That Old Cape Magic

Never mind not being able to go home again, there are so many of us who are unable to ever leave home in the first place. Or perhaps more accurately, our childhood home, our parents, our youthful experiences (especially the more traumatic ones) never leave us.
Such is the case with 57-year-old Griffin, the central character in Richard Russo's 2009 novel “That Old Cape Magic.” His life is in a state of upheaval. He is separated from his wife, his daughter is getting married and he has yet to decide what he really wants to be when he grows up. Does he prefer to be a Hollywood screenwriter, less secure but more exciting, or a college professor like his parents?

Even after death, his parents seem to want to dominate his life. For a long show more time he carries his father's ashes in the trunk of his car, then his mother dies and her ashes join them. Both wanted their ashes spread on Cape Cod, though in separate locations, but Griffin can never seem to find the right spots for them. Perhaps, despite spending his entire adult life trying to stay away from them, he doesn't really want to part with them.

His snobbish parents both taught at a college in Indiana, but each summer they would take their son to Cape Cod, where they could pretend to possess a higher social status than they ever actually achieved. His mother in particular thought they deserved to be professors at some Ivy League school, or almost any college on the East Coast. Being stuck in Indiana seemed shameful to her. But at least they could vacation on Cape Cod and enjoy what they called "That Old Cape Magic."

Does the Cape have any magic left for Griffin? Can he leave his parents behind, both literally and figuratively, and confront his current problems as a grownup?

Russo, as usual, uses wit to address serious human issues, making a reader laugh between the tears, or cry between the laughs, whichever the case. There's a wedding rehearsal dinner that turns into a disaster worthy of a Laurel and Hardy movie. His various characters are wonderfully drawn, so real you can almost see them. This is a novel that itself contains a bit of magic. show less

In That Old Cape Magic, Russo explores memory and disappointment and mid-life re-evaluation with sharp insight and gentle humor. He sees his characters’ flaws and isn’t afraid to expose them, but he does so with kindness and understanding. He illustrates the mundane intimacies of marriage and family life in heartbreaking detail, but he never fails to make us laugh along the way.

In many ways, That Old Cape Magic is classic Russo. The themes and character outlines—and the presentation of hilariously humorless academics—will be familiar to readers who have enjoyed his other work, but the scope of this book is smaller, cozier, than anything he’s written previously. And I thought it was a refreshing shift.

No other writer writes show more about relationships and expectations the way Richard Russo does, and That Old Cape Magic is simply not to be missed.

Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog. show less

Richard Russo’s That Old Cape Magic begins and ends with weddings attended by many of the same people. But, despite the overlap in the guest list, and the fact that the two weddings are barely one year apart, they could hardly have been more different.

As the book begins, Jack Griffin and his wife, Joy, are making their separate ways to Cape Cod to attend the wedding of their daughter’s best friend. Another university year has ended, and Jack, too impatient to wait one more day for Joy to finish up her administrative work at the school, has left for the Cape without her. Technically, however, he is not alone since he carries his father’s ashes in the trunk of his car and plans to dispose of them somewhere along his route to the show more wedding.

The Griffins, who have been married for more than three decades, have weathered lean times and tensions with the in-laws to carve out a rather comfortable existence for themselves. They have, in fact, attained the lifestyle that Jack’s own parents always yearned for, but never achieved for themselves – all of it centered on their work at a respected liberal arts college in Connecticut. For Jack, driving to Cape Cod for the wedding is a bit like coming home. As a boy, he spent part of each summer vacationing with his parents on the Cape, and it was where he and Joy had honeymooned. All things considered, Jack Griffin is satisfied with his life.

One short year later, Jack is driving to the coast of Maine for his daughter’s wedding, but much has changed. He is still carrying his father’s ashes in the trunk, but this year his father’s urn has been joined by a second one containing the ashes of Jack’s mother. Like last year, he and Joy are making their separate ways to the wedding – but this time each of them has brought along a date. The flaws in their marriage, obvious during the first wedding weekend, have seemingly doomed it just one year later.

That Old Cape Magic is told from Jack Griffin’s perspective, the reader ensconced in Jack’s head for a series of flashbacks going all the way back to his boyhood. Jack is an introspective man and, as he considers the events of his childhood and his relationship with his parents, the reader begins to understand Jack Griffin, the man. He has reached a threshold in his life – his marriage seems over, his parents are dead, his only child has just married, he has been granted a leave of absence from the university, his Hollywood screenwriting job is not going well - and he has no idea what comes next.

That Old Cape Magic might be one man’s story, but Jack Griffin’s contemporaries will easily identify with it and the realization that little things, given enough time, and occurring in the right combination, can ultimately chip away at one’s whole world. Russo uses a good bit of humor (his daughter’s wedding rehearsal is genuinely hilarious) and over-the-top characters (Jack’s parents are unforgettable snobs of the first order), however, that make this one fun despite its rather somber theme.

Rated at: 5.0 show less

Jack Griffin, like the protagonists in all of Richard Russo's novels, is a man with a problem. He is torn between what he THINKS he wants and what he HAS, and he's spent most of his adult life vacillating between the two. Russo is just so good at developing these kinds of male characters:middle-aged, good-hearted, conflicted.

When the story opens, Jack is on his way to a wedding on Cape Cod. He petulantly decided to go on his own, rather than wait one more day for his wife Joy to be done with her job and, thereby, Russo lets the conflict begin.

The underlying theme is Griffin's upbringing by two college professors and although he has his father's ashes in the trunk of his car and his mother is near death, their influence on him and the show more story, is of major importance. They were, in a word, pretty awful at parenting and his mother's caustic wit riffles through the book. She has little tolerance for people in general. When Griffin first decides on Joy as a mate and his mother wants to know where she went to graduate school the following ensues:'He'd taken a deep breath and explained that Joy had gone directly to work after getting her undergraduate degree and that she had a good job, one that she enjoyed. "Yes, but what sort of person doesn't do graduate work?" His mother inflected the word person ever so slightly, as if to suggest that anyone who didn't go to graduate school might belong to neither gender, or perhaps to both.' Vintage Russo. His exploration of Griffin's youth, especially the time he spent with his parents on Cape Cod in the summer, is remembered, or misremembered, as Griffin comes to terms with his feelings for his mother and his wife.

We follow Griffin for one year that ends with his daughter's wedding on the coast of Maine, so different from the Cape, which gave "the impression that July lasted all year." Maine, on the other hand, "reminded you, even in lush late spring, of its long harsh winters, of snowdrifts that rotted baseboards and splintered lattice work." Following the wedding, a comedy of errors, where Griffin finally begins to resolve his issues, the story ends on the Cape, whose "allure was its shimmering elusiveness, the magical way it receded before them year after year, the stuff of dreams." The uplifting message and ending hoped for is on its way.

I can't say enough about Richard Russo. Even though I read Bridge of Sighs in February 2008, it seemed like forever until his next book came along. Now we can just sit back and wait for the next one. He just seems to get better with age. Wonderful read. show less

That Old Cape Magic. Richard Russo. 2009. This may be the best novel I have read on marriage since Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. When Griffin returns to Cape Cod for his daughter’s wedding memories of entire life flash in front of him: his childhood, his crazy parents and their marriage, his 30 year marriage to Joy, his screen writing career, the birth of his daughter and the year-long separation from his wife. Russo is such a skilled writer we are laughing one minute, crying the next, and recognizing his perfect insights into human nature the next.

Jack Griffin is on his way to the Cape again - this time, for the wedding of one of his daughter's childhood friends. Along the way, Griffin reflects on his rocky relationship with his parents, academics who came to the Cape every year in search of elusive happiness, and how he feels about his life's current direction - or lack thereof.

This book is peppered with miserable characters. Griffin is miserable, his parents were miserable (or at least, from his perspective, they certainly seemed to be), and Griffin's wife Joy would be content with their life but Griffin's misery is making her miserable, too. Maybe because I'm a naturally optimistic person, I found Griffin and his parents irritating in their ability to see the negative. I have show more bad days, too, but here he is with a good life, as far as I can see, and all he can do is bemoan what he doesn't have and what might have been. As the story develops, there is some understanding - particularly as Griffin comes to realize that he didn't know everything he thought he did about his parents' lives - and through that, some redemption as well. But honestly, it was a case of too little, too late for me and I only carried on because I had to read it for work. show less

Jack Griffin is middle-aged, married for thirty-four years to Joy, and driving around the Cape with his father’s ashes in his car’s wheel well as he contemplates his childhood, his unruly (and often emotionally absent) parents, and his own marriage. By the end of the weekend, everything will have changed – suddenly and unexpectedly. A year later, he finds himself on the coast of Maine at his daughter’s wedding, separated from his wife, now carrying two urns in the trunk of his car, and unable to turn off the ironic and sarcastic voice of his dead mother which plays inside his head. Richard Russo’s iconic novel is filled with humor, bittersweet nostalgia, and wise observations of marriage and love.

Russo is a genius when it show more comes to developing character. Griff is a man who has finally come to rest in Connecticut, after giving up a career as a screen writer in Los Angeles. He settles into his job as a college professor, and he and his wife Joy buy their dream house and nurture their daughter, Laura. But Griff has a lot of unfinished business – especially regarding his relationship with his parents which has come to inform his life and his marriage. Russo employs a lot of irony and humor in unraveling Griff and his parents. Griffin’s mother is outrageously elitist and narcissistic. When she retires from her position as a professor at a small, Indiana university, she stuns everyone with her farewell speech.

“Unlike my colleagues,” she said directly into the microphone, the only speaker of the evening to recognize that fundamental necessity, “I’ll be brief and honest. I wish I could think of something nice to say about you people and this university, I really do. But the truth we dare not utter is that ours is a distinctly second-rate institution, as are the vast majority of our students, as are we.” Then she returned to her seat and patted Griffin’s hand, as if to say, There, now; that wasn’t so bad, was it? - from That Old Cape Magic, page 20 -

On the other hand, Griff’s father is a bit bumbling and prone to having a wandering eye when it comes to other women. He also has a propensity for automobile accidents. His car is perpetually damaged, the trunk secured with a bungee cord.

Griffin, raised as an only child, seems dwarfed by his bigger-than-life parents. His struggle to find his own place in the world, secure his own marriage, and come to terms with the ambivalent love he has for his difficult parents is what drives the narrative in That Old Cape Magic.

Russo’s writing in That Old Cape Magic is, well, magical. I found myself completely absorbed in the lives of the characters, wanting them to find redemption, hoping that all the many strands of their lives would weave together again. Russo does what so many writers struggle to do – namely, make you care about what happens to the characters which people the story. Russo’s strength lies in his razor sharp observations of life with all its subtle quirks and twists, especially middle-aged life when individuals begin to look back on the paths they’ve chosen and wonder whether they have made the right decisions; to contemplate the plans they have mapped out and question the outcomes.

Late middle age, he was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming. – from That Old Cape Magic, page 248 -

Readers who love literary fiction and who appreciate irony, humor and deftly developed characters, will love this novel.

Highly recommended. show less