They Came Like Swallows (Vintage International) - Softcover

Maxwell, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067977257X ISBN 13: 9780679772576

Publisher: Pantheon Books Inc, 1997

Synopsis

First published in 1937, They Came Like Swallows was William Maxwell's second novel. It tells of an ordinary American family overtaken by the devastating epidemic of the Spanish influenza of 1918. The book begins on the day before the armistice in a small midwestern town, and the events are seen from the perspective, in turn, of eight-year-old Peter Morison - called Bunny; of his older brother, Robert; and of their father. They are witnesses to a domestic tragedy that is written with beauty and a quite magnificent tenderness.

About this title

Review:

In the Morison house the important goes unsaid and indirection is the operative mode--conversation stops where it should start and key terms such as fear, pain and pregnancy fail to be addressed. The younger son, an eight-year-old, passes his days deciphering adults' inaccessible discussions. "In this fashion they communicated with each other, out of knowledge and experience inaccessible to Bunny. By nods and silences. By a tired curve of his mother's mouth. By his father's measuring glance over the top of his spectacles". Bunny's older brother would rather escape to the outside world, and their father finds declaiming the day's headlines--the end of World War I and the onslaught of Spanish Influenza--far preferable to engagement. Only Elizabeth, their mother, is capable of holding the family together. The fifth main character in They Came Like Swallows is the house itself. Maxwell expresses the boys' reactions through this labile, interior landscape. Bunny finds the dining room can be "braced and ready for excitement"; later his brother realises "for the first time how still the house was, how full of waiting ... tense and expectant". Though war never makes it to Illinois, the flu changes all. First Bunny is stricken, and once he recovers Elizabeth, pregnant, dies from it. In quiet, piercing prose, William Maxwell's second novel, originally published in 1937, evokes the greatest of losses and the terrors of imagination. --Amazon.com

Review:

"A story of such engaging warmth that it would thaw the heart of any critic... will melt many a reader to tears."- Times

"A heart-warming tale, the book bears witness to William Maxwell's genuine artistry."- Christian Science Monitor

"Rare...exquisite...a cameo-like perfection."- The New York Herald Tribune

"A sensitive, wistful reminiscence... very delightful."- V.S. Pritchett

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon Books Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 067977257X
• ISBN 13: 9780679772576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192