Evening

With two novels and one short story collection published to overwhelming critical acclaim (" Monkeys takes your breath away," said Anne Tyler; "heartbreaking, exhilarating," raved the New York Times Book Review ), Susan Minot has emerged as one of the most gifted writers in America, praised for her ability to strike at powerful emotional truths in language that is sensual and commanding, mesmerizing in its vitality and intelligence. Now, with Evening, she gives us her most ambitious novel, a work of surpassing beauty. During a summer weekend on the coast of Maine, at the wedding of her best friend, Ann Grant fell in love. She was twenty-five. Forty years later—after three marriages and five children—Ann Lord finds herself in the dim claustrophobia of illness, careening between lucidity and delirium and only vaguely conscious of the friends and family parading by her bedside, when the memory of that weekend returns to her with the clarity and intensity of a fever-dream. Evening unfolds in the rushlight of that memory, as Ann relives those three vivid days on the New England coast, with motorboats buzzing and bands playing in the night, and the devastating tragedy that followed a spectacular wedding. Here, in the surge of hope and possibility that coursed through her at twenty-five—in a singular time of complete surrender—Ann discovers the highest point of her life. Superbly written and miraculously uplifting, Evening is a stirring exploration of time and memory, of love's transcendence and of its failure to transcend—a rich testament to the depths of grief and passion, and a stunning achievement.

The setting is a New York apartment where two long-estranged lovers try to resuscitate their passion. Kay is old enough to be skeptical about men–this man in particular–but still alert to the possibility of true love. Benjamin is a filmmaker with an appealing waywardness and a conveniently disappearing fiancée. As the two lie entwined in bed, Susan Minot ushers readers across an entire landscape of memory and sensation to reveal the infinite nuances of sex: its power to exalt and deceive, to connect two separate selves or make them fully aware of their solitude. Honest and unflinching, the result is a hypnotic reading experience.

Book Magazine

Minot's latest book, which describes a romantic interlude between two former lovers, may encompass the longest and least titillating episode of fellatio in fictional history. The question is, Who will tire first: Kay Bailey, Benjamin Young or the reader? Former lovers estranged for more than a year, Kay and Benjamin somehow stumble into bed. As their interplay meanders toward resolution—his urges are numbingly simple, hers are hopelessly conflicted—the narrative moves between their interior monologues. Against her better judgment and to his amazement, they've plainly gotten together for the wrong reasons, yet their respective ruminations suggest that every romance they've experienced has been equally misguided. "People would never get together without some kind of hydraulic urging," thinks Kay, who nevertheless finds the sensual intimacy bringing her closer to Benjamin, as he drifts further from her. Minot has written often and well of lust's folly, but her characters here are so shallow and their predicament is so trite that it's as much of a challenge for the reader to sustain interest as it is for Benjamin.
—Don McLeese

With two novels and one short story collection published to overwhelming critical acclaim (" Monkeys takes your breath away," said Anne Tyler; "heartbreaking, exhilarating," raved the New York Times Book Review ), Susan Minot has emerged as one of the most gifted writers in America, praised for her ability to strike at powerful emotional truths in language that is sensual and commanding, mesmerizing in its vitality and intelligence. Now, with Evening, she gives us her most ambitious novel, a work of surpassing beauty. During a summer weekend on the coast of Maine, at the wedding of her best friend, Ann Grant fell in love. She was twenty-five. Forty years later--after three marriages and five children--Ann Lord finds herself in the dim claustrophobia of illness, careening between lucidity and delirium and only vaguely conscious of the friends and family parading by her bedside, when the memory of that weekend returns to her with the clarity and intensity of a fever-dream. Evening unfolds in the rushlight of that memory, as Ann relives those three vivid days on the New England coast, with motorboats buzzing and bands playing in the night, and the devastating tragedy that followed a spectacular wedding. Here, in the surge of hope and possibility that coursed through her at twenty-five--in a singular time of complete surrender--Ann discovers the highest point of her life. Superbly written and miraculously uplifting, Evening is a stirring exploration of time and memory, of love's transcendence and of its failure to transcend--a rich testament to the depths of grief and passion, and a stunning achievement. From the Trade Paperback edition

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

In this luminous story of family life--the first novel by Susan Minot, author of the highly acclaimed Evening--the seven Vincent children follow their Catholic mother to Mass and spend Thanksgiving with their father's aging parents who come from a world of New England priviledge. As they grow older, they meet with the perplexing lives of adults. Susan Minot writes with delicacy and a tremendous gift for the details that decorate domestic life, and when tragedy strikes she beautifully mines the children's tenderness for each other, and their aching guardianship of what they have.

Library Journal

Minot chronicles the family life of Gus and Rosie Vincent and their seven children, dubbed ``monkeys'' by their mother. Rosie, or ``Mum,'' is the most vibrant character, creating a secure home for her children as she tries to mask her husband's alcholism and counter his withdrawal from the family. Minot has a fine eye for detail and a talent for creating tension through half-revealed clues in dialogue. However, because the book is very short, involves many characters, and spans roughly 13 years, the development of other characters is not satisfying. The chapters are rather disparate, the first, in fact, having a different narrator than the others. The final chapter, ``Thorofare,'' was included in The Best American Short Stories of 1984 and is perhaps the strongest section, providing a moving ending to an otherwise uneven novel. Lucinda Ann Peck, Learning Design Associates, Gahanna, Ohio

"There is a particular post-coital moment when one everything begins to seem remarkable and striking - the pattern of the wallpaper, the ticking of the clock, the hissing of a radiator in the next room. The lovers in this tale are apparently trapped in such a moment, for they offer us, from beginning to end, nothing other than the sort of gooey platitudes ("He thought of his grandmother's driveway. That's what popped into his head. The way it looked in the fall with orange leaves on the bright green grass") that are best washed away with a brisk, cold shower. The story itself - which appears only in a sort of fragmentary haze - is mostly a succession of flashbacks that describe the various steps by which Benjamin Young ended up in bed with Kay Bailey. Ben is a filmmaker who meets Kay during a movie shoot in Mexico. He is unhappily attached to Vanessa Crane, a college sweetheart who runs an art gallery and wants to marry him."--Kirkus "Using a single interlude - a brief encounter of former lovers, two bodies entwined on a bed at midday - Minot defines the distance that erupts at what seems to be the height of connection, as well as the extent to which the senses deceive and the intensely private eroticism of fantasy and the imagination. Minot's lovers are hypnotic in their individual journeys - one moving toward a kind of holy consummation, the other toward abnegation and despair. This is the wayward history of their efforts to make contact with each other while deluding themselves about the nature of the contact they're making. Sex here is many things: a devotional, almost religious offering; an act of bravery, surrender, denial and hope, and ultimately, one of profound loneliness. Provocative and unsettling, Rapture is a meditation on romantic love, sex, and their reflections in the life of the mind."--BOOK JACKET. During a summer weekend on the coast of Maine, at the wedding of her best friend, Ann Grant fell in love. She was twenty-five. Forty years later - after three marriages and five children - Ann Lord finds herself in the dim claustrophobia of illness, careening between lucidity and delirium and only vaguely conscious of the friends and family parading by her bedside, when the memory of that weekend returns to her with the clarity and intensity of a fever-dream. Evening unfolds in the rushlight of that memory, as Ann relives those three vivid days on the New England coast, with motorboats buzzing and bands playing in the night, and the devastating tragedy that followed a spectacular wedding. Here, in the surge of hope and possibility that coursed through her at twenty-five - in a singular time of complete surrender - Ann discovers the highest point of her life. The author of Monkeys and Evening focuses her observant eye and lyrical voice on the delicate emotional negotiations of young New Yorkers.  As in a series of deceptively simple watercolors, these stories uncover small moments that yield larger truths--about the ways in which women and men come together and come apart again, about the disappointments and hopes of lovers who know what they want but don't always know how to keep.  A deeply poignant meditation on the nature of desire and loss.

Susan Minot's eagerly anticipated short story collection, in which she "returns to doing what she apparently does best, describing that place where lives interact, where human beings try to love one another."--Philadelphia Inquirer.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this luminous story of family life--the first novel by Susan Minot, author of the highly acclaimed Evening --the seven Vincent children follow their Catholic mother to Mass and spend Thanksgiving with their father's aging parents who come from a world of New England priviledge. As they grow older, they meet with the perplexing lives of adults. Susan Minot writes with delicacy and a tremendous gift for the details that decorate domestic life, and when tragedy strikes she beautifully mines the children's tenderness for each other, and their aching guardianship of what they have. The author of Monkeys and Evening focuses her observant eye and lyrical voice on the delicate emotional negotiations of young New Yorkers. As in a series of deceptively simple watercolors, these stories uncover small moments that yield larger truths--about the ways in which women and men come together and come apart again, about the disappointments and hopes of lovers who know what they want but don't always know how to keep. A deeply poignant meditation on the nature of desire and loss Now ailing and surrounded by her children, sixty-five-year-old Ann Grant Lord reminisces about a glorious summer weekend some forty years earlier during which she met and lost the love of her life. Reissue. (A Focus Features film, releasing Summer 2007, directed by Lajos Koltai, starring Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Patrick Wilson, Eileen Atkins, Mamie Gummer, Natasha Richardson, & Hugh Dancy) (General Fiction) Focusing on the delicate emotional negotiations of young New Yorkers, this collection of stories uncovers small moments that yield larger truths--about the ways in which women and men come together and come apart again--while offering a deeply poignant meditation on the nature of desire and loss. Reprint. A woman dying of cancer relives a weekend with the man of her dreams. For Ann Lord, who subsequently married three times, nothing equalled the passion she felt for her first love, a doctor from the Korean War whom she lost to another woman The Vincents, a New England family of nine, struggle to keep up appearances amidst the underlying tensions of the squabbles of seven children, a father with a drinking problem, and a marriage being torn apart. Reprint. printing. When Rosie Paine dies tragically and unexpectedly, her seven children must learn to rely on each other as they begin to cope with a life bereft of the mother who held the family together Lust Sparks Blow City night Lunch with Harry The break-up The swan in the garden The feather in the toque The knot A thrilling life Ile Sèche The man who would not go away. HE LAY BACK like the ambushed dead, arms flung down at his sides, legs splayed out and feet sticking up, naked.