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Prosperous Friends
Described by John Ashbery as “pared down but rich, dense, fevered, exactly right and even eerily beautiful,” Christine Schutt’s prose has earned her comparisons to Emily Dickinson and Eudora Welty. In her new novel, Schutt delivers a pitch-perfect, timeless and original work on the spectacle of love.
Prosperous Friends follows the evolution of a young couple’s marriage as it is challenged by the quandaries of longing and sexual self-discovery. The glamorous and gifted Ned Bourne and his pretty wife, Isabel, travel to London, New York, and Maine in hopes of realizing their artistic promise, but their quest for sexual fulfillment is less assured. Past lovers and new infatuations, doubt and indifference threaten to bankrupt the marriage. The Bournes’ fantasies for their future finally give way to a deepened and mature perspective in the company of an older, celebrated artist, Clive Harris, and his wife, Dinah, a poet. With compassionate insight, Schutt explores the divide between those like Clive and Dinah who seem to prosper in love and those like Ned and Isabel who feel themselves condemned to yearn for it.
Prosperous Friends follows the evolution of a young couple’s marriage as it is challenged by the quandaries of longing and sexual self-discovery. The glamorous and gifted Ned Bourne and his pretty wife, Isabel, travel to London, New York, and Maine in hopes of realizing their artistic promise, but their quest for sexual fulfillment is less assured. Past lovers and new infatuations, doubt and indifference threaten to bankrupt the marriage. The Bournes’ fantasies for their future finally give way to a deepened and mature perspective in the company of an older, celebrated artist, Clive Harris, and his wife, Dinah, a poet. With compassionate insight, Schutt explores the divide between those like Clive and Dinah who seem to prosper in love and those like Ned and Isabel who feel themselves condemned to yearn for it.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published November 6, 2012
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502 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
November 9, 2012
You should know that I have had sex.
So it bothers me immensely that I would be half way through a scene (these are too underdeveloped to be chapters or sections or parts) before I realized that is what the characters were doing. And badly.
Even knowing that this book is about sex and love and the quest for a man to teach his woman how to have an orgasm (?), I had no idea.
The writing is beyond sparse. It is incoherent. It is underdeveloped.
So it bothers me immensely that I would be half way through a scene (these are too underdeveloped to be chapters or sections or parts) before I realized that is what the characters were doing. And badly.
Even knowing that this book is about sex and love and the quest for a man to teach his woman how to have an orgasm (?), I had no idea.
The writing is beyond sparse. It is incoherent. It is underdeveloped.
November 22, 2013
Know some young engaged couple who shouldn’t get married? Wrap up a copy of “Prosperous Friends” and toss it into the bridal shower like a molotov cocktail. Christine Schutt‘s artful little novel is mixed from crushed hopes and laced with the essence of despair. No one who opens it could walk down the aisle untroubled.
But at least the chastened lovers will have something good to read.
At 64, Schutt hasn’t written much compared with her book-a-year colleagues, but almost everything she publishes attracts extraordinary critical praise. Her first novel, “Florida,” was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, “All Souls” was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, and her short stories have won the Pushcart Prize and two O. Henry Awards. If her striking, lyrical work remains relatively unknown, it’s a house favorite of other literary authors and readers of sophisticated fiction.
“Prosperous Friends” will satisfy that refined audience again. In these dark, delicate pages, two young writers enjoy a short romance, “no more than a sniffle,” Schutt writes, “an accumulation of scenes in thrift shops and workshops, a whimsical wedding in a rhinestone casino” in Las Vegas. Then, almost immediately, they realize they’re incompatible, but their marriage bleeds on, weakening but never dying.
Ned and Isabel met at Columbia University while working halfheartedly on MFAs in creative writing. (The piercing accuracy of these scenes is informed by a lifetime of experience: Schutt earned an MFA from Columbia and has taught at a number of schools.) Ned is popular and distractingly good looking — “a sleek boy in an ad for cologne”; Isabel is lithe, beautiful and despondent. Released from any responsibilities and gassed up on fellowship money, these two blessed kids tour the United States and Europe. Ned fiddles with a collection of short stories and considers writing a memoir. Isabel floats in a corrosive fluid of indolence and depression. “Who was to say what anyone might make of a life, but Isabel was stung by the little startles of those who knew her at what she had become,” Schutt writes in that arresting voice of hers with its surprising sidesteps. “From the girl most promising — no book, no significant publications either, and online didn’t count.”
Isabel remembers promising a college roommate that they would soon be purposeful, employed and well traveled — a plan only a third completed, though she’s already 33 years old. “I need a regular job when we get back to the States,” she tells Ned. “I need something to do.” Together, these two are like poster children for some Marxist campaign against excess leisure. My sympathy for their pain was mitigated by rising irritation at their laziness and self-absorption (and the nagging sense that I’d read enough about the ennui of bright New Yorkers in the New Yorker back in the 1980s). Let Isabel spend a few years asking, “Do you want fries with that?” and then at least she’d have a reason to feel so sleepy and bored.
Like Schutt’s two previous novels, “Prosperous Friends” is relatively short, but the poetic concision and allusiveness of her prose give the story more heft than a mere 200 pages would suggest. Pared almost to the point of stinginess, her sentences never waste a phrase or even a word. In these finely cut scenes, months are reduced to crucial moments, and those moments captured in just a few impressionistic lines. A short section concerning an unwanted pregnancy rivals Hemingway’s elliptical devastation in “Hills Like White Elephants”:
“ ‘Are you sure?’ the doctor asked.
“She did all the unsightly crying things, and both men watched. She used the sleeve of her yellowed nightgown on her face.
“ ‘You’re in agreement?’ the doctor asked.
“ ‘Yes,’ and they said yes at the same time, so Ned and Isabel must have been in agreement.”
Schutt deals killing blows with such short, precise movements that at first you barely register the wound. Her portrayal of sexual dysfunction manages to be just as cringe-inducing as it is oblique. Here’s one complete scene, for instance, that makes you wince with its mingled tones of frustration:
“Let’s just try this.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Let’s.”
“No. Why don’t you just give in to what I can do for you? Most guys would.”
Not all the scenes are that short — most run for a page or two — but all of them display this astonishing compression of emotion. Though clipped to within a phrase of real life, Schutt’s dialogue always sounds piercingly real: “If you could only look as if you were having fun,” Ned tells Isabel, “we might make some friends.” By the time spouses are calmly giving each other poisonous advice like that, there’s no use calling Dr. Ruth. In the mellow, ironic voice that flows around these characters, Schutt writes: “Alone and together in the intimate familiar that was marriage — wasn’t it? And she had nice clothes, too, didn’t she?”
What complicates the story of these two toxic lovebirds is their interaction with prosperous friends. How happy they seem, how content, but who really knows what’s going on behind the doors of other people’s marriages?
The second half of the novel takes place on the idyllic Maine farm of a famous artist who has invited Isabel to work as his model during the summer of 2004. Clive is a serial adulterer, as his wife, Dinah, well knows, but “pride was overrated; she had learned how to put it aside.” This older, long-married couple serve as an unsettling counterpoint to Ned and Isabel’s faltering marriage. But how successful is a union built around turning a blind eye to one partner’s perpetual infidelity? Of course, we’ve got an easy answer to that question, but Schutt keeps needling our righteous indignation. “The advantages of an old wife, Clive thinks, are too often overlooked.” Try that toast at your next anniversary dinner.
A bitter wisdom runs through these pages. “There may be cures to loneliness,” Dinah thinks, “but marriage is not one of them.” Although Schutt can be grim about the agony of a loveless marriage, she’s not dismissive of the dream that keeps leading us to say, “I do.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
But at least the chastened lovers will have something good to read.
At 64, Schutt hasn’t written much compared with her book-a-year colleagues, but almost everything she publishes attracts extraordinary critical praise. Her first novel, “Florida,” was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, “All Souls” was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, and her short stories have won the Pushcart Prize and two O. Henry Awards. If her striking, lyrical work remains relatively unknown, it’s a house favorite of other literary authors and readers of sophisticated fiction.
“Prosperous Friends” will satisfy that refined audience again. In these dark, delicate pages, two young writers enjoy a short romance, “no more than a sniffle,” Schutt writes, “an accumulation of scenes in thrift shops and workshops, a whimsical wedding in a rhinestone casino” in Las Vegas. Then, almost immediately, they realize they’re incompatible, but their marriage bleeds on, weakening but never dying.
Ned and Isabel met at Columbia University while working halfheartedly on MFAs in creative writing. (The piercing accuracy of these scenes is informed by a lifetime of experience: Schutt earned an MFA from Columbia and has taught at a number of schools.) Ned is popular and distractingly good looking — “a sleek boy in an ad for cologne”; Isabel is lithe, beautiful and despondent. Released from any responsibilities and gassed up on fellowship money, these two blessed kids tour the United States and Europe. Ned fiddles with a collection of short stories and considers writing a memoir. Isabel floats in a corrosive fluid of indolence and depression. “Who was to say what anyone might make of a life, but Isabel was stung by the little startles of those who knew her at what she had become,” Schutt writes in that arresting voice of hers with its surprising sidesteps. “From the girl most promising — no book, no significant publications either, and online didn’t count.”
Isabel remembers promising a college roommate that they would soon be purposeful, employed and well traveled — a plan only a third completed, though she’s already 33 years old. “I need a regular job when we get back to the States,” she tells Ned. “I need something to do.” Together, these two are like poster children for some Marxist campaign against excess leisure. My sympathy for their pain was mitigated by rising irritation at their laziness and self-absorption (and the nagging sense that I’d read enough about the ennui of bright New Yorkers in the New Yorker back in the 1980s). Let Isabel spend a few years asking, “Do you want fries with that?” and then at least she’d have a reason to feel so sleepy and bored.
Like Schutt’s two previous novels, “Prosperous Friends” is relatively short, but the poetic concision and allusiveness of her prose give the story more heft than a mere 200 pages would suggest. Pared almost to the point of stinginess, her sentences never waste a phrase or even a word. In these finely cut scenes, months are reduced to crucial moments, and those moments captured in just a few impressionistic lines. A short section concerning an unwanted pregnancy rivals Hemingway’s elliptical devastation in “Hills Like White Elephants”:
“ ‘Are you sure?’ the doctor asked.
“She did all the unsightly crying things, and both men watched. She used the sleeve of her yellowed nightgown on her face.
“ ‘You’re in agreement?’ the doctor asked.
“ ‘Yes,’ and they said yes at the same time, so Ned and Isabel must have been in agreement.”
Schutt deals killing blows with such short, precise movements that at first you barely register the wound. Her portrayal of sexual dysfunction manages to be just as cringe-inducing as it is oblique. Here’s one complete scene, for instance, that makes you wince with its mingled tones of frustration:
“Let’s just try this.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Let’s.”
“No. Why don’t you just give in to what I can do for you? Most guys would.”
Not all the scenes are that short — most run for a page or two — but all of them display this astonishing compression of emotion. Though clipped to within a phrase of real life, Schutt’s dialogue always sounds piercingly real: “If you could only look as if you were having fun,” Ned tells Isabel, “we might make some friends.” By the time spouses are calmly giving each other poisonous advice like that, there’s no use calling Dr. Ruth. In the mellow, ironic voice that flows around these characters, Schutt writes: “Alone and together in the intimate familiar that was marriage — wasn’t it? And she had nice clothes, too, didn’t she?”
What complicates the story of these two toxic lovebirds is their interaction with prosperous friends. How happy they seem, how content, but who really knows what’s going on behind the doors of other people’s marriages?
The second half of the novel takes place on the idyllic Maine farm of a famous artist who has invited Isabel to work as his model during the summer of 2004. Clive is a serial adulterer, as his wife, Dinah, well knows, but “pride was overrated; she had learned how to put it aside.” This older, long-married couple serve as an unsettling counterpoint to Ned and Isabel’s faltering marriage. But how successful is a union built around turning a blind eye to one partner’s perpetual infidelity? Of course, we’ve got an easy answer to that question, but Schutt keeps needling our righteous indignation. “The advantages of an old wife, Clive thinks, are too often overlooked.” Try that toast at your next anniversary dinner.
A bitter wisdom runs through these pages. “There may be cures to loneliness,” Dinah thinks, “but marriage is not one of them.” Although Schutt can be grim about the agony of a loveless marriage, she’s not dismissive of the dream that keeps leading us to say, “I do.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
January 13, 2013
If you like lyrical sentences and complex characters, but don’t need to have a raucous plot, you’ll like this book very much. I did. The writing is stunning, and the characters of Ned and Isabel are fascinating. And there IS a plot. It’s just not one that involves much mystery or action. Consider this book the antidote to Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. The enjoyment of that book was in its breathless pace and surprise (fueled, it has to be said, by deception), but the characters were flat and implausible. Here, the reader practically feels Ned and Isabel in the room with him.
Maybe because they’re writers? They meet at Columbia. They marry, too soon, probably, they go to London, travel on the Continent. They come back and they’re not very happy. He’s struggling to find his voice—he writes short stories and can’t get a collection published, imagine that—and she’s just floundering. And then there’s Phoebe, Ned’s ex-girlfriend. Isabel is jealous, sort of.
More fascinating characters: Clive and Dinah. Clive is a somewhat famous painter (and uncle of Phoebe’s husband Ben). Dinah is his current wife. Sally is Clive’s depressed daughter.
And sex? Schutt’s writing style is elliptical, and so much of what happens is missing, but is there just the same. Beautiful stuff.
Maybe because they’re writers? They meet at Columbia. They marry, too soon, probably, they go to London, travel on the Continent. They come back and they’re not very happy. He’s struggling to find his voice—he writes short stories and can’t get a collection published, imagine that—and she’s just floundering. And then there’s Phoebe, Ned’s ex-girlfriend. Isabel is jealous, sort of.
More fascinating characters: Clive and Dinah. Clive is a somewhat famous painter (and uncle of Phoebe’s husband Ben). Dinah is his current wife. Sally is Clive’s depressed daughter.
And sex? Schutt’s writing style is elliptical, and so much of what happens is missing, but is there just the same. Beautiful stuff.
June 2, 2013
A couple's marriage is falling apart, so they both react by having affairs and never communicating. And this goes on for 200 pages. Within the 200 pages, interesting details of their relationship are alluded to, but never directly spelled out. To me, the biggest problems with the book were:
1. Though the characters were realistic, there was absolutely no one that was likable, not at all, in the least. IF people are going to be doing horrible things to each other, the reader should be rooting for them a little.
2. The author was so vague. She'd release very important plot points in way that was very easy to miss. Hemingway did this too, except his writing was spartan and kept the plot moving, so you'd be paying attention. Schutt's writing meanders, so it encourages the reader to skim.
I think she DID hit on some very important universal truths. That was great. But the rest of the story was very slow moving. I cared little.
1. Though the characters were realistic, there was absolutely no one that was likable, not at all, in the least. IF people are going to be doing horrible things to each other, the reader should be rooting for them a little.
2. The author was so vague. She'd release very important plot points in way that was very easy to miss. Hemingway did this too, except his writing was spartan and kept the plot moving, so you'd be paying attention. Schutt's writing meanders, so it encourages the reader to skim.
I think she DID hit on some very important universal truths. That was great. But the rest of the story was very slow moving. I cared little.
April 23, 2013
"I am not turning into the person I want to be," one of the main characters reveals at the end of the book. I struggled with this one mightily. I like to think I can recognize artistry and appreciate complex inventive writing, but I had so much trouble following the truncated, abrupt, ungrammatical sentences in the first half of the book, I almost stopped reading. And here's the thing: Schutt's own voice seems to change in the second half. The writing gets a bit more fluid, but then suddenly we are introduced to new characters. And there was no time and not enough meat on the bone for me to have any empathy for the characters. In spots she reminded me of Updike, and Woolf, but not enough so. I would read her other work, however, to see why she has such a following. Maybe just this book needed more editing? Dare I say so???
November 28, 2014
David Winters wrote a sound, glowing review for this book in the LARB. While it had been on my radar, his review is what made me take the plunge.
While the story here is fairly commonplace, about the trappings and miscommunications in interpersonal relationships, Schutt's prose is magisterial: it truly is the primary focus in Prosperous Friends.
There is a temptation perhaps to call Schutt's prose poetic, but this is a phrase so often used when discussing novelists' prose that it's hardly fitting here. By "poetic" I don't mean lush or flowery; I don't mean an attempt to suggest dreams or fantasies (although there is some of that here, too). What I mean by Schutt's poetic prose is that it's very technical and formal, yet at the same time loose and fluid—fluid, at least, in adherence to its own rhythms. Assonance, dissonance, syntactical ruptures: all of these formal and technical elements abound in this novel, causing us to be both within and without the characters: as Winters says in his review, "Schutt has mastered an intricate indirectness."
There is a Jamesian distancing here, and I think this might well frustrate some readers who may have picked up Prosperous Friends based on the plot summary; however, the prose is something to be marveled at, relished, and also puzzled over at times. I definitely look forward to reading more of Schutt's work after this wonderful performance—for there's no other word to describe the skill evident here, a truly wonderful performance.
While the story here is fairly commonplace, about the trappings and miscommunications in interpersonal relationships, Schutt's prose is magisterial: it truly is the primary focus in Prosperous Friends.
There is a temptation perhaps to call Schutt's prose poetic, but this is a phrase so often used when discussing novelists' prose that it's hardly fitting here. By "poetic" I don't mean lush or flowery; I don't mean an attempt to suggest dreams or fantasies (although there is some of that here, too). What I mean by Schutt's poetic prose is that it's very technical and formal, yet at the same time loose and fluid—fluid, at least, in adherence to its own rhythms. Assonance, dissonance, syntactical ruptures: all of these formal and technical elements abound in this novel, causing us to be both within and without the characters: as Winters says in his review, "Schutt has mastered an intricate indirectness."
There is a Jamesian distancing here, and I think this might well frustrate some readers who may have picked up Prosperous Friends based on the plot summary; however, the prose is something to be marveled at, relished, and also puzzled over at times. I definitely look forward to reading more of Schutt's work after this wonderful performance—for there's no other word to describe the skill evident here, a truly wonderful performance.
January 30, 2013
Most "poetic" prose is primarily prose and most "prosy" poetry is still really poetry. Schutt is one of the few writers I can think of whose work gets close to a half-and-half amalgam. Yes, Prosperous Friends IS a novel, but its logic, its compression, and its language have deep roots in poetry. The book nominally follows (but "follows" is more of a term for a typical prose narrative) thirtysomething couple Ned and Isabel, both of whom have artistic ambitions. Their sexual mismatch begins to poison all aspects of their life together, until in a last-ditch attempt to salvage their marriage, they accept the offer of a summer cottage on the property of a famous artist in northern Maine. This straightforward description does absolutely no justice to the fragmented yet supple feeling of the narrative, nor to its many-stranded matrix, with vivid secondary characters moving in and out without fidelity to the usual rules of subplot. The first read is all about language and surprise; I expect my second read to reveal overlooked patterns and associations and to deepen my pleasure.
September 29, 2012
This short novel, written in a minimalist and somewhat surrealistic style, is about a young couple trying to find their way in their marriage. It is about their erotic needs, their intellectual curiosities and the people around them who fuel their lives.
Ned and Isabel are both privileged and at some point in time run into Clive and Dinah, he a painter and she a poet. They are inspired by Clyde and Dinah's ability to keep their marriage alive despite infidelities and personal differences.
Overall, I found the book confusing and without much substance. It is not one I would recommend. The characters are shallow, the actions petty, and the inspirations vague and confusing.
Comment
Ned and Isabel are both privileged and at some point in time run into Clive and Dinah, he a painter and she a poet. They are inspired by Clyde and Dinah's ability to keep their marriage alive despite infidelities and personal differences.
Overall, I found the book confusing and without much substance. It is not one I would recommend. The characters are shallow, the actions petty, and the inspirations vague and confusing.
Comment
June 30, 2024
Felt like a character study that took too long to introduce the characters, almost. And it was more about one couple than about their friends/friendships. Some really good moments and vignettes, but missing something for me.
February 9, 2018
Wonderful, amazing prose...one of the best living makers of sentences.
November 28, 2012
Reading Christine Schutt's work often feels to me like walking through a forest on the verge--on the verge of what I'm not always sure--perhaps of decay in one part, sudden growth in another, a transition to fall, branches full of bird song and then sudden quiet. In Prosperous Friends, the forest felt always on the verge of November in New England. The trees are stripped, their bare bones becoming visible, but the memory of leaves strong enough that despair is kept at bay.
Schutt writes with a laser beam, paring her prose to essence, showing that we don't always need so many words, so many leaves, to tell a tale. This makes Prosperous Friends a beautiful book to read even as the story itself is conveys little joy and its characters are almost impossible to like. But why shouldn't we write stories about the uglier parts of characters. There is truth in Schutt's men and women who are artists and writers. They are self-involved, ungenerous with each other and with themselves. But they are not stock figures. Because they are nuanced I was less likely to toss them away. I found that I had to keep looking, to take them seriously.
It is not just having to face Schutt's characters that is challenging. Even though, or perhaps because, Schutt's writing is so beautiful, it is easy to get lost. Passages have to be re-read which was just fine with me. Who wouldn't want to go over sentences like: "Here again were the near-dead, weird days when she lived as in a closet in her migraine hell: her bed, a box of rags; her heart, a corner, spooky." Or, "So the day came on, another day with a sky blue enough to put the sun in its place, a sky as hard to look at as the sun, although she looked up after the incongruously sweet sound of the ospreys." The character Ned looks at "... the accusatory mirror that was his wife ... a lot of hair on a pillow." Later, Isabel wonders: "What even was it first diluted the marriage, or was it an absence of event, Isabel's failure to make something worth regarding? Where was her book, her business, her flaring discovery?"
Schutt writes about relationships, marriage, why some work and others don't; or, because no relationship in this book works by the standard definition of marriage, why do we enter into these partnerships and what aspects of ourselves are we satisfying. The book appears to be chronological but time doesn't always seem to be pinned down. Because of that, and the fact that names emerge and conversations appear as snippets--without complete information about how they began or how they ended--the reader must work to understand. But by doing that work, by paying attention, so much more is gained than if all was clear. Like walking in that forest at night--perhaps with a full moon--you can see enough to make progress but you must focus to arrive at your destination.
Schutt writes with a laser beam, paring her prose to essence, showing that we don't always need so many words, so many leaves, to tell a tale. This makes Prosperous Friends a beautiful book to read even as the story itself is conveys little joy and its characters are almost impossible to like. But why shouldn't we write stories about the uglier parts of characters. There is truth in Schutt's men and women who are artists and writers. They are self-involved, ungenerous with each other and with themselves. But they are not stock figures. Because they are nuanced I was less likely to toss them away. I found that I had to keep looking, to take them seriously.
It is not just having to face Schutt's characters that is challenging. Even though, or perhaps because, Schutt's writing is so beautiful, it is easy to get lost. Passages have to be re-read which was just fine with me. Who wouldn't want to go over sentences like: "Here again were the near-dead, weird days when she lived as in a closet in her migraine hell: her bed, a box of rags; her heart, a corner, spooky." Or, "So the day came on, another day with a sky blue enough to put the sun in its place, a sky as hard to look at as the sun, although she looked up after the incongruously sweet sound of the ospreys." The character Ned looks at "... the accusatory mirror that was his wife ... a lot of hair on a pillow." Later, Isabel wonders: "What even was it first diluted the marriage, or was it an absence of event, Isabel's failure to make something worth regarding? Where was her book, her business, her flaring discovery?"
Schutt writes about relationships, marriage, why some work and others don't; or, because no relationship in this book works by the standard definition of marriage, why do we enter into these partnerships and what aspects of ourselves are we satisfying. The book appears to be chronological but time doesn't always seem to be pinned down. Because of that, and the fact that names emerge and conversations appear as snippets--without complete information about how they began or how they ended--the reader must work to understand. But by doing that work, by paying attention, so much more is gained than if all was clear. Like walking in that forest at night--perhaps with a full moon--you can see enough to make progress but you must focus to arrive at your destination.
November 6, 2012
Prosperous Friends
by
Christine Schutt
My" in a nutshell" summary...
This is a book about two rather odd dysfunctional couples...their lives and their loves.
My thoughts after reading this book...
Whew...this is a beautifully written book with stark truths and character studies. This is the kind of book that I love...and yet...this book and its characters...though exquisite in their oddities...did not appeal to me at all! OMG...my dislike for these characters was fierce. The first couple...Nick and Isabel...were just sad and pathetic...mismatched? They never seemed to find a true connection. And the second older couple...Clive and Dinah...oh my goodness...Clive didn't even like his daughter let alone his wife...and his attraction for Isabel was just plain weird. This short novel bounced all over the globe...England, NYC, Maine...with Nick and Isabel floundering with their lives, careers, writings...wherever they went.
What I loved about this book...
This author packed tons into this short little book. She writes beautiful and lovely sentences. I loved her words without loving the book.
What I did not love...
Unfortunately I strongly disliked these characters and their lives...I could not get past their wastefulness...of time, talent, people...the situations with Isabel and the mouse and dog were just creepy. I particularly did not like Isabel...at all...she seemed passive...lost...pathetic.
Final thoughts...
I was not able to engage with these characters but that did not stop me from reading and finishing this book. And if you are drawn to dysfunction and characters you like to puzzle over...you should not pass this book by!
by
Christine Schutt
My" in a nutshell" summary...
This is a book about two rather odd dysfunctional couples...their lives and their loves.
My thoughts after reading this book...
Whew...this is a beautifully written book with stark truths and character studies. This is the kind of book that I love...and yet...this book and its characters...though exquisite in their oddities...did not appeal to me at all! OMG...my dislike for these characters was fierce. The first couple...Nick and Isabel...were just sad and pathetic...mismatched? They never seemed to find a true connection. And the second older couple...Clive and Dinah...oh my goodness...Clive didn't even like his daughter let alone his wife...and his attraction for Isabel was just plain weird. This short novel bounced all over the globe...England, NYC, Maine...with Nick and Isabel floundering with their lives, careers, writings...wherever they went.
What I loved about this book...
This author packed tons into this short little book. She writes beautiful and lovely sentences. I loved her words without loving the book.
What I did not love...
Unfortunately I strongly disliked these characters and their lives...I could not get past their wastefulness...of time, talent, people...the situations with Isabel and the mouse and dog were just creepy. I particularly did not like Isabel...at all...she seemed passive...lost...pathetic.
Final thoughts...
I was not able to engage with these characters but that did not stop me from reading and finishing this book. And if you are drawn to dysfunction and characters you like to puzzle over...you should not pass this book by!
March 10, 2013
The writing style is slightly poetic which made this narrative choppy to read in places - didn't really work for me. And then the story is about privileged, trust fund, east coast couples who cheat on each other somewhat openly in marriages based on financial convenience and social status. All are writers and artists. Some have multiple homes. Hard to feel sorry for this type, especially when they're struggling to enjoy it all. Of course, with all the above factors in the mix, depression plays a huge part in all their lives. It seemed like they just all had way too much time on their hands to spend thinking about life. Depressives need to be kept occupied. Reading this book made me feel thankful that I'm not in a jacked-up marriage like these 30-something couples. The main couple was so dysfunctional and downright mean to each other!
September 21, 2013
What was the point of the book, the resonating message I'm supposed to be left with? It's so vague. I don't like any of the characters and I don't know why the main couple bothered to get married in the first place. I understand more of why Dinah married James, Jimmy, Jimbo Card.
It's definitely meant to be read at night. The words flow in a really nice way sometimes, lulling. But during the day, I'm a bit jarred by the body shaming and the fact that these people are really awful to their core. And there is this line about Haitians and Guatemalans and white folks that rubs me the wrong way. I have no idea what the author meant by it because there's no context surrounding it. It just is.
It's definitely meant to be read at night. The words flow in a really nice way sometimes, lulling. But during the day, I'm a bit jarred by the body shaming and the fact that these people are really awful to their core. And there is this line about Haitians and Guatemalans and white folks that rubs me the wrong way. I have no idea what the author meant by it because there's no context surrounding it. It just is.
November 19, 2012
More privileged, over educated people who fancy themselves creative who are pissed that the world does not find them as fascinating as they do and so they create unnecessary drama and design neuroses for themselves in order to appear as interesting as they think they are. Unlikable characters throughout and the narrative goes nowhere fast. Also WTF on the epilogue? A case of trying to be artfully subtle, I guess.
March 3, 2013
I like prosey and disjointed. This was prosey, which I liked, and disjointed, which I didn't. I felt dense while reading it, because there were times I had no idea what was going on, what anyone was doing or talking about, or even where they were. The sentences that did make sense were very beautiful, but the characters were boring, flat, and unlikable.
Read
June 26, 2021Reading this book made me really want to re-read Light Years. The pros? A few out-there sentences (which were also cons in a sense they were speed bumps) & sometimes the prose read pretty mellifluously--otherwise you can skim the lollygag dialogue of the book's well-traveled West Coast socialites, yet idly admire the minimal details of their intrafuck games aka 'hide the Forsythia.'
November 25, 2012
Not sure I loved the last scene pre-epilogue, but overall I was very taken with this book. I don't think the comparisons to Salter's LIGHT YEARS are unwarranted, and Schutt's elliptical prose style impressed throughout.
December 13, 2012
it could be me but this was the most disjointed book I have ever read.
the reviewers had to have been paid to rave. the last chapter, the epilogue, had nothing to do with the story that I can figure out.
my review? YUCK!
the reviewers had to have been paid to rave. the last chapter, the epilogue, had nothing to do with the story that I can figure out.
my review? YUCK!
April 26, 2013
Finished it, but hated it. Didn't like the style, didn't even understand the characters or what was happening, much less like them.
December 24, 2022
And so ends my first trek through Christine Schutt’s six wonderful books. It’s bittersweet. But I know I’ll be rereading her for the rest of my life, and happily so. That serves to ameliorate the agony somewhat. So pardon this being less of a proper review of Prosperous Friends, which was truly excellent, and more of a general endorsement of Schutt. A gushing over, more like. Whatever. She deserves gushing over as much as any of the greats. Her prose is a goddamn miracle. Here, let me open up to a random page of Prosperous Friends to prove my point. This is 100% random, mind you. I don’t mark, but I do tab sometimes. But NEVER with Schutt because every page would be tabbed to oblivion and it would just be silly.
Here, from 118:
When Dinah woke from her nap, she saw the meadow had been mown. The field stones were visible again. They looked like lumpish animals in the muddy embankment, and Clive, at the shed, appraising, seemed pleased—pleased with the appearance of everything, himself included, and why not? The smooth movable parts of him—nothing caved in or stiff or dry about Clive, nothing barreled but his chest was russet colored, ardent—all worked, and the whole of him turned to her now, welcoming. Up close, he smelled grassy. Was it any wonder what she did, what she had done, and would do again for the attentions of this man?
Fucking resplendent. Read it aloud at a normal pace and tell me it doesn’t sing.
Another, page 80:
The early dogwood’s yellow had arrived, no more than dots on twigs, yet they brightened the bark-chip mulch and blackened leaves that had toughed out winter. He liked the yellows better than the pinks to come or the Conservatory Garden’s rigid plantings of tulips, now just spikes, but the penitent Lenten rose was up in borders, and he liked that perennial very much.
You get it by now, surely. I’ll shut up. Read Prosperous Friends. Read Schutt generally, anything. Start anyplace. Great stories, great novels. She’s a god-tier stylist and master of stories that crawl with discomfort and darkness and fragile human beauty in equal measure.
Recommended as hell.
Here, from 118:
When Dinah woke from her nap, she saw the meadow had been mown. The field stones were visible again. They looked like lumpish animals in the muddy embankment, and Clive, at the shed, appraising, seemed pleased—pleased with the appearance of everything, himself included, and why not? The smooth movable parts of him—nothing caved in or stiff or dry about Clive, nothing barreled but his chest was russet colored, ardent—all worked, and the whole of him turned to her now, welcoming. Up close, he smelled grassy. Was it any wonder what she did, what she had done, and would do again for the attentions of this man?
Fucking resplendent. Read it aloud at a normal pace and tell me it doesn’t sing.
Another, page 80:
The early dogwood’s yellow had arrived, no more than dots on twigs, yet they brightened the bark-chip mulch and blackened leaves that had toughed out winter. He liked the yellows better than the pinks to come or the Conservatory Garden’s rigid plantings of tulips, now just spikes, but the penitent Lenten rose was up in borders, and he liked that perennial very much.
You get it by now, surely. I’ll shut up. Read Prosperous Friends. Read Schutt generally, anything. Start anyplace. Great stories, great novels. She’s a god-tier stylist and master of stories that crawl with discomfort and darkness and fragile human beauty in equal measure.
Recommended as hell.
September 5, 2020
Christine Schutt is such an incredible writer and Prosperous Friends is such a slog. The story itself is relatively unparseable and if that were the only way to judge it, I'd go far less than 3 stars. But her style is uncommon and grand. Poetic, yeah, but almost these blast-chilled sculptural sentences you walk around to admire:
"She pulled the curtain across his face all the while seeing his face grow long and desperate, putty mobility with a hole for howling and then the tub broke apart and all turned black with the blunt conclusiveness she knew for hell."
Boom.
But... for a book that's maybe at least for one thing about relationships, it doesn't feel like it truly knows it's males very well (a fault I know can also be pointed out of a lot of otherwise great male writers about their females). It's just, Schutt is so good, it feels like the unknowing comes from uncaring for the ones she's created. They're all louts.
Like she herself says, "'Moody?' It's no use talking about him,' she said ais fi they had been talking about Clive for a long time."
Have we been talking Clive? Or any of these guys? What have we been saying about them? Other than that they're glamourous, unfeeling predators? It just feels too easy for a book that's not easy.
All of that said, if you run out of poetry, and don't mind a semi-story that you look at instead of live in, you could do worse.
"She pulled the curtain across his face all the while seeing his face grow long and desperate, putty mobility with a hole for howling and then the tub broke apart and all turned black with the blunt conclusiveness she knew for hell."
Boom.
But... for a book that's maybe at least for one thing about relationships, it doesn't feel like it truly knows it's males very well (a fault I know can also be pointed out of a lot of otherwise great male writers about their females). It's just, Schutt is so good, it feels like the unknowing comes from uncaring for the ones she's created. They're all louts.
Like she herself says, "'Moody?' It's no use talking about him,' she said ais fi they had been talking about Clive for a long time."
Have we been talking Clive? Or any of these guys? What have we been saying about them? Other than that they're glamourous, unfeeling predators? It just feels too easy for a book that's not easy.
All of that said, if you run out of poetry, and don't mind a semi-story that you look at instead of live in, you could do worse.
April 29, 2021
How was this atrocious book a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize?!
This book is a terrible, arduous story about terrible, miserable people.
The only thing that could have saved this book is if Sally and Isabel end up together at the end.
We don’t learn anything about the characters that matter. I don’t care about Ned. He’s an asshole. Why does the author waste her time telling us anything about his past?
None of these characters are endearing. None.
The author paints sally as a Sloppy, embarrassing head case and then when Isabel meets her all the sudden she’s attractive and intelligent, not to mention caring?
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.
This book is a terrible, arduous story about terrible, miserable people.
The only thing that could have saved this book is if Sally and Isabel end up together at the end.
We don’t learn anything about the characters that matter. I don’t care about Ned. He’s an asshole. Why does the author waste her time telling us anything about his past?
None of these characters are endearing. None.
The author paints sally as a Sloppy, embarrassing head case and then when Isabel meets her all the sudden she’s attractive and intelligent, not to mention caring?
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2018
While each sentence is beautifully written - almost with a lyrical precision - the overall narrative fell a little flat for me. It goes exactly where you think it'll go and ends exactly how you assume it will.
April 22, 2019
Just another great work from an established author, but nothing too groundbreaking. The narrative felt a little too safe.
September 27, 2020
I really loved this novel. It truly had F. Scott or Zelda Fitzgerald tone to it (at one point they are mentioned).
December 26, 2020
If you like entitled, supposedly talented, deeply depressed characters, who engage in joyless sex, in settings that should be beautiful but are generally dismal, this is the book for you.
September 5, 2014
I finished this book only to realize that I needed to read it again, so I did. After all, Prosperous Friends was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. I liked it better the second time, but I am only a little wiser as to its meaning. Christine Schutt has an extremely light touch and leaves unspoken far more than she explains. I believe that her book is about the gulf between the artistically prosperous and those who wish to be prosperous but are timid or have other factors holding them back from success. This is the dilemma of the central character Isabel, who is married to the successful but shallow and sycophantic Ned. The book seems to imply that culturally prosperous friends are not a good investment for the culturally modest and may in fact bring them to harm.
One of the central motifs of the book is the story of Baucis and Philemon, poor mortals who are the only ones in a a rich town who give hospitality to the gods Zeus and Hermes disguised as peasants. When the gods reveal themselves, they destroy the rest of the town and offer Baucis and Philemon a gift - the granting of a wish. Baucis and Philemon wish that they, long-married, may die at the same time. Upon their simultaneous deaths, they are turned into intertwined oak and linden trees springing from one trunk.
I think that Schutt is talking about hospitality in a wider context - the hospitality of relationships. How one treats the guests in one's heart (spouses, parents, children, friends, lovers) is surely as important as how one treats them at table. Prosperous friends may consider themselves important but in their ability to have it all are unkind to the "poor strangers" - those among them they perceive to be of lesser cultural status. Schutt advises, in her epilogue, that "Pious mortals who stick to the code fare better" - pious mortals who, with their heart hospitality, are rewarded with devotion, loyalty, and permanence.
Prosperous Friends also brings into relief that desiring to make an artistic mark on the world is in and of itself an aggressive and pretentious act, which is, dare I say it, why one encounters certain types of unkind people when art turns into commodity... or maybe it is the unkind qualities that allow art to turn into commodity in the first place.
This book left me with many feelings and much to think about.
One of the central motifs of the book is the story of Baucis and Philemon, poor mortals who are the only ones in a a rich town who give hospitality to the gods Zeus and Hermes disguised as peasants. When the gods reveal themselves, they destroy the rest of the town and offer Baucis and Philemon a gift - the granting of a wish. Baucis and Philemon wish that they, long-married, may die at the same time. Upon their simultaneous deaths, they are turned into intertwined oak and linden trees springing from one trunk.
I think that Schutt is talking about hospitality in a wider context - the hospitality of relationships. How one treats the guests in one's heart (spouses, parents, children, friends, lovers) is surely as important as how one treats them at table. Prosperous friends may consider themselves important but in their ability to have it all are unkind to the "poor strangers" - those among them they perceive to be of lesser cultural status. Schutt advises, in her epilogue, that "Pious mortals who stick to the code fare better" - pious mortals who, with their heart hospitality, are rewarded with devotion, loyalty, and permanence.
Prosperous Friends also brings into relief that desiring to make an artistic mark on the world is in and of itself an aggressive and pretentious act, which is, dare I say it, why one encounters certain types of unkind people when art turns into commodity... or maybe it is the unkind qualities that allow art to turn into commodity in the first place.
This book left me with many feelings and much to think about.
November 26, 2014
Shouldn't your spouse be your best friend? The title "Prosperous Friends" hints at the term "friends with benefits", a concept even more intriguing since the characters are married.
Ned and Isabel are both writers, who struggle in their relationship. They compete in their writing and in how much they can hurt each other. Married right out of grad school, they travel and collect friends, friends of one or the other, never both, friends with benefits, friends with secrets, friends with gifts they both benefit from even when one hates the benefactor.
Prosperous Friends is an intimate look at bad marriages - Isabel and Ned's and later that of Dinah and Cliff whose lives intersect theirs in several, unexpected ways.
And the strange couple of the pro and epilogue who exist only on the periphery but with accurate perspective.
Prosperous Friends is a finalist for the Pullitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It is prose at its finest - details reported without a word wasted. Skim over a page and you'll miss a detail and be forced to reread a chapter to answer the question, "How did they get there?"
With lines like "I need to be happy more of the time" and "Real excitement at a wedding at last", words spoken by married people. You'll ask yourself, "Do people really live this way?" The epilogue, your answer.
More reviews here http://runwright.net/what-i-read/
Ned and Isabel are both writers, who struggle in their relationship. They compete in their writing and in how much they can hurt each other. Married right out of grad school, they travel and collect friends, friends of one or the other, never both, friends with benefits, friends with secrets, friends with gifts they both benefit from even when one hates the benefactor.
Prosperous Friends is an intimate look at bad marriages - Isabel and Ned's and later that of Dinah and Cliff whose lives intersect theirs in several, unexpected ways.
And the strange couple of the pro and epilogue who exist only on the periphery but with accurate perspective.
Prosperous Friends is a finalist for the Pullitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It is prose at its finest - details reported without a word wasted. Skim over a page and you'll miss a detail and be forced to reread a chapter to answer the question, "How did they get there?"
With lines like "I need to be happy more of the time" and "Real excitement at a wedding at last", words spoken by married people. You'll ask yourself, "Do people really live this way?" The epilogue, your answer.
More reviews here http://runwright.net/what-i-read/
January 13, 2014
Prosperous Friends follows the evolution of a young couple’s marriage as it is challenged by the quandaries of longing and sexual self-discovery. The glamorous and gifted Ned Bourne and his pretty wife, Isabel, travel to London, New York, and Maine in hopes of realizing their artistic promise, but their quest for sexual fulfillment is less assured. Past lovers and new infatuations, doubt and indifference threaten to bankrupt the marriage. The Bournes’ fantasies for their future finally give way to a deepened and mature perspective in the company of an older, celebrated artist, Clive Harris, and his wife, Dinah, a poet. With compassionate insight, Schutt explores the divide between those like Clive and Dinah who seem to prosper in love and those like Ned and Isabel who feel themselves condemned to yearn for it.
I read someone's review and they put it really well. Know of someone who is getting married and shouldn't? Wrap this up and give it to them, like a Molotov cocktail. No joke. Talk about dysfunction at its height! Made me dizzy and just a bit sick. These people should have NEVER gotten married and I was so rooting for them at the end to make it work. Come on, I am always looking for the bright side. Can't help it. Boo!
I read someone's review and they put it really well. Know of someone who is getting married and shouldn't? Wrap this up and give it to them, like a Molotov cocktail. No joke. Talk about dysfunction at its height! Made me dizzy and just a bit sick. These people should have NEVER gotten married and I was so rooting for them at the end to make it work. Come on, I am always looking for the bright side. Can't help it. Boo!
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