Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

Since his father was not a financial or social success, Charles Gray was determined to become a prosperous and prestigious business executive

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literary Fiction, 20th Century, American, Literature, Novels

559 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Pulitzer Prize for Novel in 1938 for The Late George Apley

John Phillips Marquand (November 10, 1893 – July 16, 1960) was an American writer. Originally best known for his Mr. Moto spy stories, he achieved popular success and critical respect for his satirical novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley in 1938. One of his abiding themes was the confining nature of life in America's upper class and among those who aspired to join it. Marquand treated those whose lives were bound by these unwritten codes with a characteristic mix of respect and satire.

By the mid-1930s he was a prolific and successful writer of fiction for slick magazines like the Saturday Evening Post. Some of these short stories were of an historical nature as had been Marquand's first two novels (The Unspeakable Gentleman and The Black Cargo). These would later be characterized by Marquand as “costume fiction”, of which he stated that an author “can only approximate (his characters) provided he has been steeped in the (relevant) tradition”. Marquand had abandoned “costume fiction” by the mid-1930s.

In the late-1930s, Marquand began producing a series of novels on the dilemmas of class, most centered on New England. The first of these, The Late George Apley (1937), a satire of Boston's upper class, won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1938. Other Marquand novels exploring New England and class themes include Wickford Point (1939), H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), and Point of No Return (1949). The last is especially notable for its satirical portrayal of Harvard anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner, whose Yankee City study attempted (and in Marquand's view, dismally failed) to describe and analyze the manners and mores of Marquand's Newburyport

Reviews

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. Published in 1947, and contemporary at the time, at this point it almost qualifies as a historical novel. Charley Gray, a hard-working assistant vice-president at a small but tony New York bank, is twisting in the wind waiting for news about whether he, or a presumed rival, will be tapped for a vacant vice presidency. We spend a day in Charley's life, and then flash back to his coming of age in, and ultimately leaving, a tradition-bound small Massachusetts town in the wake of traumatic personal events. Marquand's touch in describing the structures of small-town life, prejudices, and social structure is wonderful, and his accounting of Charley's life in the New York world of finance and family is perfect.
Charley is a thoughtful and sympathetic protagonist; we like him, admire him and want him to succeed. He's bound in social chains that are hard to break, but he behaves himself and doesn't give up. His observations are acute. Plus, he went to Dartmouth. What's not to like? (Never mind that every one in the hierarchies Charley comes in contact with loses no opportunity to disparage Dartmouth.) One could wish at times he acted more decisively on his judgements, but if he did, there wouldn't be any story to tell.
A wonderful book of American life and times in the late twenties, and in the financial working world of New York just after WWII.

[Mike V · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this in a high school class 40+ years ago. I loved it then, so I recently looked for it at the library to see if I still would like it. I did, very much. I love novels like this, and wish I could find more. If you like John O'Hara and Louis Auchincloss (two of my other favorite authors), I think you will enjoy PONR.

I also would recommend Melvin (or is it Melville?) Goodwin, USA, also by Marquand. Just an excellent read.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Annoyed by the amused detachment of the observers in When Prophecy Fails and Doomsday Cult? Strike back by reading this: Charles Gray has a solid job in a solid bank in New York in the solid post-war years, being passively pushed forward by his ambitious wife, when he has a chance encounter with a sociologist who conducted a study of his Massachusetts home town circa 1925.

As he reads the resulting book 'Yankee Persepolis', we're drawn into the inner narrative - Charles' memories of those days, how he grew up and how he came to leave. And the outer story is resolved in a daring and surprising way.

Charles' father is a triumph, a subtly damaging portrait on a level with John Dorrit or Harold Skimpole.

Marquand was apparently very disparaging about his non-Mr Moto books, regarding them as potboilers. Don't listen to him. This one is fantastic.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

John P. Marquand, once among the most popular novelists in America, is now virtually unknown.  Reading Point of No Return, his novel of middle-to-upper class manners in a small New England town, it’s hard to see why.  The high-brow critics of his era never had any use for him but the public adored him.  He won a Pulitzer Prize and many of his books were Book of the Month Club selections.  Nearly all his novels published after 1937’s The Late George Apley were best-sellers.  And now he’s virtually unread.  Why?

I have a guess as to why, though I welcome other’s ideas.  There was once a time in America when there was a ruling middlebrow culture.  During the twenty year period after WWII, the exploding demographic of young suburban businessmen and their wives saw themselves as the future.  They’d fought in the war, they’d triumphed, and they regarded economic success and personal satisfaction as their reward.  They were almost exclusively white and middle-to-upper class and they were centered in the Northeastern part of the country.  The men went to work and the women stayed home and raised the children.  Unlike their parents, they had money left over after the bills were paid and this afforded them leisure time to explore cultural activities.  They played golf, they belonged to the country club and they summered at the shore.  They listened to the same songs, went to the same movies, and read the same books.  And what were these songs, movies, and books about?  Why, themselves, of course.  If there was ever a monolithic cultural consensus in America, it was perhaps reflected in this late-1940’s to early-1960’s generation. Call it the Mad Men culture.  Marquand might be the post-child of this middlebrow culture for no one reflected it, for better or worse, than he did, and everyone seemed to realize it at the time.  Perhaps he has fallen out of favor because his subjects, like John Cheever, are so identified with this particular cultural consensus, one that is long-gone and repudiated.  This is my guess as to why Marquand has virtually disappeared.  If his subjects were a reflection of the people and attitudes of a bygone era, what could he possibly have to say to us now?   

Well, the answer is, plenty.  I was a bit dismayed when I first picked up Point of No Return and found it was 550+ pages.  Who wants to read a novel of that length about the intricate class structure of pre-war WASP society?  I immediately formed a prejudice against it and assumed it would be better if it were shorter.  The thought occurred to me that maybe this was the root of Marquand’s problems with the critics, that perhaps he was nothing more than a over-blown dramatist who heaped detail upon detail, who explained every nuance, until there was nothing left to to the reader’s imagination.  But this is not the case, not even close.  Marquand is certainly no minimalist and his exploration of pre-war WASP society is detailed and meticulous but what makes it work is that it is so true to life.  There are no false notes here, nothing that seems even remotely out of place.  You always feel like you’re reading something by someone who fully understands his characters and the situations he places them in.  The book’s length turns out to be one of its strengths because the story is told at a leisurely pace which allows the reader to clearly understand the everyday rhythms of life in Clyde, Massachusetts (a stand-in for Marquand’s hometown of Newburyport, MA.)  Another of the book’s strengths is Marquand’s steady and competent prose. He has little of the charm or style a greater writer might bring to their work but, again, this is a good thing.  A more stylistic account would take away from the verisimilitude Marquand achieves. 

The story is about the life of Charles Gray, circa 1947, who is married with two children and works as an investment banker at the Stuyvesant Bank in New York City.  Charles is being considered for a vice-presidency at the bank, a position he and his wife Nancy want very much.  One day he awakes and finds his thoughts on his boyhood home of Clyde, Massachusetts, a place he hasn’t seen in nearly two decades and one he thinks about rarely.  By what perhaps is a coincidence he is asked to go back to Clyde to do some research on a business the bank is thinking of investing in.  At this point Marquand begins to tell the story of Charles’ time in Clyde through a series of flashbacks in which we trace his boyhood through adolescence and early manhood.  One of the main plots in the book has to do with Charles’ father John, a charming, likeable, rogue of a man who has little care for convention, a liability in a town as class-oriented as Clyde.  Marquand contrasts the steady and reliable Charles with his charming but reckless father.  We see early on that Charles is the antithesis of his father, purposefully.  Charles understands early in life that John Gray, for all his good-natured likeability, is a careless and foolhardy man, a man who will inevitably hurt those who love him most.  I am not saying I identify with Charles but one of Marquand’s skills is to show us glimpses of ourselves in his characters.  While arguing with his father about his reckless investments, which threaten the entire family, John insists to Charles that he’ll be careful, which Charles knows from experience is a lie: 

When it came to money, everyone always promised to be careful.  In fact, it often seemed to Charles that most of his subsequent life had been spent in a series of timid, hedging precautions, in balancing probable gains and losses in order to keep sums of money intact.  The probity, the reliability and the sobriety that such a task demanded were to make his own life dull and careful.  Except for a few brief moments, he was to face no danger or uncalculated risk.  He was to measure his merriment and hedge on his tragedies.  He was to water down elation and mitigate disaster, and to be at the right place at the right time, and to say the right thing with the right emphasis.  Yet, whenever he thought of himself as a dull, deluded opportunist, compared with other people, he always remembered the intensity of his own feelings when his father had been speaking.  There had been a hideous sense of impending disaster, and no possible way to stop it.   

Who among us has not had such thoughts about themselves?  I certainly have about my own self, along with the same self-justifying rationalization that Charles has.  Point of No Return is full of such glimpses into the human condition.  We get it (spoiler alerts!!) when Charles, deeply in love with a young lady who, according to Clyde’s intricate class distinctions, is out of his league, convinces himself that everything will turn out fine.  His love blinds him to the fact that it could never turn out fine and the reader sees this long before Charles does.  The girl is too weak, too much a part of Clyde, to ever go against her father’s wishes.  When she finally breaks it off with Charles and lies crumpled at her father’s feet in front of him, the father and daughter are so pathetic we breathe a sigh of relief for Charles – he can get away clean from this situation. From that point it was clear (at least it was to me) that Charles’ personal relationship worked out for the best.  Nancy, who would become his wife, is a much more admirable character than the weak, tradition-bound Jessica.  Nancy has the traits – good-nature, a sense of humor, compassion and understanding, no illusions, no nonsense - most of us would want in a wife.  For those of us long married, we get another glimpse into ourselves in the relationship between Charles and Nancy, in particular the easy comfort which comes from knowing someone so well so long, when you know each other’s thoughts so well that words are often not necessary for communication.  We also get a glimpse of reality in the book’s final pages when Charles, having gotten the vice-presidency he so desperately wanted, finds no joy or satisfaction in it.  His climb up the corporate ladder will afford him and his family a bigger house in a better neighborhood, perhaps membership in a more upscale country club, perhaps a new sailboat, but that is all.  It will not buy happiness, which will still be elusive. His doubts and discontents will still remain.  Charles Gray is one of the most fully-realized characters I’ve even encountered in a novel because Marquand has made him fully human.  He’s everyman, which is another way of saying he’s you and me.

Read Marquand if you love a story in which you get such glimpses into yourself.  When my wife noticed how wrapped up I was in the book she asked me what it was about.  Not wanting to stop reading to explain the whole plot, I shrugged and simply said, “It’s about life.”  

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

woof-woof

How come nobody remembers J.P. Marquand anymore ? At his best, he produced some of 20th century America's great fiction. POINT OF NO RETURN is perhaps his greatest novel and surely one of the "great American novels", up there with "An American Tragedy" by Dreiser, Warren's "All the King's Men", and Norris' "McTeague" Lewis' "Dodsworth", and several by Faulkner. It is quieter, it takes its time, and there are no dreadful family secrets, no violence, sex, or perversions of any kind. In short, it is a novel of another era, but a great novel nonetheless.
It seems to me that two opposing tendencies have always occupied American culture. One is quite puritanical, centered more in New England and Philadelphia, concerned with moderation, education, hard work, and success to those who deserve it. The Old North Church in Boston, where our nation can be said to have begun, typifies this tendency. In what other nation is the historical heart so simple and plain ? The other tendency, found in many places, but epitomized today in Las Vegas and a certain president, is about luck, flash and vulgar display, raw opportunism and the willingness to pull whatever tricks it takes.
In POINT OF NO RETURN, Marquand takes an officer in a genteel Manhattan bank who hopes to be promoted to vice-president. He has a rival, somebody a bit more flashy, more willing to utter subtle put-downs behind his back. The officer, Charles Gray, hails from Newburyport, Mass., but has married and made his career elsewhere. He is sent back to his old hometown suddenly on bank business. The majority of the book is devoted to his memories of how he grew up in this small New England city on a river by the sea. Marquand contrasts the sober, hard-working, reliable Charles with his father, a likeable neer-do-well who gambled everything he could get his hands on in the stock market. The family is shown in the context of a conservative small town where "everything is in its place and there's a place for everything." The painstaking detail, the nuances of small town New England life, the nature, the passing of the seasons, the varieties of people found in such an environment are what make this such a great novel. If Charles Gray is not such a vivid character as those found on the pages of Balzac, Zola, or Faulkner, that may be the point. Charles romances the daughter of an `old money' family, but it is not to be. Class and tradition, as well as the vagaries of history and his own father's insouciance block him. He leaves his Boston job and goes to work in New York, where he meets his wife. When he returns to New York from his short trip to the past, he despairs. His rival will surely triumph. Charles and his wife are invited to the bank president's mansion by the sea. The ending is perfect. That is, it perfectly reflects Marquand's view that America became great because of its ability to produce people like Charles Gray--steady, reliable, intelligent, and willing to be a team player.
Marquand no doubt admired such people, perhaps a little too much. One of the strong characters in POINT OF NO RETURN is an anthropologist, Malcolm Bryant, who comes to do a social survey of Newburyport (called "Clyde" in the novel). Marquand paints him as a grotesque, unpleasant man with no social skills who treats the townspeople like insects. Bryant is based on the character of F. Lloyd Warner, an anthropologist who indeed carried out a social study of Newburyport in the 1920s. Throughout, Marquand displays an almost Antipodean dislike of intellectuals and academics, yet his own work is close to modern anthropology. That is probably why I like it so much. He has described the roots and origins of a solid class of businessmen; how they avoided the temptations of speculation and opportunism on one hand, and prevailed over the too-tight restrictions of class on the other. He shows how certain New England values and styles permeated east coast institutions in the first half of the 20th century. Though business is hardly the only occupation of a large country, America owes a lot to those generations who produced great numbers of people willing to labor for years to build solid industries and financial institutions. POINT OF NO RETURN is a slow, lyrical study of a life and career which may illustrate the whole society of the time. I consider it a classic. When I looked around ten years ago and saw Enron, sub-prime mortgage disasters, and 24 year-old arms dealers with government contracts worth hundreds of millions for defective ammunition, I despaired. I fear the country has gone to the dogs. Where are our Charles Grays ? Woof woof.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and highly recommend it, especially if you are interested in small-town New England social politics and stock market crashes. It has been out of print for years -- a totally overlooked masterpiece.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really a tremendous read - loved the whole thing. Haven't fully processed my reaction to this work, but it's certainly the best book I've read this year

[Janine Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, a good book to read to escape the turbulent present times. This book would appeal to those who like Trollope, as I do. It quietly observes the effect of social class, and how it can limit opportunities in careers and marriages. It takes place post WWII, and the pace of life seems slower than today, which is soothing. I thought it was quite well written, although I think the male characters are more fully fleshed out than the female ones. The main character, Charles Gray, seems very decent, hard working, and a bit stodgy, but still sympathetic. His first love, Jessica, was from an upper upper class family, whereas Charles was from a lower upper class family; and that makes all the difference. But I can’t fathom what he sees in Jessica, who claims to love him but who seems to have no backbone at all. The woman he marries, Nancy, seems to have the proper amount of ambition to match Charles’ aspirations, and seems to be the perfect wife for him, but she seems two dimensional. But then, I suspect no woman could truly make Charles happy. He is intent on being successful, and being the opposite of his irresponsible father, but has never really learned what it takes to be happy.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I mean it’s all so superficial. The bank president and the big job, and what will happen to Junior, and whether a boiled shirt will help. The values of it are childish. It hasn’t any values at all.”

John P. Marquand's tremendous 1949 novel of the upper middle class, Point of No Return, is as much a cry of despair as anything in Kafka.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Made me think about how we as people view the different events in our life and how perspective really is everything. A slow moving and thoughtful book, obviously not a page turner, but satisfying nonetheless

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 2 out of 5]

During a stressful possible career step-up in the late 1940s, banker Charles Gray reflects on his family, home town, and coming of age in the 1920s. Too introspective, dated, and lengthy to appeal to me despite the historical details. Originally published in 1947.

[Tricia Elworthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow read, but thought provoking. Somethings change with time, yet somethings never do.

[Gaucho36 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an essential book I wish I had read in my 20s. It has many aspects but the primary theme regards the “pursuit of happiness” aka material success and social standing. There is a line towards the end of the book that reads (paraphrasing) “the more you pursue happiness, the less Liberty you have and in the end it can leave you in ruins”…… a cautionary tale I can relate to

[Jackson Elworthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Johnson Street smells like beef.

[Jason Reese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally good portrayal of the inner life of Mid-Century WASPs. Beyond that, a thought provoking examination of class, filial piety, and home. I’ll be chewing on this one for a long time. After reading this, I am quite eager to read more by Marquand.

[Jessika Hoover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially, I was unsure what to make of this book. Here is a book written in the 1940s by an author who, by all appearances, was wildly popular during his time. So, why has this book seemingly fallen to the wayside? Well, now that I've finished, I can't really say. I enjoyed this novel immensely. It wasn't a pageturner, by any means, but I kind of liked it all the more for that. It reminded me of a book you'd curl up with under a blanket in your comfy chair next to your reading lamp to while away the hours on a dark and chilly night. (Can you tell I'm a mood reader?) It was a quiet, thoughtful read, and I very much enjoyed getting to know Charley Gray. He's a bit of an "every man," but that's something that doesn't bother me. I think Charley is a character that will stick with me for a while. Yesterday's "rat race" might look slightly different than today's, but in a lot of ways, it's the same. And, at least for me, it's something I frequently give thought to, so Charley was somebody I felt very sympathetic towards.

All in all, I thought this was an excellent book, and I truly think it is a misplaced classic. I will certainly be on the lookout for more of John P. Marquand's works.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Point of No Return is the story of a man who comes of age before WWII in small town America.. The writing is direct. Charles and the town of Clyde are the two main characters in this work Written just after WWII, it gives us a bird's eye view of a changing America. Clyde is older America where people stayed in town in the same social strata they were born into, working in local jobs in perhaps a local factory or small business in the town. Charles is a striver who wants to do "better" moving from the small town first to a smaller city and then finally NYC. The style of writing is direct and concise. I felt like I was in good hands from the first page to the last. It is like settling into a comfortable chair on a cold winter's night. I enjoyed this book and intend to look for other works by Mr. Marquand.

[Trisha Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this novel of pre and post Wall Street Crash. The story of Charles and his Father and the influences, subtly left after his Father passes away. Charles, like many of the period, constantly compares himself to others, as does everyone in the story of small town Clyde, Massachusetts. In the end, the striving he has made over his lifetime, somehow seems an echo of his past experiences, and is not what he had been trained to think it would be. Very well written and probably a very accurate tale of the 1940's, and the pressures to be successful.

[Susan Kruger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book at a pivotal time in my own life and so perhaps it resonated a little more for me that it would have otherwise. There were things I wanted, and options that were right in front of me that would lead me another way. But to have that opportunity to go back and see where the road could have taken you instead is what this book provided me. In reaching for the stars he found the sun, and it made all the difference.

[Linda S. Savory · Rating 5 out of 5]

My kind of writer

I took to Mr. Marquand's writing style immediately and plan to read all of his novels. I enjoy character-centric novels most and his characters were well developed and interesting.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tragic portrait of social striving from the 1910s to the post-WWII era, first in an old New England seaport town, then on to New York City and its suburbs. The gap between "upper-middle" and "upper-upper" class only seems to widen. Along the way: love, money, country-club rivalries, painted French wallpaper. The meaning of America. And an anthropologist character's take on class variegations in Yankeedom.

Realist novels, especially of this type, may be considered old-fashioned, but I loved it. It's the American version of something like the Forsyte Saga or Brideshead Revisited, only with bank presidents in place of lords and ladies, plus a driving cultural mythology that anyone can reach the highest step on the ladder.

“It would have made quite a story — if it could have been written down — how all those families had come to Sycamore Park. They had all risen from a ferment of unidentifiable individuals whom you might see in any office. They had all once been clerks or salesmen or assistants, digits of what was known as the white-collar class. They had come from different parts of the country and yet they all had the same intellectual reactions because they had all been through much the same sorts of adventures on their way to Sycamore Park. They all bore the same calluses from the competitive struggle, and it was still too early for most of them to look back on that struggle with complacency. They were all in the position of being insecurely poised in Sycamore Park — high enough above the average to have gained the envy of those below them, and yet not high enough so that those above them might not easily push them down."

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed "The Late Gorge Apley" and H. M. Pulham, Esq." and esteem Marquand as a writer. But this one did not quite measure up.

To begin with, it's overlong, and the middle section about Charley Gray's growing up in Clyde, Mass. dragged for me, as did the detour into a fictional sociological study of Clyde. The ending, though, is pretty cool, and it is worth plowing through the pages to get to it.

There is relatively little action for all the book's longwindedness. Unfortunately, most of the characters (especially the female ones) are pretty flat. It's hard to understand what made Jessica Lovell so appealing to Charley, and they talk to each other like 50-year-olds. John Gray, Charley's father is one of the more fully depicted characters, as is the detestable Malcolm Bryant. Jessica's father, Laurence, is more of an allegorical figure than a believable one, and it is hard to like him. Marquand does frequently satirize the heredity New England elite, but does so subtly that I am not sure if that is his intention here.

But the book is still worth reading. It represents a kind of social history, with a particular focus on social class. Life in Clyde (based on Newburyport) is clearly described, and one can almost visualize the town. The description of reactions to the 1929 stock market crash has an eerie relevance to what we face today.

Regardless of this slight literary misstep, Marquand is very much worth reading, and I will continue through his other books.

[Tracy Flannery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with others that this should be considered a "great American novel". Charles Gray is in the prime of his career, competing for a touted spot at a boutique banking firm in NYC in the late 1940s. When Charles is asked to return to his Massachusetts hometown to research a company, memories of his childhood and school years resurface. His relationship with his flawed but charming father, the love of a woman above his social rank and conversations with a sociologist studying his parochial suburb propel Charles to strive for more.
Point of No Return investigates the relationship between predestination, hard work and luck with Prohibition, the 1929 stock market crash and WWII serving as backdrops. It is a slice of American history but is timeless in its critique of social structure and relevant and haunting when considering current events. Running out to buy Marquand's Pulitzer Prize winning The Late George Apley right away.

[Mike Zickar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful novel. I picked this one up for a project I'm working on related to management portrayed in fiction. The book does capture banking and the financial industry in the late 1920s through the mid to late 1940s with some depth and insight. But the book is much more than that. Other themes are social class and nostalgia, two topics covered often in American fiction, though with a sensitivity and appreciation that is often drowned out by sarcasm or bitter critique.

One of the characters in the novel is an anthropologist who is studying the small town of Clyde Massachusetts (really Newburyport), patterned after W. Lloyd Warner. Marquand, himself, has the eye for thick detail that guides good anthropology. The book is long (650 or so pages) and has several phases that make it read fairly quick.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlie Gray seems more self-aware and more satisfied with his life than other Marquand protagonists. He is a young striver working his way up the ladder, both social and economic, and is ably matched by his wife. As an investment banker he is paid a middle class income to take care of the investments of the very wealthy, making his life one of always being around those financially superior to himself. Many of the characters' personalities reminded me of real people, and, as always, Marquand's characters do seem like real people. What really struck me was the importance of reading all the signs correctly in the use of first vs last names or being invited for supper instead of dinner--all the kind of thing I am completely at a loss about.

[Margarita · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book came recommended as part of the daily list I receive from BookBub and it is my first time reading J.P. Marquand. Although published in 1949, the writing style and thematic exploration in this novel is distinctively contemporary. Marquad explores ‘The American Dream’ within the context of the class system (old money vs. new money; smaller town vs. bigger city) and how this system influences social conventions – beliefs and behaviours – and impacts personal and professional relationships. His observations are astute and still relevant nearly 70 years later.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first part and the last part of the book, taking place in the novel's present time--circa 1947--I found more interesting than the middle part of the book, which is a remembrance by the principal character, Charley Gray, of his years through his mid-20s in the small Massachusetts town of Clyde (which I read elsewhere is a fictional version of Newburyport, where Marquand grew up). The Clyde period runs a bit long, in my opinion. But all in all this is a very good portrait of the mid-Century WASP banking world.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author writes dialogue really well. I loved the realistic bantering, supportive, teasing, scolding from Charley’s wife. The author writes a lovely bit about working being a series of polishing apples in the first chapter. Really excellent writing, bit I think some judicious editing would have made it a bit better. It almost 600 pages, and bogs down in section 2. This was a book club read that I didn’t choose. Second super long book from about 1950 we’ve read this year. We speculate books may have been longer 70 years ago because people didn’t watch as much TV!

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, glad that's over with. What a crushingly depressing book. The writing, though, it's extraordinary. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed this book much when I was younger. But from the perspective of over six decades of life, I found the agony of the role playing, the fitting in, the class rules, all of it, too compelling to turn away. Not sure I'll pick another one of Marquand's books anytime soon. I don't think my emotional state can endure it.

[Mervyn E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely book. At 665 pages, it is quite an involving read. Mr. Marquand goes into, at times, excessive detail, However it this allows the reader to really become immeshed in what is happening and become really involved with the story.
Apparently, this was the highest selling book in 1949; it gives a wonderful picture of family-life and philosophy in those days will be for the cell phone and other distracting devices.