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A review by jennifer
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
5.0
It didn't dawn on me that this book is in many ways an American version of Brideshead Revisited until, a few days after I finished it, I happened across this article on Brideshead in a Guardian series on Families in Literature, http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/dec/23/families-in-literature-the-flytes-in-brideshead-revisited-by-evelyn-waugh, which makes the case that "Brideshead is not a book about Oxford, or homoerotic love, or social climbing: it’s a book about religion – and about families."
Like Charles in Brideshead, Dr. Paul O'Rourke, the protagonist of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, is a man without strong family ties. Paul's father committed suicide when he was a child and his mother is in a nursing home, no longer emotionally or intellectually available. And just as Charles fell hard for the Flytes, the family of his college best friend, Sebastian (“That summer term with Sebastian,” he says, “it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood.”), Paul keeps falling in love with the close-knit, religious families of his girlfriends. First there were the Catholic Santacroces, echoing the Catholic Flytes in Brideshead, then the Jewish Plotzes, then something altogether more enticing, a sort of uber-family in the form of an entire (fictional) lineage of Biblical provenance, the Ulms.
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a dark book and it probably says something difficult about me that I related to the main character. Despite its darkness, and unlike Brideshead Revistited, it manages to have a happy ending twice, first in the last chapter and then again in the epilogue. I read it just before Christmas and found it oddly hopeful, which may explain why it's turned out to be my favorite book of the year. It's been a surprise to see it excluded from so many year-end best of lists, although I suppose its inclusion on this year's Man Booker Prize shortlist is all the lists it needed to make.
Like Charles in Brideshead, Dr. Paul O'Rourke, the protagonist of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, is a man without strong family ties. Paul's father committed suicide when he was a child and his mother is in a nursing home, no longer emotionally or intellectually available. And just as Charles fell hard for the Flytes, the family of his college best friend, Sebastian (“That summer term with Sebastian,” he says, “it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood.”), Paul keeps falling in love with the close-knit, religious families of his girlfriends. First there were the Catholic Santacroces, echoing the Catholic Flytes in Brideshead, then the Jewish Plotzes, then something altogether more enticing, a sort of uber-family in the form of an entire (fictional) lineage of Biblical provenance, the Ulms.
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a dark book and it probably says something difficult about me that I related to the main character. Despite its darkness, and unlike Brideshead Revistited, it manages to have a happy ending twice, first in the last chapter and then again in the epilogue. I read it just before Christmas and found it oddly hopeful, which may explain why it's turned out to be my favorite book of the year. It's been a surprise to see it excluded from so many year-end best of lists, although I suppose its inclusion on this year's Man Booker Prize shortlist is all the lists it needed to make.