Point of No Return - Softcover

Marquand, John P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0897331745 ISBN 13: 9780897331746

Publisher: Academy Chicago Pub, 1985

Synopsis

Since his father was not a financial or social success, Charles Gray was determined to become a prosperous and prestigious business executive

About this title

Review

“[Point of No Return] may be Marquand’s best book.” —The Atlantic Monthly
 
“Funny and evocative and pure pleasure to read.” —The Paris Review
 
“Point of No Return is smooth, penetrating and continuously interesting. . . . Brilliant.” —The New York Times
 
“The most completely realized product of Marquand’s maturity . . . Impeccable.” —Commentary 
 
“A superb novel . . . that brilliantly summarizes Marquand’s themes.” —Jonathan Yardley
 
“Point of No Return . . . stands alone in the upper-upper class [of Marquand’s serious fiction].” —Malcolm Cowley

About the Author

John P. Marquand (1893–1960) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, proclaimed “the most successful novelist in the United States” by Life magazine in 1944. A descendant of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, shipping magnates Daniel Marquand and Samuel Curzon, and famed nineteenth-century writer Margaret Fuller, Marquand always had one foot inside the blue-blooded New England establishment, the focus of his social satire. But he grew up on the outside, sent to live with maiden aunts in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the setting of many of his novels, after his father lost the once-considerable family fortune in the crash of 1907. From this dual perspective, Marquand crafted stories and novels that were applauded for their keen observation of cultural detail and social mores.

By the 1930s, Marquand was a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, where he debuted the character of Mr. Moto, a Japanese secret agent. No Hero, the first in a series of bestselling spy novels featuring Mr. Moto, was published in 1935. Three years later, Marquand won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Late George Apley, a subtle lampoon of Boston’s upper classes. The novels that followed, including H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), So Little Time (1943), B.F.’s Daughter (1946), Point of No Return (1949), Melvin Goodwin, USA (1952), Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955), and Women and Thomas Harrow (1959), cemented his reputation as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary New England society and one of America’s finest writers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Academy Chicago Pub
• Publication date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0897331745
• ISBN 13: 9780897331746
• Binding: Paperback