Il nipote

by James Purdy, Floriana Bossi (Translator), Sam Lipsyte (Contributor)

Cliff (il nipote di Boyd e Alma) è un giovane soldato sul fronte della guerra di Corea, la cui improvvisa scomparsa piomba a turbare il sonnolento paesino dove viveva con gli zii. Scossa dall'accaduto, Alma tenterà di ricostruire la vera personalità di un nipote con cui da sempre ha avuto un rapporto contrastato e che in fondo non ha mai conosciuto davvero, coinvolgendo nella sua indagine gli altri abitanti della cittadina. Romanzo sull'assenza, il libro è un'appassionata opera corale in cui lo stile visionario e ribelle di Purdy cede il passo alla rappresentazione piana ma acutissima della provincia americana di quegli anni, mostrando come anche sotto la placida immobilità della campagna si nascondano incomunicabilità, segreti, bugie e pregiudizi.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Queer, Gay, Americana, The United States Of America, American Fiction

211 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

James Otis Purdy was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who, from his debut in 1956, published over a dozen novels, and many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and in 2013 his short stories were collected in The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy.
He has been praised by writers as diverse as Edward Albee, James M. Cain, Lillian Hellman, Francis King, Marianne Moore, Dorothy Parker, Dame Edith Sitwell, Terry Southern, Gore Vidal (who described Purdy as "an authentic American genius"), Jonathan Franzen (who called him, in Farther Away, "one of the most undervalued and underread writers in America"), A.N. Wilson, and both Jane Bowles and Paul Bowles.
Purdy was the recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993) and was nominated for the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel On Glory's Course (1984). In addition, he won two Guggenheim Fellowships (1958 and 1962), and grants from the Ford Foundation (1961), and Rockefeller Foundation.
He worked as an interpreter, and lectured in Europe with the United States Information Agency.

Reviews

[SCARABOOKS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il Nipote è meno potente di Rose e cenere, più convenzionale per scenario e soggetto; ma proprio questo risalta ancor più l’eleganza sommessa dello stile, la capacità straordinaria di restituire le tonalità e le atmosfere di ambienti e dialoghi. Una prosa di grande pulizia stilistica, senza una sbavatura. La sensazione è che incanterebbe anche descrivendo il nulla. Quegli scrittori da leggere come se lo ascoltassi mentre ci passeggi a fianco piano piano su un viale alberato.

Un libro che ha al centro l'assenza e l'impossibilità di conoscere davvero l’altro. Neppure la scrittura riesce ad aiutare. Chi ci prova a tentare di raccontare e conoscere è costretto a rinunciare.
Come Rose e Cenere è un romanzo sulla impossibilità patologica di vivere serenamente l’affetto, l’amore. Di darlo e di consentirsi di riceverlo. Anche qui la condizione omosessuale si eleva a paradigma universale. E anche qui il mondo militare, la guerra è il simbolo mostruoso di qualcosa che alla fine inghiotte tutto.

A indagarci attorno, Purdy, più leggi, più scavi e più incuriosisce. Un personaggio anomalo, contraddittorio su tanti aspetti, interessante come pochi altri. Per chi volesse saperne di più qui trova qualcosa

https://scarabooks.blogspot.com/2019/...

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baby's third James Purdy. I think I like him very much. I was taken by surprise by how affected I was by the unfolding of this story of how we don't know if we really knew the one's we loved, or if they ever loved us at all. I know this and yet I wanted to protect these people from finding out about it themselves. I shouldn't have been surprised, really. James Purdy has a gentle gravitational pull inside all the people planets. It seemed like Aunt Alma was going to go about not writing her memorial for her nephew Cliff who may or may not be missing in action after joining the army. Is she really going to go about writing this memorial? What a thing to do! Yeah, yeah I rolled my eyes. Get on with it. Screw me! Purdy knew what he was doing. What would you say about someone if you really sat down to do it? Could you remember their face after they had stayed gone?

Whispers from the past that went on without her after she left their small town to teach school in other places. She could make up a composite shot of what they were likely to look like twenty years on and they would look as if they were still the boy next door. The Nephew was nobody's baby. Looked to by his old aunt Alma and her elderly brother Boyd by them as if he's all they have. It could be that he never knew he had anyone of his own. Did he ever know that they loved him? Did they ever talk about any of the important stuff while they could? Alma and her brother Boyd mask their feelings behind saccharine and dour expressions, behind a past they cannot agree on. Alma holds onto her shield to keep out. It's nothing new and she's decorated it in her own fashion. No boys allowed. I liked so much the way the characters nudged around acknowledging these protective barriers in their efforts to protect themselves from the truth about what happened to Cliff and what secrets he may have been hiding. Get her to ask him to ask her this. Purdy writes about it as the cold hard truth of things rather than a deluge of bottled up emotions. The writing of a memorial is besides the point. People know more than you think they do, sometimes. Anyway, I'm impressed because the way this kind of thing can stick is if it is shared and in this town it was. This town that I wasn't sure I cared at all about, at first. You believe it when they show you. Right on, James Purdy.

"Cliff knew we cared, Alma," he told her. "And that made him care too, at last, though maybe he never said it, and he didn't have the gift, you and I know, to write it."
I bet they know and then they don't know.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Retired schoolteacher and busybody extraordinaire Alma Mason lives with her older brother Boyd in the fussy little town of Rainbow Center, somewhere in the mid-to-lower section of the United States. While at home, the aging siblings spend their time crabbing at each other and pining over—each in their own way—their nephew Cliff, who is off fighting in the Korean War. For a long time, not much of interest happens in this novel and then all of a sudden the action picks up. But by then, I was nearly bored to death and the so-called action, while perhaps considered risqué in 1950s small-town America, didn’t exactly engage my reading engine at full throttle. It would appear that the novel is mostly significant in the context of gay literature. Without Purdy’s occasional illumination of the difficult realities for gay men at this time in American history and in these types of stultifying places with their rigid social mores, the book would not have much to offer beyond a well-written character study of 1950s small-town life—which I have already read enough examples of in my lifetime. (2.5)

[Ubik 2.0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aspettando Cliff
Delicato racconto nel cuore della provincia americana degli anni ’50, pervaso da un costante senso di malinconia che la perpetua assenza del personaggio principale, al quale il titolo stesso del romanzo è dedicato, tende ad accentuare.
Il nipote: che non appare mai in scena ma del quale tutta la piccola comunità parla, in un’attesa che solo per il personaggio di Alma sembra reale e che gli altri simulano più o meno consciamente.
Peninsula Drive, la stradina di Rainbow costeggiata da villette monofamiliari in cui si svolge interamente la vicenda (gli eventi esterni sono solo narrati per sentito dire) è un microcosmo in cui anche il lettore è come racchiuso, nell’odore di ketchup della vicina azienda alimentare e in un’atmosfera al tempo stesso confortevole e claustrofobica da cui tutti, soprattutto i più giovani, cercano disperatamente di fuggire.
E’ l’America periferica di Yates, della Strout e di Anne Tyler, disegnata con precisione da entomologo attraverso la decina di personaggi che popolano le pagine del romanzo, dove la cura dei giardini, lo scambio di cortesie e pettegolezzi, il racconto delle piccole e grandi disgrazie assumono la valenza di eventi che scandiscono il lento fluire del tempo, fino a concludersi nel modo più soffuso e impalpabile nella commovente scena finale dei due vecchi zii, fratello e sorella in poltrona nella penombra serale, che si scambiano qualche parola.
“…con quella loro abitudine di stare al buio, solo i capelli bianchi che a volte sembravano fosforescenti rivelavano all’uno la presenza dell’altro. Dalle finestre aperte entrava il delizioso profumo della azalee. L’orologio del municipio batté le dieci.”

[pierlapo quimby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Secondo me la Strout, dopo aver vinto il Pulitzer con Olive Kitteridge, sarebbe dovuta andare a trovare il vecchio James Purdy con una torta alla crema fatta in casa, avrebbe dovuto scambiarci due chiacchiere di cortesia, e poi gettarsi ai suoi piedi e ringraziarlo con le lacrime agli occhi.
Quantomeno.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'An elderly woman in a small American town tries to reconstruct the life of her nephew, posted as missing in Korea, whom she deeply loved and scarcely knew. Her love was innocent, ignorant, appalling vulnerable. As neighbors fill in the picture for her we watch her love progressively exposed to truth, like the 'dreadful light' in the Blake poem, and the crucial issue is whether it will take the strain. The tyranny of love, the impediment in human communication; this is Mr. Purdy's joint theme, and his quiet voice speaking of it would fill the largest room or suburb or city.' The Guardian" From the back cover of the 1961 paperback edition from Four Square Books.

At the time this novel was first published (1960) the English author Angus Wilson Wrote:

"Mr. James Purdy is one of the few novelists whose progress really excites me. After the baroque elaboration of his earlier work, he has found in THE NEPHEW a magnificent simplicity. But let no one be deceived. This simple-seeming story of the innocence of old age is a complex, reverberating work with a subtle dialogue that constantly makes the reader turn his (please see my footnote *1 below) head as the second meaning overtakes him."

I hate to start my review by disagreeing with other reviewers and the various, minimalist, GR synopsis posted against different editions, but I don't think this is 'gay' novel, I don't think it is a novel about 'the nephew' and certainly not about 'the nephew' discovering he was 'gay' (a term, which while not unknown in the late 1950s as a term for queer/homosexual men, had none of the meanings it now has). The reason I quoted from a review of the novel printed as a blurb on the back of the first paperback edition and Mr Wilson's review, is to show how the novel was understood then, and I don't think it was homophobia (in the UK, because this review is from a UK newspaper) which prevented publishers or reviewers from either seeing, understanding or acknowledging what Purdy was writing about. The clearly identified 'homosexual' character (the term used in the novel) who was a friend of the nephew, Cliff Mason, specifically denied that Cliff was 'homosexual'. I can't help feeling that there is a retrospective insistence on reading into novels plot lines that aren't there (see my review of 'Jamie is My Hearts Desire' by Alfred Chester). Sometimes, as Sigmund Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. There are lots of reasons for a 19 year old boy to be unhappy and volunteer for the army, particularly if you have been an orphan since 14, living with relatives who might love you but who you think/fear/wonder might really only love you as an obligation.

I don't say it is impossible, but there are no allusively homoerotic potentialities in young Cliff's makeup, and I believe that concentrating on them ignores what the novel is really about, '...The tyranny of love, the impediments in human communication...' to quote the review above again. Such insistence on a 'gay' reading of the novel ignores themes that would occur again and again in Purdy's work: joining the army,' In A Shallow Grave'; the lost boy, in 'Malcolm' and 'Jeremy's Version'; but most importantly it ignores the centrality of females, powerful, independent females such as in 'The Nephew', 'Jeremy's Version', 'On Glories Course' and others. The eponymous nephew, Cliff, in this novel, compared to his aunt Alma and her circle of strong minded female neighbors is barely a cipher. He is not described physically, emotionally, or in any other way. He exists only in Alma's love for him and that is what defines and makes him real. To turn this into a novel in which the revelation of Cliff's homosexuality is the driving force of the action is to reduce the novel to a soap opera simplicity which insults Purdy's immense talents.

It is possible I am too dense to grasp the complex web of metaphors and allusive language that Purdy uses to both hide and reveal his meanings, but I don't think so. I read 'The Nephew' as a very beautiful novel about family, love and our place in the world, or more simply, home. You could throw in growing up, secrets, the things we do not tell and are not told and how little we understand those closest to us. It is also about getting older and many other interesting themes. To insist on reading it as a novel about being gay then, aside from Cliff's putative homosexuality, you should also search out subtexts to read Alma as a unacknowledged lesbian, after all she is a spinster who pursued a career.

This is my second or third time reading of this beautiful, short, poetic and very moving novel. I think it has a lot to say, but you need to read what Purdy says not what others want him to say.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

An American classic about the dark underbelly of small town life.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

(recensito anche sul mio blog, qui: http://yatesinthespace.it/il-nipote/)

"Tutte le case e i negozi di Rainbow Center erano imbandierati per il giorno della commemorazione dei caduti, quando Boyd tornò con la sua Buick da un viaggio d'affari nel Kentucky e si fermò all'angolo tra Peninsula Drive e Crest Bridge Road, accanto alla casa di sua sorella Alma. Boyd vi abitava dalla morte della moglie, avvenuta vent'anni prima."

Sono queste le parole di apertura del (secondo) romanzo di James Purdy, Il nipote, pubblicato nel 1960. Una storia sospesa tra il tentativo disperato dei protagonisti, in particolare di Alma, di ricordare il passato, di trattenere i ricordi che, uno dopo l'altro, guizzano via fulminei, e l'essere in costante attesa di ciò che è andato perduto. Il passato per Alma e Boyd combacia perfettamente con l'immagine sfocata, e sospesa da ogni certezza, del nipote Cliff, rimasto orfano da piccolo; da quando è partito per la guerra in Corea è, infatti, il loro pensiero fisso.

"Durante i quattro o cinque anni in cui Cliff aveva vissuto con loro a Rainbow Center, Alma era quasi sempre fuori perché insegnava in un'altra città, e spesso Boyd era in viaggio per affari, ma per quei cinque anni casa loro era stata per Cliff il posto in cui tornare e a cui rendere conto, fino alla Corea. Poi, da quando era partito, non parlavano altro che di lui."

A Cliff è stato aggiunto un valore in più quando se n'è andato, giacché, partendo, ha lasciato in eredità la sua assenza e la sua misteriosità, che gli zii non possono accettare passivamente. Si spiega così il motivo per cui Alma si lambicca tanto per cercare ricordi da buttar giù su un foglio e da cui partire per scrivere una commemorazione – un'idea nata spontaneamente nella sua mente dopo aver ricevuto una lettera autorevole in cui vi è scritto che Cliff è disperso da qualche parte in oriente. Tuttavia Alma, Boyd e gran parte del vicinato non hanno conosciuto realmente Cliff, non c'è molto da scrivere e da ricordare, e così, uno dopo l'altro, cadono come foglie secche e rattrappite schiaffeggiate dal vento, tutti ignari di chi fosse, cosa desiderasse e quali dubbi e paure lo tormentassero.

Il nipote è dunque un romanzo sull'incomunicabilità – rappresentata perfettamente dalla sordità del fratello di Alma, Boyd, e dalle poche lettere stringate del nipote –, sull'incapacità di conoscere realmente chi abbiamo a fianco – esemplificato dalla figura di Alma, che l'unica certezza che ha di Cliff è che è suo nipote –, sull'assurdità della guerra e di alcune consuetudini e pregiudizi ma, soprattutto, sull'attesa di un passato che non torna. Oserei dire che si tratta di elementi tradizionali all'interno dell'universo della letteratura americana, ma per niente scontati.

La critica sollevata da alcuni lettori, secondo la quale Il nipote è un romanzo lento, vuoto e acerbo, è alquanto scarsa: quest'impressione è necessaria ai fini della storia stessa. Alma e Boyd – angosciati dal non sapere se Cliff è vivo o morto – vivono i loro giorni nell'attesa di ricevere notizie e di rivederlo; per questo sembra lento. Alma, poi, è forse il personaggio più angosciato perché intimidita dal fatto di non avere in mano nulla di Cliff: nessuna lettera intima, nessuna fotografia personale, nessun documento ricco di informazioni dettagliate sulla sua personalità – non conosce per niente suo nipote; perciò il racconto sembra vuoto. La storia, alla fine, non serba alcunché di eclatante, in essa non succede nulla di estremamente suggestivo: tutto quanto, i giardini, i salotti, le torte e le tazze fumanti di caffè, sembrano nascondere qualche cosa ai nostri occhi – ogni cosa inneggia al nulla più assoluto, all'essere in potenza che è sul punto di esplodere e tuttavia non lo fa; per questo Il nipote ha un aspetto acerbo, ma in definitiva non lo è.

"Oh, Alma", lui le tese la mano, "ho paura che sia impossibile per chiunque di noi conoscere veramente un'altra persona".
Lei gli prese la mano tra le sue, un gesto che non aveva forse più fatto da quando erano giovani, tanto tempo addietro.
"Siamo tutti degli estranei l'uno per l'altro", mormorò lui.

Un romanzo ingiustamente dimenticato. Gli appassionati di letteratura americana (e non) lo devono recuperare.

[Justin Labelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

'We none of us, I'm afraid, know anybody or know one another...we're all pretty much strangers to one another' (178)
'That's what the mid century has brought to us, exits and entrances and never being anywhere' (101)
James Purdy's The Nephew has quickly become one of my favourite novels. It's engrossing from beginning to end and all its characters could likely found in a suburb near you, they certainly could in my hometown.
The premise is relatively simple, it asks the question, how much can we ever truly know of one another? After the sudden disappearance of a nephew during the war, two siblings, a man and a woman with no children of their own, try and come to terms with the possible death of someone they'd come to view as their own child. The woman, Alma, ex teacher and 'spinster', decides to write a memoriam and all too quickly realizes she knows nothing of depth about him...
Neighbours get involved and Purdy introduces the complexities of private life in a small town.
That's about it but it's so much more than the some of its parts. It feel like you've been given access to the dull and intensely captivating realities of daily life.
If a novel ever embodied the concept that 'We are, each of us, a little universe' This is it.
And truly, I don't think it's ever been done better, Babbitt, Rabbit, Run & Winesburg, Ohio be damned.

Memorable lines:
'Since Alma had retired from teaching and no longer spent most of her day with children, she had become increasingly dissatisfied with her understanding and knowledge of adult problems and lives. She did not understand she supposed, as she had heard her mother say many years before,' the main thing about life' and she had come to attribute this to her being and old-maid schoolteacher'

'...In the sudden engulfing emptiness of her life'

'Times, she thought, was so odd: things changed imperceptibly for a while, then unrecognisably'

'One forgets so much in the daily routine of living'

'In all his life he had never felt so alone, but this time he was alone as an old man. The strength he had always been able to summon in the past was gone, like his easy tears, and he felt something cold and intolerable sweep across him like the wing of the angel of death'

'There's so much we can never know about everything and everybody' (173)

'I'm afraid there's something wrong with us all'

Chapter heading favourite 'An odor of Ketchup'

[Shelter Somerset · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Purdy is a little known American writer, perhaps appreciated more overseas where he’s considered a great author of American letters. “The Nephew” (published 1960) might read dated today and Purdy’s similes and metaphors might come across as cliché, but fifty years ago readers considered his work original. The Nephew is about a middle-aged brother and sister who live together in a small Midwestern town. Unmarried and childless, their only connection to the world is their nephew who's MIA in Vietnam and their small Midwestern town which always smells of stewing tomatoes from the local ketchup factory. We never see the “the nephew” in real time, only through letters and back stories. He symbolizes for his aunt and uncle a link to the future. A future that, in Purdy’s vision, is bleak.

Purdy does not tell us their destiny is miserable—he uses metaphor after metaphor to foreshadow a world of war and death and helplessness. Torn U.S. flags and broken picture glasses all showcase Purdy's technique. The blurb mentions that the aunt discovers the nephew's homosexuality, but his sexuality is only alluded to symbolically. Purdy’s coded messages transcend even the consciousness of his main characters, who go about their mundane lives making the smallest act appear grandiose. Baking a cake or planting tulips are presented as glorious feats. Purdy’s style can perhaps be summed as “romantic realism.” He’s dramatic—perhaps melodramatic—yet maintains a somber reminder of a real world that eschews romance. His manipulation of the English language is exquisite and fascinating. If you enjoy soap operas mixed with "American Gothic," The Nephew would make the perfect introduction to Purdy's work.

[Sher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found James Purdy by reading Gore Vidal's books; Vidal was a great admirer of Purdy's work. This is the second of Purdy's books that I've read and, for me, the language in "The Nephew" felt somewhat stilted. I kept getting the feeling that this novel would make a better play; Purdy's use of dialogue here seems more like stage direction than writing. The plot is interesting: An old woman and her brother, living together in a small town, have a nephew whom they dote upon. They've been caring for this nephew since his parents were killed. The couple receives a telegram telling them that the nephew, who has gone off to the Korean War, is missing in action. From there, the plot winds its way through the lives of the nephew, his aunt and uncle and the entire small-town community they live in. I would recommend this book, but by all means, read this after you've read, "In a Shallow Grave," also by Purdy. I did not know that he was one of the great unsung writers of our time.

[Gary Garth McCann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often re-read The Nephew around or over Memorial Day weekend and have been responsible for friends reading it then. One scene has a sweater-clad character crossing the yards between houses on a gray, chilly Ohio Memorial Day, as so many Memorial Days can be where I live, in Maryland. And how many Memorial Day books do you know of? After learning their nephew is missing in the Korean War, an elderly, quarrelsome sister and brother try to reconstruct what they know of the elusive boy who lived with them from age 14, when he was orphaned, until he joined the service. In their minds he manages to be more present in his absence than he was when he lived under their roof. The edition I have includes a foreword by Edward Albee, which suggests the tenor and quality of this jewel of fiction.

[Erica Pasotti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Molto diverso dal suo primo romanzo, Malcom, che per la sua singolarità ho molto amato, non meno particolare. In una piccola città di una provincia americana, la scomparsa in guerra del nipote getta nello sconforto Alma, l'anziana zia che, con il fratello, l'aveva ospitato in casa sua per anni. Decide di scrivere su di lui un memoriale, ma ben presto si rende conto che nonostante la lunga convivenza, di lui non conosce quasi nulla. Cercherà di avere maggiori informazioni sul nipote interrogando le persone che avevano avuto a che fare maggiormente con lui. Così facendo scoprirà cose inaspettate sia sul nipote, sia su coloro che credeva di conoscere da anni.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love James Purdy's books and this early novel, written in 1960, is no exception. The setting is an Ohio town called Rainbow and the book centers on an elderly brother and sister and their nephew who is missing in action in Korea. The many character, mostly neighbors are gently and sympathetically drawn, not unlike in the writing of William Inge, another mid-western author. There are very few grotesque moments in this lovely book. Several characters are gay but well integrated in the story. Highly recommended for the sheer pleasure of reading a well-written book.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this one over break--found it in one of those "must read before you die" books. I found it to be a bit too TOO. Good enough to make me want to read Malcom though. Easy to read, and lots of dialogue, Purdy shrouds the characters in the novel with a smidge of mystery to push the reader through. The controlling idea of the story is the thought provoking: a person never really knows another person.

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come già detto per il precedente (Malcom) libro pubblicato da minimumfax, Purdy sembra scrivere in un modo molto preciso, quasi perfetto. E se nel primo libro questa sua caratteristica mi era sembrata naufragare in una trama poco centrata, troppo lontana, in questo invece il gradino si alza, perché la storia c’è, si legge e si sente. Eppure ancora qualcosa non mi quadra... (perfetta la copertina).

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unconscionably out of print, The Nephew explores how love and knowledge do and do not overlap. An exploration of "home" worthy of Marilynne Robinson without the religious baggage. Tightly written, with an eye, nonetheless, for midwestern detail. Really worth seeking out.

[Djrmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short novel about small town life with a better eye for detail than most. The moral of the story is we sometimes know the least about the people that we think we're the closest to.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is the measure of a great book? One that you enjoy reading or one that stays with you long after it ends? I can't say that I really liked this book but I think about it a lot.

[Robert Dunbar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book -- gentle, quiet, deeply felt.

[Jeanine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an American classic about an elderly brother & sister who live together. Their main interest in life is their beloved nephew, Cliff, who they just learned is missing in action overseas. Their other interest, especially that of Aunt Alma, is watching their neighbors. In fact, most of the people in this small town seem obsessed with the neighbors and what they do, how they dress, etc.

I did enjoy this book, but I feel I was too distracted last year, by serious health issues, to truly get a good feel for the story. I will hold onto the book & read it again in a couple years.

I enjoyed the more superficial story but didn't spend much time delving into the deeper issues that are evident in this fascinating book. So, I don't feel I can truly give a review at this time that gives the book justice.
I do sense that this is one of those times that when I go back and re-read the book, I find it far more enjoyable than the first time I read it. I look forward to that, & I will update my review then, also.

[Gi Reina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aunque la temática no va más allá, el autor desarrolla la trama con mucha fluidez. No es que me haya entusiasmado la historia pero ha sido ameno y muy visual gracias a las descripciones de la vida provincial norteamericana. Este libro es pura sacarina comparado con In a Shallow Grave y Narrow Rooms .

[RP · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, quiet, funny, loving book. I've read Purdy's most outrageous, transgressive, and strange work, and this is not it. This is something else. First of all, it's a novel about old people, which is a rarity! Fiction is youth-obsessed. This was a refreshing read and I loved it. It should be a classic. Penguin should reprint it or something!

[Anna Ward-Gow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A potent injection of blissful realism.

Love and propriety- how they disguise, obscure and swallow up one another- are themes which 'The Nephew' quietly and then ferociously unfurls.

James Purdy captures the genius of the small rural town.

[Ben Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

1960 life among some elderly residents of the US Midwest. This slice of smalltown realism is the first James Purdy novel I've read and I'm inclined to check his other, more speculative work.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite aspect of this novel was the dialogue -- the way characters talk past each other and about more than one thing at a time. But I loved judgmental Alma and self-effacing Boyd. (Alma felt like a precursor to Olive Kitteridge, one of my favorite fictional characters.) The ending was not everything I'd hoped it would be, but I still felt the book took me on a good ride. I particular liked going back to small-town Ohio in the 1950s, when people sending handwritten letters to each other was an important part of their story.

[Jon Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeez, what a disappointment. This book has been on my reading list for some time, and, when I finally managed to get my hands on a copy (it's a rare item in my neck of the woods), I was so excited to read it.

The excitement didn't last long. Just so-so for most of the length and then really fell to pieces in the final act. Talk about authorial interference. Nothing in the final quarter of the book seemed to happen as an organic progression from what came before; instead we got a lot of author makes things happen to...And here I'm stuck with "...to what?" Make a point? Teach a lesson? Exhibit his total abhorrence of moral turpitude?

Ugh. Just ugh.

Technically, the level of polish also seemed to diminish toward the end. He started off rather technical sound--nothing particularly special, but certainly more than serviceable. At the end he really just seemed to be trying to crank it out and reach the finish line.

[Anish · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow pacedstory describing different well to do persons with their different problems in life . The comments in a society . A book for one who are interested in society gossips and views of different people living in the same society under different conditions an d mindsets. Wholly a good read for a patient mind .the best character is the old monarch which left me astonished with her last chapter understanding and her confession of her own memorial.

[James Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many reviewers believe that The Nephew is one of Purdy's greatest works. In it, Purdy combines his aesthetic and emotional concerns, and through a succession of sardonic exchanges between two characters, he gradually opens the narrative to explore the theme of people's unbridgeable psychological distance from one another.