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Rodin's Debutante (2011)

by Ward Just(Favorite Author)

3.1 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0547504195 (ISBN13: 9780547504193)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: Like in An Unfinished Season, Ward Just adeptly examines the contrivances of memory and unfurls the subtleties of the North Shore class system. Although the novel's two primary settings, New Jesper (Waukegan?) and Hyde Park, are deftly sketched, Just leaves Ogden Hall deliberately vague. I found this jarring and think I was supposed to. There's lots and lots of motif to unpack here. Basically I find Just to be worth reading in the pantheon of Chicago writers.
review 2: Lovely language, thoughtful descriptions, some puzzling sentences (thank you book club members for helping unravel one part of speech mystery). This book is very much of the momement or lived in, I am stumbling for words here, but you get a sense that the places and people are very authentic, ver... morey right for their time. The problems I have with this book and with some other books by Mr. Just are 1) that the protagonist is removed a bit from the drama, not a first-hand participant, but an observer, and 2) perhaps as a consequence of 1) we don't really find out what happens to key characters. In this book there is a major crime, which remains unsolved, there is the model of the title whose name we never find out (and I am not sure why the book is named Rodin's Debutante other than as a way of loosely connecting the stories of Tommy and Lee), also, we never find out what exactly happened to Marie, Tommy's wife. So, even though I really enjoyed reading the book, at the end I feel cheated, because either the author withheld information or I was not smart enough to figure it out.. And I do not like feeling not smart enough! :) less

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