Leading the Cheers - Softcover

Cartwright, Justin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340751614 ISBN 13: 9780340751619

Publisher: Sceptre, 1999

Synopsis

Dan Silas returns to America for his high school reunion where he makes some unexpected discoveries. His former girlfriend tells him that her daughter was his child and Dan's oldest friend has suffered a breakdown and now believes himself to be the reincarnation of an Indian chief. In an attempt to make sense of these disturbing facts, Dan digs further into their lives, with both tragic and comic results.

LEADING THE CHEERS is a rich portrayal of small-town life with wonderfully evoked characters and

Justin Cartwright's beautifully observed writing.

About this title

Review

The impact a return to the past can have on the present is the theme of this delicately crafted novel by Whitbread winner and Booker nominee Justin Cartwright. Dan Silas, who has been living in his native England for the last 27 years returns to the American town where he grew up for his High School reunion. The place resonates with poignant reminders of his teenage years, not least his deeply cherished memories of Gloria, his childhood sweetheart. But a journey back cannot fail to disrupt one's perceptions of one's past, and Dan discovers that not only are his memories of his relationship with Gloria a false recording of reality but that she gave birth to their daughter soon after he left America. That daughter, of whom he never knew, is now dead, killed by a serial killer a few years previously. Furthermore, his oldest friend Gary has suffered a breakdown and now believes himself to be the brother of a dead Indian chief. Dan tries to resolve his sense of helplessness in the face of a present and a past that no longer make sense by visiting his daughter's killer in prison and by retrieving some "stolen" Indian artefacts from a musuem for Gary. Cartwright explores well the dislocation Dan experiences as a consequence of this sudden radical corruption of his life, and the way his necessary readjustment throws his present life into sharper focus. At times the novel suffers from a sugary American pathos that is a little cloying, and some incidents, Gary's illness for example, are treated with fustrating simplicity. Despite this, the novel is a haunting examination of the fragile relationship between experience and identity.

Review

"A meditation on time, memory, friendship and
identity. It overturns the clichéd perception of America and
gives a new depth to something which is often treated
sensationally. Cartwright has a real talent for getting to the heart
of different cultures and how we live now."
The judges of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel

'Such a complex and rewarding novel is only what you would expect from such a talented and original writer'
Evening Standard

'A vividly exceptional performance, both for the poetry of its descriptions and the largeness of its themes. It is an off-kilter study of America, from Jefferson to serial killers, and a meditation on the way people cope with death and the lack of meaning in life'
Sunday Times

'A book which is itself individual; eloquent, tender, as well as sharply observant and funny'
Sunday Telegraph

'Excellent . . . sharply written episodes abound'
Mail on Sunday

'In Cartwright's skilful hands the ordinariness of circumstances is always juxtaposed with something so extraordinary that no doubt is left as to why his story has to be told'
Daily Telegraph

'LEADING THE CHEERS represents an accomplished, and often entertaining, engagement with the paradoxical nature of the relationship between individuality and community'
Times Literary Supplement

'A wonderfully observed novel . . . lean prose and deft characterisation . . .A book which provides a rare outsider's glimpse of the quiet despair that lurks behind those bright, perfectly-formed American smiles'
Literary Review

'Clever, funny and never quite predictable, LEADING THE CHEERS takes the familiar theme of a mid-life crisis and offers a solution which is as unexpected as it is ingenious'
Financial Times

'A richly comic novel. The writing is deeply textured'
Independent

Edition details

• Publisher: Sceptre
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0340751614
• ISBN 13: 9780340751619
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English