3.0
We Had It So Good
ByPublisher Description
Now in paperback from the acclaimed author of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel The Clothes on Their Backs—a hugely satisfying, exuberant novel about the generation that came of age during the 1970s.
Stephen Newman’s children find it hard to believe that their father once dressed up in Marilyn Monroe’s furs, cooked acid at Oxford and lived with their mother, Andrea, in an anarchist collective. Quite often, Stephen finds it hard to believe himself. Born to immigrant parents in sunny Los Angeles, Stephen never imagined that he would spend his adult life under the gray skies of London, would marry and stay married and would watch his children grow into people he cannot fathom. Over forty years he and his friends have built lives of comfort and success, until the events of late middle age and the new century force them to realize that they have always existed in a fool’s paradise. Linda Grant’s utterly absorbing novel about the generation that came of age during the 1970s reveals the truth about growing up and growing older and once again displays her uncanny ability to illuminate our times.
Stephen Newman’s children find it hard to believe that their father once dressed up in Marilyn Monroe’s furs, cooked acid at Oxford and lived with their mother, Andrea, in an anarchist collective. Quite often, Stephen finds it hard to believe himself. Born to immigrant parents in sunny Los Angeles, Stephen never imagined that he would spend his adult life under the gray skies of London, would marry and stay married and would watch his children grow into people he cannot fathom. Over forty years he and his friends have built lives of comfort and success, until the events of late middle age and the new century force them to realize that they have always existed in a fool’s paradise. Linda Grant’s utterly absorbing novel about the generation that came of age during the 1970s reveals the truth about growing up and growing older and once again displays her uncanny ability to illuminate our times.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesWe Had It So Good Reviews
3.0
“Mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed reading the first three-quarters, and found it compelling enough to read much more consistently and regularly than I've been doing recently. As the book progressed, though, I began to lose track as the focus became more diffuse. I guess it's a challenge taking people through their lives from childhood through to the beginnings of old age, alongside their parents and offspring, without losing the focus of a book that has a more concise setting. By the end I've lost whatever sense I had of the objective of the book. It now seems to be trying to convey the ultimate failure of the 1960s' optimism, so I'm left feeling somewhat deflated, although I share that viewpoint in many ways. Like Stephen, I'm wondering whether there was much point to it all, and whether that generation has actually just been a bit of a disappointment.”
About Linda Grant
Linda Grant is a novelist and journalist. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 and the Lettre Ulysses Prize for the Art of Reportage in 2006. Her most recent novel, The Clothes on Their Backs, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008. She writes for The Guardian, The Telegraph, and Vogue.
Other books by Linda Grant
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