Joe Barrett. It's easy to follow, so the narration is good. One can hear a melancholy that I think should be there. It expresses an inability to communicate properly.

Maybe this sounds like I liked the book? Well, I didn't. It didn't give me at all what I was looking for. It was boring to listen to the stupid things the characters did. I just couldn't relate. Sex is portrayed in a way that turned me off. The sex isn't graphic; it just left me cold. Should sex leave you cold?! Both the cover and the book description misled me. The central flaw of the book is that the author failed to make it possible for me to empathize with the characters' ambivalent feelings.

Scopro Cheever, fashionably late and with great taste. There are three things that have struck me about his writing. Right from the first pages, I noticed a small obsession in describing odors, presenting the reader with various images like a kind of olfactory catalog.

This clandestine and impossible love between description and smell is well summed up in this sentence at the beginning of the novel: "The house is quite easy to describe, but what can be said about a summer day in an old garden? Smell the fragrance of the grass, smell the odor of the trees!"

Cheever asks the reader for complicity in "smelling" and collaborates with lush and effective descriptions: That evening breeze in New England that smells of virgin things, of the root of the geranium and toilet soap and rented rooms soaked because of a window left open during a downpour of rain, of chamber pots and sorrel soup and roses and cotton and grass, of choir robes and copies of the New Testament relegated to soft leather and pastures for sale lush with ferns and rue.

There is a fragrance in the first part of this novel, an exploration of odors that changes with the wind (carried by the east wind the smell of lemons, of burning wood, of roses and dust), knows the old environments (In the fishing shed there was the smell of worms and interiors, of kerosene, of burned fritters, the musty smell of the blankets, of the smoke, of the wet shoes, of the slippery), and explores new sensations with the classic journey that leads from the domestic and pure countryside to the unknown, enchanting and babylonian City (Smell the odor of the food of a Spanish restaurant, of fresh bread, of watered beer, of toasted coffee and the exhaust fumes of a bus).

Cheever and his words that "evoke a friendly picture even if you sense the naked blade of malignancy".

We plunge into the disconsolate and tragic human reality, colder and meaner than adventurous and romantic. Like wells of despair, standing on the sides of the vital current. "The earth, in the vague light of dawn, appeared to him hypocritical and offensive like the smile of a door-to-door salesman. Everything was false, thought Badger, nothing was as it seemed and the enormity of this fraud, the delicacy with which the color of the sky became more intense while he was dressing, made him furious." The diversions are over, would say Shakespeare's Prospero.

Tremendous, lucid, cold, certainly a bit of a bastard but loaded, loaded, so loaded with humanity as in the "spiritual testament" of father Leander (a magnificent character) to his two sons: "Fear smells of a rusty knife, don't let it enter the house. Courage smells of blood. Always go forward with your head held high. Admire the world. Enjoy the love of a woman as it should be. Trust in the Lord."

I love all of Cheever's short stories, but I have never really liked any of his novels.

This particular one, in my opinion, wandered too much. It was as if Cheever couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted to tell the reader everything or nothing at all.

I found myself longing for the book to be centered around just one of the three main Wapshot men - Leander, Moses, or Coverly - and the different women in their respective lives.

Combining all three, along with superfluous relatives and characters, resulted in a general narrative mess.

However, I did enjoy Leander's staccato style. It provided a nice punctuation to the tedium, adding a certain rhythm and interest to the otherwise somewhat chaotic story.

Overall, while there were some aspects I liked, this novel didn't quite hit the mark for me.

Well, that was truly one of the most astonishing books I've read in a long while.

I really had no clue what I was anticipating, but it definitely wasn't what I got. It was as if I was perusing a well-written script for a truly awful soap opera.

Did I overlook something crucial along the way? Was I supposed to have any genuine concern for those pitiful characters?

Was the dysfunctional Wapshot family some sort of model or example? Was there a moral to be gleaned from all of this?

Alright, I have now completed reading that winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Check.

Now, it's time to move on to the next one, which I'm sure will be a disappointment as well.

Tackled this in my quest to read all National Book Award winners for Fiction (1958). I have to admit this is my first Cheever that I remember reading. (Probably read a short story in college, but that's a distant memory.) And I loved it.

This is simply a fun book to read. It follows a ragtag family of goofballs from a small fictional town in New England, the Wapshots. The book doesn't really have much of a plot. Instead, it meanders around from incident to incident. It's as if the plot devices are just a way for Cheever to work in great material and writing throughout.

It took me about 100 pages to get into it. At the beginning, it does jump around from character to character, which can be a bit disorienting. But once I did get into it, there were many laugh-out-loud moments. The good kind, where the writing is excellent and the author communicates something in a way that seems to have just nailed the truth. It's a charming and engaging read that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a lighthearted and enjoyable book.

Some family chronicles are as long and dull as a slumber brought on by sleeping pills, while others are as turbulent as a rocket launch. I'm sure you can easily guess which category The Wapshot Chronicle belongs to.

The Wapshot boys had been up since four. They were sleepy, and sitting in the hot sun, they seemed to have outlived the holiday. Moses had burned his hand on a salute, and Coverly had lost his eyebrows in another explosion. They lived on a farm two miles below the village and had canoed upriver before dawn when the night air made the water of the river feel tepid as it rose around the canoe paddle and over their hands.

Be pleased to meet some of the heroes.

Some lives are as straight and purposeful as the flight of a bullet, while others are as weird and unpredictable as a patchwork.

Leander would never take his sons aside and speak to them about the facts of life, even though the continuation of Honora's numerous charities depended upon their virility. If they looked out of the window for a minute, they could see the drift of things. It was his feeling that love, death, and fornication, extracted from the rich green soup of life, were no better than half-truths, and his course of instruction was general. He would like them to grasp that the unobserved ceremoniousness of his life was a gesture or sacrament toward the excellence and the continuousness of things.

Some believe in planning, success, and money, while to others, their living is an obstreperous joyride full of romance and rubbish.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if it’s absolutely necessary for you to make love to me, I’ll do it, but I think that you ought to understand that it’s not as crucial as you make it.’

‘You’ve talked yourself out of a fuck,’ he said bleakly.

‘Oh, you’re so hateful and egotistical,’ she said, swinging her head around. ‘Your thinking is so crude and mean. You only want to hurt me.’

All ordinary families are alike; each strange family is strange in its own way.

This is a highly successful realistic novel.

By presenting the period conditions through the Wapshot family without imposing emotional analyses, it delicately touches on the life of each individual one by one.

In non-event-centered novels, although it can sometimes be difficult to keep the reader's excitement alive, this risk has been overcome with its style and manner.

A very sweet family story has emerged. Moreover, among the books I have read for a long time, I can say that it is one of the rare books that does not create a sense of emptiness with its ending.

An ending that perfectly suits the described family and characters has been written. I closed the book with a smile on its cover.

If you like classic works or this type, I definitely recommend it. However, it will not be a very correct choice for those who seek adventure, science fiction, etc. :)

It seems to me that this book is more of a collection of stories and anecdotes with a common thread than a truly organic novel.

In some parts, it reminded me of some of Steinbeck's choral novels. It is true that there are characters who are followed from the beginning to the end of the book. However, there are many others who appear only briefly. For example, Rosalie's story is almost completely disconnected from those of the Wapshot family members.

I liked the initial setting in St. Botolph with Aunt Honora and all the other characters. But I lost a little interest when it was suddenly abandoned. I was pleased that the ending took us back there and that everyone was present for the finale in the church.

The book has aspects that are too sad for me to really appreciate it fully. The description of interpersonal relationships, especially those of couples, is quite poignant. Clarissa's story and for me, also that of Leander, who will not have a new boat and a life with his grandchildren, are rather heartbreaking.

There are certainly some humorous passages, but overall, it seemed to me to be a rather pessimistic book. I found the writing style a little tiring at times, and in certain parts, I really had a hard time getting through.

Perhaps with a second reading, I might be able to pick up on more of the nuances and appreciate the book in a different light.

A Less Caustic Cheever

For those who are retiring from the rankings or lists, the publishing house Modern Library has added The Wapshot Chronicle to the sixty-third position among the 100 best English-language books of the 20th century.

This novel takes place mostly in New England, which I discovered is not a state. I was persistently looking for it in Maps without finding it because I'm trying to memorize and locate all 52 American states. In fact, New England is a grouping of states, the northeasternmost region of the US that includes Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, with very similar natural landscapes.

And it must be beautiful in this period. Besides the late camellias that bloom in autumn, seeing the forests covered in a magnificent foliage, I imagine it like that.

Also from a literary point of view, probably also because of an important colonial past, New England has been a hive that has given birth to important writers like Poe, the poetess Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thoreau, and more recently Updike, Stephen King, and a great variety of others that I don't remember or know.

This novel is the narration of the vicissitudes of the Wapshot family, of the parents and the two sons, as well as a diverse multitude of characters that revolve around them, all slightly eccentric but not too much. It's a somewhat dysfunctional family but not completely so because in these chronicles there is a genuineness that touches and we don't reach the extreme and bizarre originality of the family in Hotel New Hampshire by Jhon Irving, another author born in the hive of New England, or the famous families of I Malavoglia or our own Viceré.

And why should we forget I Buddenbrook and their declining epic? Or the Joad family of The Grapes of Wrath that goes west in search of fortune, where the mother towers like a caryatid while the father doesn't even rise to the level of a small dog with a coat in winter.

These families interest us because they tell about life, and there is always one of the characters in whom we identify more: and yes, in that magnificent moment I would have done like Tizio... or I feel more in tune with the melancholy of Caio, etc. etc.

Although the family novel is not a literary genre in its own right, upon closer inspection it could become one. Differentiating from the saga, which usually follows multiple generations over epochs and decades and where the interest focuses more on the events, while in the family novel the temporal horizon is more limited, concentrating on the characters that we follow with voracious interest.

This is Cheever's first novel and it shows, at least for those who have already read the stories for which Cheever is better known. There is a kind of underlying immaturity of an author who is not yet a victim of the disenchantment of life, when life has not yet hit hard for him. Because while in his short stories Cheever is highly caustic and unapologetically lifts the corner of the carpet showing all the dust that hides beneath and that we pretend not to see, in this first novel his pen does not penetrate deeply but stays more on the surface. It makes us walk on the carpet revealing the pattern of the texture of the story but less its underlying thought, it doesn't scratch.

A memorable American family story that always seemed English to me, perhaps because of the traditions and the fine sense of humor that it exudes. Characters to remember like Coverly, Moses, Leander, and Justina, and a wonderful bouquet of fantastic secondary characters.

This novel came to my mind as the mother of Franzen's "The Corrections". It has a similar charm and depth in exploring the complex relationships within a family. The detailed descriptions of the characters and their interactions make the story come alive. The author's use of language is both beautiful and engaging, drawing the reader in and making them feel as if they are part of the family.

Overall, this is a novel that I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good family story. It is a classic that will continue to be read and loved for generations to come.

A matchless novel.

It is both entertaining and profound, full of twists and turns. It is a fundamental work not only for those who define themselves as readers, but also for men as such.

In Cheever's work, there are lights, cliffs, and frozen lakes in the border states between America and Canada. There are laughter, dances, and rivers of alcohol. There is melancholy and there is sadness.

In this novel, all these things, and more, come together and embrace in a beautiful dance.

Cheever's writing style is unique, painting a vivid picture of the human condition. The characters are complex and relatable, making the reader feel as if they are a part of the story.

This novel is a must-read for anyone who appreciates great literature and wants to explore the depths of the human heart.

This book presented a certain level of challenge that I had not anticipated. The prose in some sections was rather experimental, which added an interesting dimension. It was an enjoyable family epic that didn't linger on specific events or scenarios for too long. Instead, it moved forward in a linear fashion, almost without looking back. There was an incredible amount of drama, but it was presented with little in-depth examination. I found this book to be quite unique and eccentric.

Famous (or perhaps infamous) for being the first Book-of-the-Month Club selection to include the word "fuck," I must admit that I didn't notice this word while reading the narrative. Maybe I have become desensitized to its use, or perhaps it was simply not as prominent as I expected. Nevertheless, this aspect of the book added to its reputation and made it stand out in some way. Overall, it was an engaging read that offered a different perspective and a unique literary experience.