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The Albany Cycle #5
Very Old Bones
The continuation of the Phelan family saga is narrated by a bastard artist, who, estranged from the family, traces its history in paintings that document their scandals and eccentricities. By the author of Ironweed. 100,000 first printing. 100,000 ad/promo.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
84 people are currently reading
557 people want to read
About the author
William Kennedy
31 books252 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York. Many of his novels feature the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family, and make use of incidents of Albany's history and the supernatural.
Kennedy's works include The Ink Truck (1969), Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Ironweed (1983, winner of 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; film, 1987), and Roscoe (2002).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_...
William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York. Many of his novels feature the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family, and make use of incidents of Albany's history and the supernatural.
Kennedy's works include The Ink Truck (1969), Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Ironweed (1983, winner of 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; film, 1987), and Roscoe (2002).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 22, 2021
Literary fiction of a very high order. Absolutely hypnotic! The main story is about an Irish family in Albany in the 1950s. It’s about the Phelan family. Our narrator is the out-of-wedlock son, Orson, of a struggling bohemian painter who late in life finds success. Orson’s mother was once the assistant to a randy vaudeville magician, which puts Orson’s paternity in question. The timeline shifts to take in ancestors, so important to the father’s painting; and Orson’s time as an officer in Occupied Berlin; there he meets his European wife in a scene in which she offers risqué glimpses of herself to a bunch of drunken soldiers. Orson suffers from what looks like manic depression and wild collapses ensue. It really is an astonishing piece of writing.
March 7, 2013
Whenever I am asked to describe myself or something about myself (i.e. college/work) I always go straight to my various roles in my families:
Daughter of ______ & _______
Sister of ______&_____&________&______
Mom to ______&_____
wife to ________
nieces to 20+ aunts and uncles
etc
It is so rare that I see myself as disconnected to these roles. I'm old enough now to see my families many flaws, eccentricities, and annoyances. One sibling lives in Japan, I see another only a few times a year and my dad passed away 19 years ago but I still feel like every single one of them (including the "aunt" that turned out to not be biologically connected but rather a run-away that found permanent refuge amongst my grandmothers brood)is part of who I am.
And I think that is why I this book captured my attention so strongly. I don't know what the author intended (or more likely didn't intend) to say about family but to me it screamed "you ARE your family - for better or worse...and it's usually worse". And I closed the book and I thought "yep, I totally get that".
or maybe I just liked the cover a lot. Either way, I'm giving it 4 stars.
Daughter of ______ & _______
Sister of ______&_____&________&______
Mom to ______&_____
wife to ________
nieces to 20+ aunts and uncles
etc
It is so rare that I see myself as disconnected to these roles. I'm old enough now to see my families many flaws, eccentricities, and annoyances. One sibling lives in Japan, I see another only a few times a year and my dad passed away 19 years ago but I still feel like every single one of them (including the "aunt" that turned out to not be biologically connected but rather a run-away that found permanent refuge amongst my grandmothers brood)is part of who I am.
And I think that is why I this book captured my attention so strongly. I don't know what the author intended (or more likely didn't intend) to say about family but to me it screamed "you ARE your family - for better or worse...and it's usually worse". And I closed the book and I thought "yep, I totally get that".
or maybe I just liked the cover a lot. Either way, I'm giving it 4 stars.
September 13, 2020
Very Old Bones had an interesting set of characters, the Phelan family, lots of lunatics, but what family doesn’t have their share of those?? Lol.
Alcoholics - check
Check forgery - check
Physical abuse - check
Burying infants in the cellar (what??!) - check
Murderers - check
But, I only rated it three stars due to the rambling. Too much rambling for my taste.
Alcoholics - check
Check forgery - check
Physical abuse - check
Burying infants in the cellar (what??!) - check
Murderers - check
But, I only rated it three stars due to the rambling. Too much rambling for my taste.
July 13, 2020
This book reminded me of a film noir movie. Is it the generation? Albany, NY, an unlikely setting, but Kennedy's favorite. We feel the thirties, the forties, tinted by war memories, injuries, sacrifices. There is a pervading darkness present throughout. Not enough to stop one from reading; perhaps, alternatively, the darkness is the reason to keep reading, as one hopes for a ray of optimism, or one surprising moment of joy in the Phelan family. It is not to be. Yes, there are hints of good humor, glimmers of good intentions, lives lived in anticipation.
The book holds surprises, unexpected occurrences, wonderful character insights. One roots for some members of the Phelan family, denounces others. You will be drawn in, eager to find out who will be vindicated, who will be saved, who will be made to pay for wrongdoing? Will there be a resolve?
The book holds surprises, unexpected occurrences, wonderful character insights. One roots for some members of the Phelan family, denounces others. You will be drawn in, eager to find out who will be vindicated, who will be saved, who will be made to pay for wrongdoing? Will there be a resolve?
December 26, 2016
3 Stars
I gave this book three stars for the language. The language was poetic and descriptive. However, the book itself bore little resemblance to the description listed.
Orson is the narrator who tells the story of an Irish American family, the Phelan’s, most of whom are deceased. They all seem more than a little off center so to speak.
The story itself was a little too dark for me to enjoy. It seemed to take off on tangents at times and the transitions weren’t all that good.
This is my first book by William Kennedy and I am not sure that I’ll look at anything else written by him.
Thanks to Netgalley and Endeavour Press for their advanced copy of this book.
I gave this book three stars for the language. The language was poetic and descriptive. However, the book itself bore little resemblance to the description listed.
Orson is the narrator who tells the story of an Irish American family, the Phelan’s, most of whom are deceased. They all seem more than a little off center so to speak.
The story itself was a little too dark for me to enjoy. It seemed to take off on tangents at times and the transitions weren’t all that good.
This is my first book by William Kennedy and I am not sure that I’ll look at anything else written by him.
Thanks to Netgalley and Endeavour Press for their advanced copy of this book.
September 8, 2015
Very old bones, reminds me of the very old times. I really enjoyed reading this book. It is beautifully written. One undestands the power of words through this book.
Orson the main character narrates the life and times of some of his family members, most of whom have died. We learn of Billy, his cousin, Peter, his father, his uncle Francis, Belinda, his mother and others.
We learn of the madness of each, starting with his grandfather right up to him and Billy. A family torn by the peculiar personality of individuals.
Orson the main character narrates the life and times of some of his family members, most of whom have died. We learn of Billy, his cousin, Peter, his father, his uncle Francis, Belinda, his mother and others.
We learn of the madness of each, starting with his grandfather right up to him and Billy. A family torn by the peculiar personality of individuals.
July 6, 2023
When we read Ironweed, about a man—Francis Phelan—who accidentally kills his infant son and then, in shame, becomes a hobo for the rest of his life; or Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, about that man’s son, who lives as a gambler and numbers writer who gets involved with gangsters and nearly loses everything; little do we know what a storied, colorful, and—to use a modern term—dysfunctional family they came from. In Quinn’s Book, William Kennedy gave us their fabulous (as in, from a fable) 19th century ancestors, but in Very Old Bones he gives us Francis Phelan’s actual progenitors, and the whole family he came from. We like some of these people and hate others. But we finally understand the situation a lot better.
Francis was the first son of Michael Phelan and Kathryn McIlhenny Phelan, who—like good Catholics of their generation—gave birth to as many children as they possibly could. After Francis came Sarah, who eventually took over as the stern Catholic matriarch, actually worse than a nun; Charles—also known as Chickie—who made his family proud by accepting his calling as a priest then shamed them by returning to lay life, working for the local newspaper and eventually marrying and going away; Peter, another rebel and home leaver, who moved away early, went to New York and eventually became a world-famous artist; Julia, who died young; Mary, who called herself Molly and had one major love in her life, but emerges as the sanest member of the family; and Thomas, an intellectually disabled man who stayed around the family house all his life. Francis was Billy Phelans’ father, also had a daughter named Peg. All of these people show up in the story eventually, and Kennedy provides a chronology at the front of the book so we can keep them straight.
The book is narrated by Orson Purcell, the illegitimate son of Peter, the Bohemian artist who lived in New York, and Claire Purcell, who for all intents and purposes was his wife, though he never married her. Peter resolutely refused to admit that Orson was his child, though Claire insisted he was and though the young man lived with the two of them through most of his childhood. Orson always regarded Peter as his father and was loyal to him, despite a fair amount of neglect and abuse. Though Peter apparently became a great artist, he was a strange bird and a not terribly likable. He made one grand gesture toward the end, but it didn’t make up for much.
At first the story seems to be Orson’s, who is 32 in 1956, the present moment of the story, but the novel ranges all over his life and the lives of the whole family. Orson is a notably unreliable narrator because he is subject to a mental illness which is never specified; he may be bipolar or schizophrenic. The most daring thing about Kennedy’s narrative is that he allows Orson to tell his story right through his fits of madness, so that at first we think we’re just in William Kennedy’s world of magic realism (Francis Phelan, in Ironweed, saw ghosts and talked to the dead) but eventually realize Kennedy is showing us what it’s like to be, literally, mad. It’s terrifying. We suffer through two such episodes with Orson. They’re the most daring part of the story.
But the Phelan family began in paranoia and madness, when Malachi McIlhenny—the brother of Kathryn, the mother of this brood—went crazy and ritualistically murdered his wife, believing she was a witch. That horrifying scene, which Kathryn was present for, marked her forever, and turned her into the devoutly stern Catholic matriarch which she eventually became. Kathryn passed that role on to her celibate daughter Sarah, who was still beating the mentally disabled Tommy when he was an adult, eventually beat him so severely that she damaged his spine forever. It drove Francis, and Peter, and Charles all away from her. Only the women persisted. And only Molly remained whole and sane.
There’s a scene at the end of this novel that reconciles everything. It doesn’t make it all right, or make everyone happy (Billy Phelan, now almost 50, is still angry about the way his father was treated), but does eventually reconcile them, significantly, through art. Peter Phelan, who has spent many years in obscurity, first achieved a bit of notoriety when he did a series of paintings about his brother Francis, and at the end of his life, after trying on a number of styles and finally returning to representational painting (he sounds like his creator) paints a series about Malachi McIlhenny murdering his wife, an event that has marked this family forever. There’s no way anything can undo that, but art somehow transforms it. We can’t see the paintings, of course—we hear descriptions of them—but this novel, penned by the unlikely Orson Purcell, does the same thing. When you look hard at the story, and see everyone’s place in it, you realize not that everything is all right, but that it somehow had to happen. The low points and high points are all of a piece. That’s what great art can show.
www.davidguy.org
Francis was the first son of Michael Phelan and Kathryn McIlhenny Phelan, who—like good Catholics of their generation—gave birth to as many children as they possibly could. After Francis came Sarah, who eventually took over as the stern Catholic matriarch, actually worse than a nun; Charles—also known as Chickie—who made his family proud by accepting his calling as a priest then shamed them by returning to lay life, working for the local newspaper and eventually marrying and going away; Peter, another rebel and home leaver, who moved away early, went to New York and eventually became a world-famous artist; Julia, who died young; Mary, who called herself Molly and had one major love in her life, but emerges as the sanest member of the family; and Thomas, an intellectually disabled man who stayed around the family house all his life. Francis was Billy Phelans’ father, also had a daughter named Peg. All of these people show up in the story eventually, and Kennedy provides a chronology at the front of the book so we can keep them straight.
The book is narrated by Orson Purcell, the illegitimate son of Peter, the Bohemian artist who lived in New York, and Claire Purcell, who for all intents and purposes was his wife, though he never married her. Peter resolutely refused to admit that Orson was his child, though Claire insisted he was and though the young man lived with the two of them through most of his childhood. Orson always regarded Peter as his father and was loyal to him, despite a fair amount of neglect and abuse. Though Peter apparently became a great artist, he was a strange bird and a not terribly likable. He made one grand gesture toward the end, but it didn’t make up for much.
At first the story seems to be Orson’s, who is 32 in 1956, the present moment of the story, but the novel ranges all over his life and the lives of the whole family. Orson is a notably unreliable narrator because he is subject to a mental illness which is never specified; he may be bipolar or schizophrenic. The most daring thing about Kennedy’s narrative is that he allows Orson to tell his story right through his fits of madness, so that at first we think we’re just in William Kennedy’s world of magic realism (Francis Phelan, in Ironweed, saw ghosts and talked to the dead) but eventually realize Kennedy is showing us what it’s like to be, literally, mad. It’s terrifying. We suffer through two such episodes with Orson. They’re the most daring part of the story.
But the Phelan family began in paranoia and madness, when Malachi McIlhenny—the brother of Kathryn, the mother of this brood—went crazy and ritualistically murdered his wife, believing she was a witch. That horrifying scene, which Kathryn was present for, marked her forever, and turned her into the devoutly stern Catholic matriarch which she eventually became. Kathryn passed that role on to her celibate daughter Sarah, who was still beating the mentally disabled Tommy when he was an adult, eventually beat him so severely that she damaged his spine forever. It drove Francis, and Peter, and Charles all away from her. Only the women persisted. And only Molly remained whole and sane.
There’s a scene at the end of this novel that reconciles everything. It doesn’t make it all right, or make everyone happy (Billy Phelan, now almost 50, is still angry about the way his father was treated), but does eventually reconcile them, significantly, through art. Peter Phelan, who has spent many years in obscurity, first achieved a bit of notoriety when he did a series of paintings about his brother Francis, and at the end of his life, after trying on a number of styles and finally returning to representational painting (he sounds like his creator) paints a series about Malachi McIlhenny murdering his wife, an event that has marked this family forever. There’s no way anything can undo that, but art somehow transforms it. We can’t see the paintings, of course—we hear descriptions of them—but this novel, penned by the unlikely Orson Purcell, does the same thing. When you look hard at the story, and see everyone’s place in it, you realize not that everything is all right, but that it somehow had to happen. The low points and high points are all of a piece. That’s what great art can show.
www.davidguy.org
January 31, 2018
This is another book that is difficult to rate using the five star system. My inclination was to give it a 3 or 3.5, yet I've given other books that are not nearly as good that rating due to lack of discrimination in the system.
The writing was excellent and the book was readable for that alone. The story held my interest for the most part. I'd read Ironweed years ago so knew at least Francis, but had not read the other books in the series. Oddly, this reminded me a bit of Richard Russo even though the only real overlap is the area.
Although the characters were interesting, I guess my problem with the book was that they weren't all convincing, or maybe the motives of a few of them seemed stilted, devised for prurient interest. Although I've never felt as if I had to like a character, it did annoy me that halfway through I decided I didn't much like the narrator or his young wife. This book did, though, make me want to find out more about William Kennedy.
The writing was excellent and the book was readable for that alone. The story held my interest for the most part. I'd read Ironweed years ago so knew at least Francis, but had not read the other books in the series. Oddly, this reminded me a bit of Richard Russo even though the only real overlap is the area.
Although the characters were interesting, I guess my problem with the book was that they weren't all convincing, or maybe the motives of a few of them seemed stilted, devised for prurient interest. Although I've never felt as if I had to like a character, it did annoy me that halfway through I decided I didn't much like the narrator or his young wife. This book did, though, make me want to find out more about William Kennedy.
March 2, 2025
The culmination (1958)of the story of an Irish-American family - the Phelans of Albany, New York. The book is narrated by Orson Purcell, the more or less acknowledged son of Peter Phelan (a successful artist) who at the beginning of the book is planning on presenting his last will and testament to what remains of his family which originally had seven siblings who form the backbone of this story. The book can be described as a tragi-comedy with regular bursts of black humor as the fates of the family members are revealed via Orson’s remembrances. Orson has suffered a couple of mental health breakdowns which color his perspective, but this does not render him a sympathetic figure. But the bigger problem is that none of the Phelans are particularly likeable or attractive, and William Kennedy really doesn’t know when to stop, and when to put down the thesaurus. Yet, he’s an enormously talented writer.
July 6, 2021
When I started reading this book, I was immediately engaged in the story. As it continued its winding, sometimes seemingly off-topic path, I was still engaged but not enough to recommend it to friends. By the end, I couldn't put it down. It's a dark tale of an Irish-American family full of severely flawed individuals, each with their own dark secrets. As the secrets come to light towards the end of the novel, there's a glimmer of hope for redemption and healing, and perhaps even a breaking of the curse that seems to have followed the family for generations. This novel definitely falls in the "literary fiction" category, along with works by authors like William Faulkner and Willa Cather.
April 30, 2018
The Phelan family history, tied to Albany, NY and supernatural events, form this story of Peter Phelan and his son Orson. They live in the old family home in a declining part of Albany, and inherit family secrets that have impacted the lives of several generations. Some have fled the guilt, others allowed their lives to be formed by it, and others embrace it and learn to find a life in spite of it.
September 24, 2019
This book was not my style. The writing was very glib and breezy. Since no attempt was made to introduce a setting or the characters, I felt like I had turned on a program that was joined in progress. The events jumped back and forth between the past and present and I found I really did not care for this family. To use the author's words, they all had "bats in their hats."
October 23, 2020
I was not going to rate this book five stars initially, but I realized when the Big You-Know-What Goth Girlfriend and the narrator she has an incestuous relationship with exhumed an infant's corpse I was totally bought in, so maybe this book really was something special. And that was even before the witch makes an appearance.
January 6, 2021
The Phelan saga moved to the 1950s, where an artist is obsessed with his ancestor Francis Phelan, the protagonist of iron weed. Very old bones drags through the wreckage or the past and the grudges of current days. I did not care much for this book and do not think it would have been received as well as a stand alone story.
July 13, 2023
Really great! I've not read Kennedy in awhile, and many of his novels concern one family, zooming in on different members. Very Old Bones starts with a family tree if the Phelan family, and flashes back to different stories through the eyes of the young Orson. But it manages to feel very fluid and united. Makes me want to reread some of his other novels.
March 30, 2019
Why did I have such a hard time following the characters? Perhaps those reading other Kennedy books would have an easier time? Story too horrible, too Irish for me. Poor women having to be uber sexy or virginal or harridans. Descriptions of woman photographer for LIFE mag kindof fun.
January 12, 2026
To be fair, I think I should have read the previous works in the series to really understand/appreciate this text, but it wasn't very obvious that it wasn't a standalone novel until I had already started
September 6, 2022
Fiction writing at it’s finest- compelling family fuckery…
April 16, 2012
"People like the story up to a point, but they think the writing lacks the necessary poetry. And they say it lacks the verve for life, that it's life seen through a black veil of doom." (160)
Very Old Bones was about an Irish American family suffers from trauma of past incidents. Following four different generations in Albany, New York, the author tells the story out of order.
I liked this story up to a certain point. But it was the excess of poetic language tending to be philosophical that made this book a drag for me. It sometimes felt like it was trying too hard to be a deep read. The changing of place and time was confusing because there was usually very little transition from one time to the next. Once in a particular storyline, it was good. I liked learning about how life was for the different members of the Phelan family. However, the tone was so dark and gloomy, so demented, that it just weighed heavy. I will say that the narrator's voice was very clear and made the book sound as though it really were a memoir rather than a piece of fiction.
Very Old Bones was about an Irish American family suffers from trauma of past incidents. Following four different generations in Albany, New York, the author tells the story out of order.
I liked this story up to a certain point. But it was the excess of poetic language tending to be philosophical that made this book a drag for me. It sometimes felt like it was trying too hard to be a deep read. The changing of place and time was confusing because there was usually very little transition from one time to the next. Once in a particular storyline, it was good. I liked learning about how life was for the different members of the Phelan family. However, the tone was so dark and gloomy, so demented, that it just weighed heavy. I will say that the narrator's voice was very clear and made the book sound as though it really were a memoir rather than a piece of fiction.
June 12, 2018
a variety of thoughts i had when reading it
- William Kennedy's "very old bones" seems to be the wrap up (of sorts) of the lives of previously written about characters. I read the books about them a long time ago, so following the larger story is kind of null. I find myself referring to the timeline/family tree in the front of the book but that doesn't necessarily help. for instance, one of the characters introduced as a sister isn't on the timeline. is this a mystery to be solved later in the book? a typo? what a heck.
- if "good" art is supposed to make you uncomfortable, than this book is pretty good.
I'm surprised I'm continuing with it.
- too macho for where i'm at lately. a couple of good backstories toward the end but overall, annoying.
- William Kennedy's "very old bones" seems to be the wrap up (of sorts) of the lives of previously written about characters. I read the books about them a long time ago, so following the larger story is kind of null. I find myself referring to the timeline/family tree in the front of the book but that doesn't necessarily help. for instance, one of the characters introduced as a sister isn't on the timeline. is this a mystery to be solved later in the book? a typo? what a heck.
- if "good" art is supposed to make you uncomfortable, than this book is pretty good.
I'm surprised I'm continuing with it.
- too macho for where i'm at lately. a couple of good backstories toward the end but overall, annoying.
January 26, 2020
The first page is intriguing - it uses future and past tense, third and first person narration by the same narrator. Appears I am coming into a later book in a series so I wonder if I'm going to miss some allusions or information about the family that was already established in one of the earlier books?
April 12, 2010
Got a bit lost at times with Kennedy's drifting back and forth in time (testament to my lack of concentration skills more than anything else) but his presentation is quite fascinating. Lyricist as much as story-teller; love his use of language and his insightful musings.
July 5, 2014
Completely blown away by the writing! Dazzling with pain, brutal honesty, elluring madness, blind insanity, suffocating families, disaster behind every corner, lives unlived, people unloved, profound love and plunging passions, captivating details and masterful dialogue. I am a believer.
November 21, 2018
Of course it is book 5 of an 8 book cycle/series so now I must start at book 1 and read forward so I can read this again and appreciate it more. Oh the fine print. I love series and I LOVE historical fiction so looking forward to this journey.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC.
February 6, 2008
I have 20 pagees to go but I can't get myself to finish the damn thing. Damn these comics!!!
July 2, 2010
Evidently, I liked this more than one star but, for the life of me, I can't remember reading this.
December 22, 2014
Beautiful writing
March 10, 2015
For anyone who has read other books in the Albany Cycle, this ties the families together and fills in gaps. It's a great read!
November 16, 2015
This Cat can write. This is the second book I have read in the Albany series and Mr. Kennedy is a gifted storyteller and genius with the written word. One of my new favorite authors.
July 7, 2008
unforgettable
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews