Tommy Ogden, a Gatsbyesque character living in a mansion outside robber-baron-era Chicago, declines to give his wife the money to commission a bust of herself from the French master Rodin and announces instead his intention to endow a boys' school. Ogden's decision reverberates years later in the life of Lee Goodell, whose coming of age is at the heart of Ward Just's emotionally potent new novel.
Lee's life decisions - to become a sculptor, to sojourn in the mean streets of the South Side, to marry into the haute-intellectual culture of Hyde Park - play out against the crude glamour of midcentury Chicago. Just's signature skill of conveying emotional heft with few words is put into play as Lee confronts the meaning of his four years at Ogden Hall School under the purview, in the school library, of a bust known as Rodin's Debutante. And, especially, as he meets again a childhood friend, the victim of a brutal sexual assault of which she has no memory. It was a crime marking the end of Lee's boyhood and the beginning of his understanding - so powerfully under the surface of Just's masterly story - that how and what we remember add up to nothing less than our very lives.
Lee's life decisions - to become a sculptor, to sojourn in the mean streets of the South Side, to marry into the haute-intellectual culture of Hyde Park - play out against the crude glamour of midcentury Chicago. Just's signature skill of conveying emotional heft with few words is put into play as Lee confronts the meaning of his four years at Ogden Hall School under the purview, in the school library, of a bust known as Rodin's Debutante. And, especially, as he meets again a childhood friend, the victim of a brutal sexual assault of which she has no memory. It was a crime marking the end of Lee's boyhood and the beginning of his understanding - so powerfully under the surface of Just's masterly story - that how and what we remember add up to nothing less than our very lives.
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Used availability for Ward Just's Rodin's Debutante
See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
Hardback Editions
March 2011 : Hardback
| Title: Rodin's Debutante Author(s): Ward Just ISBN: 0-547-50419-5 / 978-0-547-50419-3 (USA edition) Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
Paperback Editions
April 2012 : Paperback
| Title: Rodin's Debutante Author(s): Ward Just ISBN: 0-547-75265-2 / 978-0-547-75265-5 (USA edition) Publisher: Mariner Books Availability: Amazon Amazon UK More details... |
2011 : Paperback
| Title: RodinÕs Debutante Author(s): Ward Just Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Availability: Amazon More details... |
Other Editions
March 2011 : Kindle edition
| Title: Rodin's Debutante Author(s): Ward Just Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Availability: Amazon More details... |
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