The Burgess boys A novel

Review by New York Times Review

STORIES of marital relations - strained, destroyed or restored - surely take up a larger section of our fiction shelves than stories of brothers and sisters. Yet why should that be, given the deep imprint siblings can make? Staying intimate with one's spouse is a challenge, certainly, but the problems posed by a difficult brother or sister can be just as painful. In Elizabeth Strout's fluid and compassionate new novel, "The Burgess Boys," her first book since the Pulitzer Prizewinning "Olive Kittredge," the connections among Jim Burgess and his younger twin brother and sister, Bob and Susan, are central to the story. That the marriages of these adult siblings are either over or in a rocky state is kept in the background of a narrative primarily concerned with the affinities and enmities played out among these three during a family crisis. At the start of the novel, the "boys" happen to be together in Brooklyn, where both live, when Jim receives a desperate call from their sister. A sour, divorced optometrist, Susan still lives in Maine, where they were all raised, with her 19-year-old son, Zach, and an elderly female lodger. Zach has gotten into some serious trouble. Shirley Falls, a depressed former mill town with a substantial influx of Somali refugees, was also the setting of Strout's first novel, "Amy and Isabelle." Susan's son, a shy, friendless boy who works at the local Walmart, has thrown a frozen pig's head through the door of a local Somali mosque - "During prayer. During Ramadan." It was, he explains, just "a dumb joke" (and one that appears to be based on an actual incident that occurred in Lewiston in 2006). The boy will be arrested and, in a community fraught with new racial tensions, may well be prosecuted for committing a hate crime. His two uncles - Jim, an extremely successful and famous defense lawyer at a highend Manhattan firm, and Bob, a die-hard liberal who works for the legal aid society - offer to help steer him and his mother through the catastrophe. Complicating the family's ability to cooperate are animosities that vibrate constantly at a low, painful pitch. Jim routinely belittles his younger brother, calling him "slob-dog" and "knucklehead." Susan, who has disliked her twin from way back, hardly manages to be civil to him, even when he comes to assist her (in one bitter moment, she even mocks him for his childlessness). Affable Bob - who is, like Susan, divorced - appears the most tolerant, though it gradually becomes clear that he considers his aggressive brother a jerk and his sister narrow-minded. All are marked by their father's sudden death when they were young children, in an accident whose contours become better defined over the course of the novel. If Bob is the book's conscience, Jim is its operator, though the perspective also shifts to include Jim's patient, proper Connecticut-born wife and Bob's ex-wife, who illuminate other sides of the Burgess boys. Bob is the main source of empathy for the Somali refugees, though Strout attempts to give broad scope to the difficulties of merging two diverse and beleaguered populations. A white cop tells Bob the Somalis are "whackjobs," and in Susan's curt opinion the town's chief of police "doesn't give a doughnut's damn about the Somalians." A Somali man grimly recalls that the policemen laughed when they first caught sight of the bloodied pig's head in the mosque. Yet the police chief, who briefly dated Susan in high school, self-importantly stages a news conference, and an ambitious lawyer in the attorney general's office takes steps to pursue the hate-crime charge. Strout, trained in the law and married to a former Maine attorney general, covers the case with easy clarity, ever alert to the intersection of personal politics and legal strategy. The Somalis struggle with displacement in scattered scenes that Strout sets within that community. Can these traumatized families find a place in the United States, specifically in the rugged, unforgiving countryside of Maine? At what cost to their sense of selves, or of home? In an affecting counterpoint, Strout chronicles the Burgesses' attitudes toward their own homes. Susan stubbornly keeps her sparsely furnished house underheated, but a greater warmth infuses it as she befriends her elderly lodger. Jim sneers at Bob for his "graduate dorm" living, but Bob's own feelings are poised between relief at the anonymity of apartment dwelling and an existential dread when his squabbling downstairs neighbors move out and he catches sight of their desolate, empty rooms. "The blank walls seemed to say wearily to Bob: Sorry. You thought this was a home. But it was just this, all along." Jim, whose luxurious Park Slope brownstone matches his ostensibly perfect family life (kind, devoted wife; three grown children, all in college), finds out how wrong it is to take such elegant stability for granted. There is a geographic extension of the Burgess boys' rivalries in the complex tensions between Mainers and New Yorkers, and it's hard to think of anyone more convincing on this subject than Elizabeth Strout. Tough, blunt Susan bears some resemblance to the magnificent Maine character of Olive Kittredge. The brothers themselves have divided emotions when it comes to their old home: the familiar landscape makes Bob "unutterably happy," while Jim finds the bleakness "unbelievably depressing." The Burgesses' mother suffered a trip to New York only once, and Susan, when she finally braves a visit, finds the place crowded, baffling, appalling. Strout handles her storytelling with grace, intelligence and low-key humor, demonstrating a great ear for the many registers in which people speak to their loved ones. If there's a weakness here, it's Zach, offstage for much of the action in spite of being the catalyst for it. He may be hollow, but he seems a basically nice kid, a teenager who doesn't appear to possess the kind of hatred (or, frankly, imagination) required for the pig's head stunt. Perhaps Strout's point is that an act of aggression against strangers will be sternly addressed by our legal system, flawed though it may be, while hostilities against one's own flesh and blood are more in the ordinary run of things. These disputes must be worked out privately, in the homes and corridors of family life. A pigs head has been thrown into a Maine towns mosque - 'During prayer. During Ramadan.' Sylvia Brownrigg's novel for children, "Kepler's Dream," written under the name Juliet Bell, will be published in paperback next month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 28, 2013]

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Review by Booklist Review

Pulitzer Prize-winning Strout (Olive Kitteridge, 2008) delivers a tightly woven yet seemingly languorous portrayal of a family in longtime disarray. Brothers Jim and Bob Burgess, and sister Susan, are mired in a childhood trauma: when he was four, Bob unwittingly released the parking brake on the family car, which ran over their father and killed him. Originally from small Shirley Falls, Maine, the Burgess brothers have long since fled to vastly disparate lives as New York City attorneys. Egoistic Jim is a famous big shot with a corporate firm. Self-effacing Bob leads a more low-profile career with Legal Aid. High-strung Susan calls them home to fix a family crisis: her son stands accused of a possible hate crime against the small town's improbable Somali population. The siblings' varying responses to the crisis illuminate their sheer differences while also recalling their shared upbringing, forcing them finally to deal with their generally unmentioned, murky family history. Strout's tremendous talent at creating a compelling interest in what seems on the surface to be the barest of actions gives her latest work an almost meditative state, in which the fabric of family, loyalty, and difficult choices is revealed in layer after artful layer. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This is the first novel from Strout since her Pulitzer Prize-winning, runaway best-seller, Olive Kitteridge, and anticipation will be high.--Trevelyan, Julie Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Strout's follow-up to her 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner Olive Kitteridge links a trio of middle-aged siblings with a group of Somali immigrants in a familiar story about isolation within families and communities. The Burgesses have troubles both public and secret: sour, divorced Susan, who stayed in the family's hometown of Shirley Falls, Maine, with her teenage son Zachary; big-hearted Bob, who feels guilty about their father's fatal car accident; and celebrity defense lawyer Jim, who moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. When Zachary hurls a bloody pig's head into a Somali mosque during Ramadan, fragile connections between siblings, the Somalis, and other Shirley Falls residents are tested. Jim's bullish meddling into Zach's trial hurts rather than helps, and Susan's inability to act without her brothers' advice cements her role as the weakest link (and least interesting character). Finally, when Jim's neurotic wife, Helen, witnesses the depth of her husband's indifference and Bob's ex-wife, Pam, finds the security of her new life in Manhattan tested by nostalgia for Shirley Falls, Zach's fate-and that of the Somalis-becomes an unfortunate afterthought. Strout excels in constructing an intricate web of circuitous family drama, which makes for a powerful story, but the familiarity of the novel's questions and a miraculously disentangled denouement drain the story of depth. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

The Burgess siblings are in disarray. Decades earlier, the "boys," Jim and Bob, fled their childhood home of Shirley Falls, ME, to practice law in New York City. Jim is a flashy uptown defense attorney who once won a high-profile celebrity murder case. His meek younger brother, Bob, the ultimate agent of conciliation, is a Legal Aid lawyer. When Bob's twin sister, Susan, calls from Shirley Falls to say her odd teenage son, Zachary, has thrown a pig's head into the mosque of the community's Somali population, an unspeakably offensive violation of the Muslim faith, the brothers scramble to throw down legal cover. Events spin out of control, Zachary's crime goes national, tensions rise, and charges against the boy escalate. Meanwhile, the abrasive relationship among Jim, Bob, and Susan erodes as the shattering moment of their childhood-the death of their father, which was blamed on four-year-old Bob-bubbles to the surface. VERDICT Pulitzer Prize-winner Strout (Olive Kitteridge) takes the reader on a surprising journey of combative filial love and the healing powers of the truth. [See Prepub Alert, 11/12/12.]-Beth Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Two squabbling brothers confront their demons, their crumbling love lives and a hate crime case that thrusts them back to their Maine roots. The titular boys of this follow-up to Strout's Pulitzer-winning 2008 short story collection, Olive Kitteridge, are Jim and Bob Burgess, who are similar on the surface--lawyers, New Yorkers--but polar opposites emotionally. Jim is a high-wattage trial attorney who's quick with a cruel rejoinder designed to put people in their place, while Bob is a divorc who works for Legal Aid and can't shake the guilt of killing his dad in a freak accident as a child. The two snap into action when their sister's son in their native Maine is apprehended for throwing a pig's head into a mosque. The scenario gives Strout an opportunity to explore the culture of the Somalis who have immigrated to the state in recent years--a handful of scenes are told from the perspective of a Somali cafe owner, baffled by American arrogance, racism and cruelty. But this is mainly a carefully manicured study of domestic (American and household) dysfunction with some rote messages about the impermanence of power and the goodness that resides in hard-luck souls--it gives nothing away to say that Jim comes to a personal reckoning and that Bob isn't quite the doormat he's long been thought to be. Speeding the plot turns along are Jim's wife, Helen, an old-money repository of white guilt, and Jim and Bob's sister, Susan, a hardscrabble repository of parental anxiety. Strout's writing is undeniably graceful and observant: She expertly captures the frenetic pace of New York and relative sluggishness of Maine. But her character arrangements often feel contrived, archetypal and predestined; Jim's in particular becomes a clichd symbol of an overinflated ego. A skilled but lackluster novel that dutifully ticks off the boxes of family strife, infidelity and ripped-from-the-headlines issues.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 On a breezy October afternoon in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, Helen Farber Burgess was packing for vacation. A big blue suitcase lay open on the bed, and clothes her husband had chosen the night before were folded and stacked on the lounge chair nearby. Sunlight kept springing into the room from the shifting clouds outside, making the brass knobs on the bed shine brightly and the suitcase become very blue. Helen was walking back and forth between the dressing room--­with its enormous mirrors and white horsehair wallpaper, the dark woodwork around the long window--­walking between that and the bedroom, which had French doors that were closed right now, but in warmer weather opened onto a deck that looked out over the garden. Helen was experiencing a kind of mental paralysis that occurred when she packed for a trip, so the abrupt ringing of the telephone brought relief. When she saw the word private, she knew it was either the wife of one of her husband's law partners--­they were a prestigious firm of famous lawyers--­or else her brother-­in-­law, Bob, who'd had an unlisted number for years but was not, and never would be, famous at all. "I'm glad it's you," she said, pulling a colorful scarf from the bureau drawer, holding it up, dropping it on the bed. "You are?" Bob's voice sounded surprised. "I was afraid it would be Dorothy." Walking to the window, Helen peered out at the garden. The plum tree was bending in the wind, and yellow leaves from the bittersweet swirled across the ground. "Why didn't you want it to be Dorothy?" "She tires me right now," said Helen. "You're about to go away with them for a week." "Ten days. I know." A short pause, and then Bob said, "Yeah," his voice dropping into an understanding so quick and entire--­it was his strong point, Helen thought, his odd ability to fall feetfirst into the little pocket of someone else's world for those few seconds. It should have made him a good husband but apparently it hadn't: Bob's wife had left him years ago. "We've gone away with them before," Helen reminded him. "It'll be fine. Alan's an awfully nice fellow. Dull." "And managing partner of the firm," Bob said. "That too." Helen sang the words playfully. "A little difficult to say, 'Oh, we'd rather go alone on this trip.' Jim says their older girl is really messing up right now--­she's in high school--­and the family therapist suggested that Dorothy and Alan get away. I don't know why you 'get away' if your kid's messing up, but there we are." "I don't know either," Bob said sincerely. Then: "Helen, this thing just happened." She listened, folding a pair of linen slacks. "Come on over," she interrupted. "We'll go across the street for dinner when Jim gets home." After that she was able to pack with authority. The colorful scarf was included with three white linen blouses and black ballet flats and the coral necklace Jim had bought her last year. Over a whiskey sour with Dorothy on the terrace, while they waited for the men to shower from golf, Helen would say, "Bob's an interesting fellow." She might even mention the accident--­how it was Bob, four years old, who'd been playing with the gears that caused the car to roll over their father and kill him; the man had walked down the hill of the driveway to fix something about the mailbox, leaving all three young kids in the car. A perfectly awful thing. And never mentioned. Jim had told her once in thirty years. But Bob was an anxious man, Helen liked to watch out for him. "You're rather a saint," Dorothy might say, sitting back, her eyes blocked by huge sunglasses. Helen would shake her head. "Just a person who needs to be needed. And with the children grown--­" No, she'd not mention the children. Not if the Anglins' daughter was flunking courses, staying out until dawn. How would they spend ten days together and not mention the children? She'd ask Jim. Helen went downstairs, stepped into the kitchen. "Ana," she said to her housekeeper, who was scrubbing sweet potatoes with a vegetable brush. "Ana, we're going to eat out tonight. You can go home." The autumn clouds, magnificent in their variegated darkness, were being spread apart by the wind, and great streaks of sunshine splashed down on the buildings on Seventh Avenue. This is where the Chinese restaurants were, the card shops, the jewelry shops, the grocers with the fruits and vegetables and rows of cut flowers. Bob Burgess walked past all these, up the sidewalk in the direction of his brother's house. Bob was a tall man, fifty-­one years old, and here was the thing about Bob: He was a likeable fellow. To be with Bob made people feel as if they were inside a small circle of us-­ness. If Bob had known this about himself his life might have been different. But he didn't know it, and his heart was often touched by an undefined fear. Also, he wasn't consistent. Friends agreed that you could have a great time with him and then you'd see him again and he'd be vacant. This part Bob knew, because his former wife had told him. Pam said he went away in his head. "Jim gets like that too," Bob had offered. "We're not talking about Jim." Waiting at the curb for the light to change, Bob felt a swell of gratitude toward his sister-­in-­law, who'd said, "We'll go across the street for dinner when Jim gets home." It was Jim he wanted to see. What Bob had watched earlier, sitting by the window in his fourth-­floor apartment, what he had heard in the apartment down below--­it had shaken him, and crossing the street now, passing a coffee shop where young people sat on couches in cavernous gloom with faces mesmerized by laptop screens, Bob felt removed from the familiarity of all he walked by. As though he had not lived half his life in New York and loved it as one would a person, as though he had never left the wide expanses of wild grass, never known or wanted anything but bleak New England skies. "Your sister just called," said Helen as she let Bob in through the grated door beneath the brownstone's stoop. "Wanted Jim and sounded grim." Helen turned from hanging Bob's coat in the closet, adding, "I know. It's just the way she sounds. But I still say, Susan smiled at me once." Helen sat on the couch, tucking her legs in their black tights beneath her. "I was trying to copy a Maine accent." Bob sat in the rocking chair. His knees pumped up and down. "No one should try and copy a Maine accent to a Mainer," Helen continued. "I don't know why the Southerners are so much nicer about it, but they are. If you say 'Hi, y'all' to a Southerner, you don't feel like they're smirking at you. Bobby, you're all jumpy." She leaned forward, patting the air. "It's all right. You can be jumpy as long as you're okay. Are you okay?" All his life, kindness had weakened Bob, and he felt now the physicality of this, a sort of fluidity moving through his chest. "Not really," he admitted. "But you're right about the accent stuff. When people say, 'Hey, you're from Maine, you can't get they-­ah from he-­yah,' it's painful. Painful stuff." "I know that," Helen said. "Now you tell me what happened." Bob said, "Adriana and Preppy Boy were fighting again." "Wait," said Helen. "Oh, of course. The couple below you. They have that idiot little dog who yaps all the time." "That's right." "Go on," Helen said, pleased she'd remembered this. "One second, Bob. I have to tell you what I saw on the news last night. This segment called 'Real Men Like Small Dogs.' They interviewed these different, sort of--­sorry--­faggy-looking guys who were holding these tiny dogs that were dressed in plaid raincoats and rubber boots, and I thought: This is news? We've got a war going on in Iraq for almost four years now, and this is what they call news? It's because they don't have children. People who dress their dogs like that. Bob, I'm awfully sorry. Go on with your story." Helen picked up a pillow and stroked it. Her face had turned pink, and Bob thought she was having a hot flash, so he looked down at his hands to give her privacy, not realizing that Helen had blushed because she'd spoken of people who did not have children--­as Bob did not. "They fight," Bob said. "And when they fight, Preppy Boy--­husband, they're married--­yells the same thing over and over. 'Adriana, you're driving me fucking crazy.' Over and over again." Helen shook her head. "Imagine living like that. Do you want a drink?" She rose and went to the mahogany cupboard, where she poured whiskey into a crystal tumbler. She was a short, still shapely woman in her black skirt and beige sweater. Bob drank half the whiskey in one swallow. "Anyways," he continued, and saw a small tightening on Helen's face. She hated how he said "Anyways," though he always forgot this, and he forgot it now, only felt the foreboding of failure. He wasn't going to be able to convey the sadness of what he had seen. "She comes home," Bob said. "They start to fight. He does his yelling thing. Then he takes the dog out. But this time, while he's gone, she calls the police. She's never done that before. He comes back and they arrest him. I heard the cops tell him that his wife said he'd hit her. And thrown her clothes out the window. So they arrested him. And he was amazed." Helen's face looked as if she didn't know what to say. "He's this good-­looking guy, very cool in his zip-up sweater, and he stood there crying, 'Baby, I never hit you, baby, seven years we've been married, what are you doing? Baby, pleeeease!' But they cuffed him and walked him across the street in broad daylight to the cruiser and he's spending the night in the pens." Bob eased himself out of the rocking chair, went to the mahogany cupboard, and poured himself more whiskey. "That's a very sad story," said Helen, who was disappointed. She had hoped it would be more dramatic. "But he might have thought of that before he hit her." "I don't think he did hit her." Bob returned to the rocking chair. Helen said musingly, "I wonder if they'll stay married." "I don't think so." Bob was tired now. "What bothered you most, Bobby?" Helen asked. "The marriage falling apart, or the arrest?" She took it personally, his expression of not finding relief. Bob rocked a few times. "Everything." He snapped his fingers. "Like that, it happened. I mean, it was just an ordinary day, Helen." Helen plumped the pillow against the back of the couch. "I don't know what's ordinary about a day when you have your husband arrested." Turning his head, Bob saw through the grated windows his brother walking up the sidewalk, and a small rush of anxiety came to him at the sight of this: ­his older brother's quick gait, his long coat, the thick leather briefcase. There was the sound of the key in the door. "Hi, sweetheart," said Helen. "Your brother's here." "I see that." Jim shrugged off his coat and hung it in the hall closet. Bob had never learned to hang up his coat. What is it with you?, his wife, Pam, used to ask, What is it, what is it, what is it? And what was it? He could not say. But whenever he walked through a door, unless someone took his coat for him, the act of hanging it up seemed needless and . . . well, too difficult. "I'll go." Bob said. "I have a brief to work on." Bob worked in the appellate division of Legal Aid, reading case records at the trial level. There was always an appeal that required a brief, always a brief to be worked on. "Don't be silly," said Helen. "I said we'd go across the street for supper." "Out of my chair, knucklehead." Jim waved a hand in Bob's direction. "Glad to see you. It's been what, four days?" "Stop it, Jim. Your brother saw that downstairs neighbor of his taken away in handcuffs this afternoon." "Trouble in the graduate dorm?" "Jim, stop." "He's just being my brother," Bob said. He moved to the couch, and Jim sat down in the rocking chair. Excerpted from The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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