Meet Larry Weller. Born in 1950 to working class parents, he's an ordinary guy. His life is punctuated by unremarkable events: marriage, the birth of a child, divorce, job changes, illness, and the death of his parents. Even the pockets of his own tweed jacket are stuffed with leftovers from his ordinary life: nickels, dimes, old movie stubs, and a gathering of gritty little bits of lint collected in the seams. The only extraordinary thing about Larry Weller is that he is the subject of Larry's Party, the new novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields that celebrates the twisting—and often chaotic—path of his life.
I finished Larry's Party last night and I enjoyed how the story ended bringing it back full circle to his first wife Dorrie. I wouldn't say that this book is the most exciting book or one that you can't put down, you know the ones I mean. Its kind of a so so story much like the story of the main character Larry as he goes about his life which I would deem as pretty ordinary and not unlike the majority of us except that he had a talent for maze building. I guess the above description really says it all-chaotic though I would question?
Carol Shields did a good job of including the maze theme within the book but I didn't like how the various life events were repeated often-I felt as though she was writing at times for a reader with dementia, it bugged me a little.
I give this book 3 kiwis out of 5.
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