From the Terrace

by John O'Hara, Budd Schulberg (Introduction)

With over three million copies sold, O'Hara's great novel of America in the first half of the century was made into an acclaimed film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. It richly chronicles one man's rise to wealth, power, and prominence - and the haunting sense of failure at his heart.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Novels, Literature, Literary Fiction, American

912 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

American writer John Henry O'Hara contributed short stories to the New Yorker and wrote novels, such as BUtterfield 8 (1935) and Ten North Frederick (1955).

Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O&#...

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars for effort. For the enormous effort it took to create this 981 page behemoth. 981 pages of tiny print and tiny margins. There are no chapters. Just little breaks in the text here and there.

I suspect if Ayn Rand and Herman Wouk birthed a novel together, this would be it.

According to Budd Schulberg's introduction, O'Hara actually believed he would get the Nobel Prize for this novel, the life story of Alfred Eaton, a boy from a very well-to-do eastern Pennsylvania family, from his birth in the late 1890s to the early 1950s.

The novel is all plot and character, and lots and lots of endless, pointless dialogue in the service of pointless plot. The characters are wooden. Most of the dialogue is stilted and comes across as very dated. The sexual innuendo in conversations is painful. The amount of adultery, promiscuity, and sexual and marital weirdness in the book is almost mind-boggling, and frankly, gross. Nearly every character is pathologically horny. I'm pretty sure the only person who wasn't being promiscuous and adulterous was the protagonist's preteen daughter. But if the novel had gone on 20 more pages - trust me on this - O'Hara would have had her screwing some old codger.

A novel with characters this libertine needs a novelist skilled enough with the language to finesse it. Nabokov or Mailer are writers whose gifts at turning a phrase can soothe the revulsion a reader feels when the debauchery gets overwhelming. O'Hara is more in a class with Herman Wouk or James Michener.

The social class being portrayed is nauseating: elite prep schools, Ivy League colleges, lots of inherited wealth, ghastly provincialism ("Her mother was a Virginian, perfectly respectable, but important only in the eyes of other Virginians.").

The novel contained one funny sentence: "Alfred prided himself on his eyesight, but so badly peeled was the ship's paint that the best he could do toward reading the name on the bow was ALGEBRA, and he was reasonably certain no ship was named Algebra."

There was also this strange sentence: "They went to the diningroom and were served by Jemima, whose real name was Jemima."

Budd Schulberg, in his introduction, calls the novel's primary setting of Port Johnson, Pennsylvania, "Port Jefferson." Dear God. The words "Port Johnson" only appear in the novel seven million times, so it's an easy mistake to make.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the longest book I had read in a while. It took me a week to get through and has such a sad ending that, at the moment of finishing the last page, I was so angry at John O'Hara I had to have a stiff whiskey before I went to sleep. So, reader, you are warned. If you think you know this story from seeing the 1960 film with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, you don't. The movie tells less than half of the story and has a happy ending.

Alfred Eaton is the son of a father who never loved him or even barely noticed him. This is a book about the very wealthy and all of their social ways, a story of staunch Republicans from the late 1800s to early 1950s. These people are portrayed as hypocrites who give lip-service to morality and marriage but who screw each other literally and figuratively every chance they get.

Alfred is made out to be a fellow who overcomes his difficulties and has a sense of uprightness and honor, but in the end is a victim of the world he lives in. He has deep flaws and hurts his wife, his children and his lover as much as his father hurt him. O'Hara has you hoping all along that Alfred will make a success of his life, so I was actually angry with myself because I fell for it even though his destiny was constantly foreshadowed throughout the book.

If you ever get nostalgic for the "good old days" and feel our current world is going to hell in a hand basket, read From the Terrace. It was ever thus and it is a wonder that we still go on.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 5 out of 5]

O'Hara is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. Another GR reviewer - correctly, I think - places him among the naturalism writers. I don't know if he was influenced by Zola or others in that "movement", but he does seem to fit from what I've read.

The book opens in the latter part of the 19th Century telling us about Samuel Eaton, owner of Eaton Steel in southern Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. "But this is Alfred's story." This book is how events develop a person's character. There is an intertwining, however, of how a person's character might influence events. It would be a stretch to suggest there is a lot of plot and if I were to use the word action, you might think this is an entirely different type of novel. Things happen, and Alfred becomes a man. He is a fine man with high ideals and integrity, but, at the same time, flawed.

O'Hara gives us this one excellent and completely real characterization. The other male characters are not quite as fully fleshed, but definitely believable, as are two of the female characters. I feel less confident in suggesting that most of the female cast is completely real and believable. With those two exceptions, the women are, for the most part, bitchy sex-starved gossips.

The prose is just what I like. My one quibble is that sometimes I got lost in the long passages of dialogue and had to go back and reread to make sure I knew who was saying which lines. But the sentence structure is complex and varied and the vocabulary is such that the reader is expected to have gotten past elementary school.

There is enough sex that I commented to my husband it probably couldn't have gotten published 20 years earlier, but is quite tame now.
"You didn't even take off your nightgown."
"You pulled it up."
"No. You pulled it up."
What happens between the pulling up of the nightgown and the conversation about its having been pulled up is left to our imagination. But we are given to believe that Raymond Alfred Eaton is quite good at everything he does from making money to satisfying a woman.

From very early in, I thought this is a 5-star read. Somewhere around 700 pages the thought crossed my mind that it is a bit long. By the end, however, I felt it all belonged, that without any of it, the ending would not have been as strong. You and I might want a different ending. It is what it is. Events form a man's character.

[Dan Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I continued my explorations into the more ignored regions of John O'Hara's universe with this 897-page epic. Not as great as his two previous doorstop novels (A Rage to Live and 10 North Frederick), but, being an O'Hara fan, I enjoyed it despite a few parts I wasn't crazy about. It's been slowly dawning on me that in a way all of O'Hara's huge body of novels, novellas and stories (at least the ones I've read) comprise one mammoth encyclopedia-sized novel, and he was probably still writing it when he died. Major characters from his first novel and later novels turn up as supporting players or in cameo parts in this one and in other stories and novels – it's all one big O'Hara World, like the longest-running R-rated cable TV series ever...Is there a theme to From the Terrace? I can think of two: (1) life plans don't always work out, and when they do they don't necessariy make you happy, and (2) true love does not always conquer all. And of course, (3) in the end you die anyway, so maybe you should think a little bit harder about how you spend your time on earth. PS for fans of the Paul Newman movie version: it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, but from what I do remember I would say that, like the movie of 10 North Frederick, it has only a slight resemblance to the novel...

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was honestly one of the best novels that I've read so far in 2015! From the Terrace (1958) is a truly memorable and sweeping novel about America and its people from the beginning of the 20th century up to the early 1950s. Much of the novel takes place through the eyes of Alfred Eaton and of the people around him over the course of much of his life.

O'Hara is a chronicler of the America that he grew up in, that of eastern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, New York City, and even the Hollywood scene in southern California. O'Hara understood the people he was writing about, including the wealthy of Newport and the Hamptons, and the nouveau riche who made their money in the steel mills, on Wall Street, or the oil patches in Texas or Louisiana. More importantly, O'Hara is an artist at describing the relationships--some good, and some horribly awry--between men and women through his brilliant use of dialog. The marriage and relationship between Alfred and his wife, Mary, starts well, but goes terribly awry, and it is painful to follow its disintegration through the course of the novel. The problem is--and this is precisely why O'Hara wrote novels and stories I believe--we all know of people, or family and friends who have had just such experiences. O'Hara has an almost uncanny ability to make his reader empathize, and in many cases even sympathize, with most, if not all, of his characters.

This mammoth novel--at 900+ pages--is certainly Dickensian in temporal scope and number of characters, but is anything but humorous or even satirical. This feels like such an accurate portrait of life in mid-Atlantic America through the eyes of Americans who lived through the two world wars and the Great Depression and the post-war boom of the 50s.

I loved the title of the novel too--From the Terrace--because with each page read I felt like a bit of a voyeur watching through the strong magnification of the lens of O'Hara's pen as I watched the life of Alfred Eaton, his loves, his successes, and his failures unfold in front of me. Upon finishing the book I realized that what O'Hara was trying to do with his craft was to make me realize that there is a bit of Alfred Eaton, Mary St. John, and Natalie Benziger in each of us, and that we are all, to some degree, a product of our families. It is what we do with our 'heritage' and family legacies that interested John O'Hara and informed his writing, and I have found that it interests me too.

This is a great American novel, and one that I unhesitatingly recommend without reservation. I am so glad to have a hardcover first edition sitting on my bookshelf to go back to and revisit periodically over the rest of my life. This novel is 5 of 5 stars for me!

[Wanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this novel while in high school as I became a fan of John O'Hara. Some have complained about his verbosity but that is what I love about his style. It does take a while to get use to the layout of the novel with no chapters and long passages leading from one to another but it still was a joy to read.

Raymond Alfred Eaton began life as the second son of a successful steel magnate in a small Pennsylvania town. His lfe is bared to all in this novel beginning with the uncaring relationship with his father (he never could love Alfred as much as his elder brother who died early), through prep school and university, World War I and the life of a young bachelor in New York with his best friend. Alfred marries and begins his career after the War and he becomes quite successful as a broker. Throughout this time his marriage begins to dissolve, partnerships also begin to fail and he becomes the Assistant Secretary to the Navy during World War II. In the later years of his life he finds a new love and also faces a terrible medical tragedy.

I so much enjoyed this reread and finally understand the meaning behind the title From the Terrace--would that we all could find that place in our own lives.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author has undeniable strengths, such as a command of the time and place of his story (eastern Pennsylvania and New York in the early 20th century) and penetrating insight into the crooked byways of human motivation and behavior, but this massive work has surprisingly little to say. It is filled with long and minutely documented interactions between people, but the story does not build; it simply peters out and ends. At 1/5 its length, it would still be too long for what it is. I can't recall a more anticlimactic story.

[Armin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schwanke noch zwischen drei und vier Sternen, denn O'Haras Stärken als Autor stehen auch einige Defizite gegenüber, die in diesem Riesenformat zahlreiche Qualitäten in den Schatten stellen.
Von daher lasse ich mir mit meinem Rating noch Zeit bis ich so eine Art Essay verbrochen habe, der dieses Magnum Opus mit Nobelpreisanspruch in den Kontext des Gesamtwerkes stellt.

[Lesley · Rating 2 out of 5]

What the hell was I thinking?

[Ipek · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ben doğmadan ölen bir yazarin 60'lar koleksiyonum icin aldığım kitabi. Uzun upuzun, 4 nesil uzunlukta, neredeyse gun gun anlatilmis. Kahramanimiz her iki dunya savasini da yasadi ve anlatti, o derece..
"Herkes keyfinin pesinde" diye özetleyebilirim. Modern kitaplardan o derece biktim ki oturup sonuna kadar bunu okumayi tercih ettim.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the Terrace is a massive novel. Covering a period from the protagonist’s birth in 1897 to the postwar 1940’s. it presents power struggles at the highest levels of business and government against a background of sexual intrigue and violent death.

Raymond Alfred Eaton, called Alfred, is born into the upper economic and social stratum of a small Pennsylvania town, Port Johnson. His father, Samuel Eaton, owns the local steel mill. Alfrd is deeply suspicious of himself, largely because of an occurrence during his boyhood over which he had no control. His elder brother, William, was the favorite son and was destined to succeed his father as the first citizen of Port Johnson until he died of meningitis at fourteen. Alfred’s father never is able to show his surviving son the same attention he lavished upon William. Two additional events reinforce Alfred’s sense of himself as a sort of jinx to others. He quarrels with his first love, sixteen-year-old Victoria Dockwiler, forbidding her to go riding in a borrowed Stutz Bearcat. She defies him and is killed in a car crash. Alfred then begins an affair with a family friend, Norma Budd, seven years older than he. Norma is later the victim of a married lover, who kills first her and then himself. Although it is irrational for Alfred to think that he corrupted Norma, he feels vaguely responsible later for her death.

Alfred attends Princeton University until the United States enters World War I. He serves with distinction as a naval officer but does not return to Princeton after the war. Declining his father’s offer of a job at the mill he and Lex Thornton, his best friend , start an aircraft company together. Alfred meets eighteen-year-old Mary St. John at a party, and here begins the sort of sexual triangle typically found in O’Hara’s later novels.

Mary is engaged to Jim Roper, a pre-medical student. Alfred is strongly attracted to Mary, more sexually than romantically, and he succeeds in winning her away from Roper. Their marriage in the spring of 1920 corresponds exactly with the death of Alfred’s father. The marriage is not a happy one. Meanwhile, Alfred has happened upon a young boy who has fallen through the ice into a pond. Alfred saves the child from drowning, thus earning the gratitude of the boy’s grandfather, James MacHardie. MacHardie is a rich and powerful Wall Street banker. He offers Alfred a job in New York, which he takes becoming an immediate success in banking, but he soon learns that he has relinquished his freedom of action. The image of MacHardie and Company is not to be tarnished by the divorce of any of its executives, so Alfred must stay married to Mary. At this point Alfred's life slowly declines through troubles with a mistress and at his job. The story would be a tragedy if Alfred had any heroic qualities. He never learns how to live with himself or others and gradually is isolated.

As the novel ends, Alfred is recovering from an illness brought on by the travails of his public and private life. He is unable to find another position, having cut himself off from the business and government arenas in which he previously thrived. He is financially secure, but he is not yet fifty and has no prospects in business or social relationships. This novel is an excellent example of naturalism demonstrating the disoluteness of the upper class. As usual in O’Hara’s fiction, the physical details are flawless. The clothing, architecture, technology, and language of the novel’s succeeding decades are authentic down to the minutest point. Yet, perhaps due to the myriad details, it ultimately was a bit of a slog to finish. John O'Hara is at his best in his short stories and novels like the classic, Appointment in Samarra.

[John Mcconahey]

Fifty years ago, I remember being impressed with the movie version of this book (starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and especially, Ina Balin). But, as is the penchant for most moviemakers, director Mark Robson frequently departed from the details of the book, and thus, from an enthralling character study of a complicated man.

At the close of the 19th century, Alfred Eaton is the second son born into the family of a steel mill owner. When his favored elder brother dies of illness, Alfred welcomes the prep school experience rescuing him from the inattention of his father. Continuing to Princeton, an association begins with a fellow student that leads to a enduring friendship. The Great War intervenes with his education, and Alfred’s hormones are given a change to rage. Following the war, he enters a short-lived business with his collage buddy before circumstances cause him to accept a Wall Street position necessitating frequent travel. His marriage suffers and eventually fails.

O’Hara depicts life in a bygone era and socio-economic class that is not only fascinating to vicariously experience, but also demonstrates that fallibilities are not confined to the unwashed masses.

[Madelaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cruellest ending to a novel I think I've ever read! A really unusual feat of writing: O'Hara doesn't do grand themes, instead he exactly captures the nature of a long, meandering human existence. Some passion, loyalty, lots of sex, but most of all disappointment and decay.
Alfred Eaton is 'successful', but weathers numerous depressing failures and setbacks, he loses people and then recovers from their loss, the bright, talented faces of his youth turn faded and dissolute. He falls spectacularly in love and then fails in the end to live up to the strength of his bond with Natalie. At the outset it seems that a troubled relationship with his father will define Alfred, but that too lessens in intensity and dies away.
This isn't a novel that has unity or beauty....it's a harsh, true read about the nature of existence and the inevitable victory of time, old age and death.
It's also very irritating, overloaded with dialogue that often grates, and somewhat dated - I'm not sure if I had my chance again I'd want to have spent 2 months on this. But it is definitely unique...and Alfred, Mary and Natalie will stay with me.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

On a John O'hara binge at the moment. What an epic this is!

[Elba Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful beyond words....speaks of a world that no longer exists and those born to a noble breed that is slowly going to extinction.

[Rick · Rating 1 out of 5]

200 pages in and I give up. Thus far nothing has really happened, it is mostly just typing. O'Hara's worst. I may try again, someday.

[Matt McClure · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the Terrace, is, purportedly, John O'Hara's favorite of all his novels. A Bildungsroman both conventional and unique, From the Terrace is difficult to assess in terms of its present status and value to the modern reader. Well, perhaps its present status is easy to assess: it is relatively unknown and out of print, but does it deserve to be?

The book revolves around Raymond Alfred Eaton, a boy born to wealth and notoriety in a fictional town in Pennsylvania whose main industry, iron and steel, is harbored by a factory owned by Alfred's father, Samuel. The book's opening pages reveal a great deal of information and backstory to the town and the Eaton family, revolving around Samuel and the father of his wife, Martha. This kind of setup is pervasive throughout the novel in that a great deal of background information about a character is presented, often portrayed via a short biographical sketch against some social backdrop to reveal the character's general disposition and propensities. O'Hara does not spend any time describing physical characteristics of the players or the setting within his novel.

The majority of the novel is comprised of these background sketches, detailing current thoughts or motivations, as well as dialog. To describe From the Terrace as conversational is an understatement. Characters engage in conversation almost incessantly and with flawless execution. O'Hara is known to have praised his own ability to capture dialects and manners of conversation among America's upper crust, but don't expect Kennedy Toole's precision or Hubert Selby's street language. O'Hara does not shy from risque subject matter, often invoking humor, aphorisms, tasteful sexuality, and plain-talk.

The primary issues with O'Hara's novel stem from its unevenness. Due to the book's length, specific criticisms can be rendered but then offset elsewhere. For example, the conclusion of the first major section of the book, in which Alfred's first love, Natalie Benzinger, meets her fate, the reader is left with a poor impression of its impact on Alfred. The narrator reveals Alfred's deep love for Natalie, but it is not demonstrated in thought or speech. In contrast, there is great emotional depth in one of the book's final acts, during which Alfred recounts his life's successes and failures (mostly failures, from his vantage point) to his second wife on a terrace in a California home.

O'Hara's novel is rife with such inconsistencies, perhaps the most egregious of which is is the absurd turn of Alfred's first wife, Mary, who eventually becomes estranged. Despite the book focusing heavily on dialog and inert descriptions of characters within present circumstances, it is difficult for the reader to develop a real understanding of any character. It is contrasts like these – those where the book is achingly dull and foreign one minute and strikingly astute another – that make an overall assessment difficult. O'Hara's tone is unforgivably uneven, skipping major life events, such as Alfred's time in the Navy during the First World War, to concentrating on seemingly innocuous and inconsequential encounters, to the narrator blatantly spoiling a major plot event two-thirds into the book that takes place toward the end. From the Terrace chronicles seemingly random selections of its main character's life in the world. But, perhaps, that is quite deliberate.

At times, one can't help but suspect influence of its composition from from Ayn Rand. On the surface, O'Hara's novel and Rand's The Fountainhead both include indefatigable figures giving long speeches, main figures with conservative undertones and a self-righteous individualist spirit. The difference is that O'Hara's novel does not have a cohesive or beleaguering agenda, and Alfred is, ultimately, defeated by the end, unlike Rand's central characters who are perfect, immovable, and in control. The bleak tone toward the end of the From the Terrace is poignant and resonant.

With all this stated, it is impossible not to recommend O'Hara's novel. Though incontestably imperfect and often confounding in execution and purpose, it is perfectly memorable. Despite its size, From the Terrace is an easy read in terms of composition and thematically relatable. Although it may be difficult to relate to any one character, including Alfred, the reader can relate rather easily to the tones, themes, and events O'Hara presents. The book is rather innocuous and unremarkable like many of the lives in which it portrays, yet its persistently reflective nature appeals to the reader's emotions and inner desire for self-reflection, giving him something to latch onto as he reads about Alfred's increase wealth that is inversely proportional to his physical and emotional well-being. There is beauty in From the Terrace, but the reader must be patient in order to find it. O'Hara's novel deserves to be in contemporary conversation, for better and worse.

[David R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like I said, whew! I think O'Hara was getting a bit bored by the 800th page. The characterizations are kinda like Steinbeck and Henry Miller, as if all the characters are half drunk all the time, which they are. The writing style is dry, flat expository prose, and a lot of it. I can just hear the dialog from an old 30's movie while reading this novel (see something by Fontanne and Lunt). The author blabbers on a lot on every subject! The wittiness is forced and sounds contrived; the snappy conversations between Alfred and his various women are cringy (Just like Steinbeck at his worst), and some of the provincial and black dialects are jarring and seem "off". It seems to have been written in haste and not much edited. Sometimes things don't make a lot of sense to me, and it's hard to keep track of so many plot lines. For example: why did George Fry quit working for Samuel Eaton? Was it the Catholic thing? Why did Alfred think the Lex would want to fight him when he saw him next? and why was Alfred so hurt when he saw Mrs. Clemmie Shreve Hennessy Porter going upstairs with Larry Von Elm? Had I missed something earlier in the novel, or was it just that she was the wife of his friend? It didn't seem like he respected or cared much one way or the other about Clemmie. It's often hard to tell how people feel during conversations in the novel, until the aftermath of the conversations, like his final meeting at the MacHardie Company and his relations with Percy Hasbrouck (I know, I know, show, not tell; but still.....). A lot of stuff which perhaps I don't understand seems to be allusive of ostensibly obsolete societal codes e.g. "people named Duffy don't get into Groton". O'Hara's approach to the sex act..... that it is flat and mechanical and unattached to emotion, seems salacious and diagrammatic, almost like pornography. Maybe it is that way with some people. Seems a bit cynical, to make the novel "naughty" to increase sales? The plot follows the life and ambitions of Alfred Eaton, and that seems to be the superficial theme of the novel.....the overarching theme is how as one ages, one becomes coarse, jaded; and finally, emotionally blind and crippled. Now, after finishing the novel, I realize that he is doing Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man"! In "A Dance to the Music of Time", William Powell analyses the protagonist's life, using much more lyrical English, and a whole lot funnier. There is no humor at all in this novel! All the pedantry and self-seriousness begins to wear on one. As an artist, Updike has him beat all to heck, as does John Cheever, but then maybe they learned from O'Hara what doesn't work. "Journey to Samarra" was masterful (and he manages to fit that story into this novel, as an anecdote).
I love the way the author is so precise and specific about a lot of things i.e: the year and make of carriages, automobiles, airplanes, celebrities, bands, music, fashion, culture. Shockingly this was written pre-Google.... so people in 1958 were on their own to know what he was talking about. Like me growing up in New Mexico and reading sophisticated novels as a teenager, and not knowing what in the heck they meant! What is Groton and why Harvard and Yale are better than Princeton, what does a '24 Marmon look like, what did Mike Markel's Orchestra sound like?
Anyway, Alfred Francis (oops, I mean Raymond Alfred) Eaton seems to be a "first class heel" as they said of Don Draper in "Mad Men"! Those script writers seem to have drawn much from this novel, and "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates, which is a far superior novel from the same period, IMHO. The political parts of the novel at the end, about his sojourn in DC are apropos of the present political turmoil, which is kinda fun!
Imminently worth reading! I was tempted at one point to give up, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

[Tim Pieraccini · Rating 3 out of 5]

This came into my hands via The Modern Library, where it was recommended as a 'traditional novel that works'. Being a traditional writer myself, I was intrigued. Did I stay intrigued? Mostly. I have to say it's something of a relief to find a writer who finds it harder to delete extraneous dialogue than I do; this book is too long, and it definitely could have been shorter. I love big books, but this is the first one I would have cut, I think.
All that said, it's a good read, coasts along, and the dialogue, if excessive (and excessively unattributed), is very naturalistic for the most part. If you want a 20th C life story to get lost in, you could do worse than read about Raymond Alfred Eaton.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am giving this five stars, for those who already like John O'Hara. If you aren't a fan of his writing, you probably won't enjoy it. And if you are just getting started on reading him, don't pick this book first. Read his short stories and his shorter novels.

It is a long read. Nearly 900 pages. The gist of the story could have been told in a short story or a novella. It's the story of a man's life. What makes it good reading is O'Hara's ability to capture dialogue so well. It's almost a sociological study of a time period and a class of people in it than a story with much action. So you read it to enjoy O'Hara's observations rather than a compelling storyline.

[Lisa]

I don't know what to say about this book ... it was my first (maybe it'll be my only?) John O'Hara book. It took me a month to read but did keep me turning the pages... and I learned something about this period of America history. But was so frustrated by the ending that it spurred me to look at feedback from other readers. I felt like the other reviewer who was angry at the ending... but I realize perhaps that was the point. I guess I'm glad I read it but not sure I'll embark on another O'Hara after this one.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has huge ambitions. It is elephantine in size, with a huge cast of characters, and it spans roughly fifty years in the life of a high WASP from Pennsylvania. The beginning of the book was vastly better than the rest of it. O’Hara fancied himself a philosopher and makes lots of references to human nature that didn’t ring true to me. His hero is also an anti-labor Republican.

There’s a lot of cutesy dialogue between the hero and his lady love. I mean seriously, about what they’re eating for dinner or whether there’s milk in the fridge.

[Tom Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you saw the Paul Newman film, and feel confident you know this novel, think again. The massive work not only covers the basic plot, in the film script, but also looks back to the start of this powerful family. O’Hara, a novelist successful in the 50s, still glistens in style and focus, especially in his epic novels.

[Joe Shumock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this book twice. I enjoyed seeing Alfred's many phases of his life. It was interesting to see him become his own man and then began to deteriorate.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh, yawn. I was expecting more from O'Hara, but the only reason I finished (most of) it was that it was on my "books to movies" list.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

John O'Hara strives to be a strictly naturalistic writer who puts a mirror up to the characters and their milieu to show how psychological or social forces control their lives. He clearly wants future generations to go to his works for sociological insights about the American Midwest in the 40s and 50s. But there's a problem: he has a strong sense of virtue, and all but openly admires his virtuous characters, and in From the Terrace he indulges his moral sense to a greater degree than in his other novels I've read. David Eaton is a hero, and both the author and the reader root for him. Near the end, however, Mr. O'Hara seems to belatedly wake up to the fact that he is not a romanticist, and rather abruptly (for an 800-page novel) moves his protagonist in the direction of renouncing some of his most admirable traits. This is done most deftly and convincingly, and does succeed in rescuing his magnum opus from been a closet romantic novel, on the order of, say, The Fountainhead. But by doing so he cancels out much of what was most valuable in the preceding plot. In the end, not only David Eaton loses his soul, but the novel itself.

Why five stars? Because it is such an absolutely brilliant near-miss.

[Raul Clement · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a perfect novel. The last few hundred pages got somewhat repetitive, and the conclusion wasn't ultimately satisfying and didn't feel of a thematic piece with the novel. However, I can't give less than five stars to a 900-page book (1000+ in some editions) that managed to hold my intellectual and emotional interest.

There's all sorts of technical stuff here for a writer to learn from and appreciate. O'Hara's dialogue is absolutely brilliant -- honest, funny, and pitched exactly right for each character. And he makes better use of the "jump cut" than any literary writer I've read: i.e. - a scene builds to a culmination, but instead of showing you that culmination directly, he cuts to its aftermath. This can be hours, months, or years later, but the effect is always surprising and more interesting than seeing the event itself.

Even if you're not a writer, you will definitely enjoy this if you like novels with big historical and social panoramas. (Can you have a small panorama? I don't think so...)

[Andrew Lasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book definitely does not fit in with the books I usually read. However, I generally like to give anything a try and picked up this behemoth randomly one afternoon.

Weighing it at nearly 900 pages, I was a little bit overwhelmed at first. As soon as I started reading, though, I was hooked. This book is all about bad people treating other bad people badly. It is like a soap opera in novel form.

Because of that, this book is a kind of guilty pleasure. I wouldn't say that I felt ashamed for reading each page and delighting in everyone's misery, but I certainly wasn't proud of the fact that I enjoyed it. As I mentioned before, this book is long, so that might turn a lot of people off. I think that you should give it a chance, though. You might be surprised at how you feel about it.

[Harley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of numerous books I read in the first year of marriage, while new husband was both working and going to school, so I had lots of time on my own. I had a morbid fascination with these characters and what I remember as a dark story. I distinctly remember setting the book down in my lap when I finished it, and as I came back to reality I thought, oh thank goodness, I don't know anyone like these people. I should go back and read it again to see if that was just my innocence at the time. Or maybe I wouldn't judge them so harshly now.

[Carole · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a book I couldn't put down. But the ending was so disappointing I almost threw it out the window! My other complaint was that the print was so tiny and close together, with narrow margins, that I actually had to track with my finger sometimes to keep from reading the same line over and over. (library book)

There was so much promiscuity, adultery, premarital sex! I kept asking myself, "How could the person who wrote My Friend Flick write so much about sex? Then I realized Mary O'Hara wrote My Friend Flicka. Ha Ha!!