Darlington's Fall - Softcover

Leithauser, Brad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375709444 ISBN 13: 9780375709449

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2003

Synopsis

A novel written in verse chronicles forty years in the lifeof naturalist Russel Darlington, from a seven-year-old boy chasing frogs in an Indiana swamp in 1895, through college and marriage, to a seemingly hopeless passion for an unapproachable young woman. By the author of A Few Corrections. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Brad Leithauser was born in Detroit and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. <br><br>He is the author of five previous novels―<i>Equal Distance, Hence, Seaward, The Friends of Freeland,</i> and <i>A Few Corrections;</i> four volumes of poetry―<i>The Odd Last Thing She Did, Mail from Anywhere, Cats of the Temple</i>, and <i>Hundreds of Fireflies;</i> and a book of essays. He is the recipient of many awards for his writing, including a MacArthur Fellowship. An Emily Dickinson Lecturer in the Humanities at Mount Holyoke College, he lives with his wife and their two daughters, Emily and Hilary, in Amherst, Massachusetts.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>

From the Inside Flap

The hero of this one-of-a-kind novel is Russel Darlington, a born naturalist and an unlikely romantic hero. We meet him in the year 1895―a seven-year-old boy first glimpsed chasing a frog through an Indiana swamp. And we follow this idealistic, appealing man for nearly forty years: into college and over the Rockies in pursuit of a new species of butterfly; through a clumsy courtship and into a struggling marriage; across the Pacific, where on a tiny, rainy island he suffers a nightmarish accident; through the deaths of friends and family and into a seemingly hopeless passion for an unapproachable young woman.<br><br><i>Darlington’s Fall</i> is ultimately a love story. It is written in verse that―vivid, accessible, and lush―imparts an intensity to the story and its luminous gallery of characters: Russel’s rich, taciturn, up-right, guilt-driven father; Miss Kraus, his formidable housekeeper; Ernst Schrock, his maddening, gluttonous mentor; and Pauline Beaudette, the beautiful, ill-starred girl who becomes his wife. Leithauser’s embracingly compassionate outlook invites us into their world―into a past so sharply realized it feels like the present.<br><br>In <i>Darlington’s Fall</i>, Brad Leithauser offers an ingeniously plotted story and the virtues long associated with his elegant stanzas: wit, music, and a keen eye for the natural world. His independent careers as novelist and poet come together brilliantly here, producing something rare and wonderful in the landscape of contemporary American writing: a book that bends borders, a happy marriage of poetry and fiction.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375709444
• ISBN 13: 9780375709449
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Leithauser Mark