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The View from Pompey's Head: A Novel
Sweet, sleepy—beautiful—old Pompey’s Head, South Carolina. Anson Page thought he’d ground it out of his life for good. Now a Manhattan lawyer representing a large publishing house, he’s returning to his hometown after fifteen years to investigate the mystery surrounding one of his client’s authors, a major American novelist who lives on nearby Tamburlaine Island. Both painfully familiar and irrevocably altered, the landmarks and people in Pompey’s Head resurrect for Page the sweep of his past life. As he sets about resolving business matters, he collides headlong with the enduring power of lineage to determine belonging and dominance, exclusion and shame, and the realization that leaving does not mean escaping.
A deft interlacing of recollection and suspense, The View from Pompey’s Head is Hamilton Basso’s most popularly acclaimed novel. When first published, it spent forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into seven languages.
A deft interlacing of recollection and suspense, The View from Pompey’s Head is Hamilton Basso’s most popularly acclaimed novel. When first published, it spent forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into seven languages.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
3 people are currently reading
365 people want to read
About the author
Hamilton Basso
43 books5 followersJoseph Hamilton Basso (who went by the name Hamilton) was an influential journalist and the author of eleven novels.While writing for New Republic, Time, Saturday Review, and the New Yorker, among other publications, Basso published novels, most set in either Louisiana or South Carolina. Throughout his writing, Basso attempted to refute romantic myths of the old South by portraying minorities—women, foreigners, and people of color—realistically rather than stereotypically. Basso is best known for his popular 1954 novel The View from Pompey’s Head, part of an unfinished trilogy that includes the novel The Light Infantry Ball. The latter was nominated for the 1960 National Book Award. Basso was also the winner of the 1940 Southern Authors Award for his fourth novel, Days Before Lent.
Born September 5, 1904, in New Orleans, Basso was the son of Italian Americans. In 1922, he enrolled in Tulane University to study law. While at Tulane, he became friends with a group of aspiring writers living in New Orleans, including William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Lyle Saxon, and Edmund Wilson, each of whom contributed to the Double Dealer, a magazine subtitled “The National Magazine of the South.” Inspired by his conversations with these writers, Basso dropped out of Tulane in 1926, three months before his scheduled graduation, to begin a career as a journalist. He went to work as a reporter for the New Orleans Morning Tribune, the New Orleans Item, and finally the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where he became the night city editor.
Encouraged by his friends at the Double Dealer, Basso published his first novel, Relics and Angels, in 1929. In 1930, he married Etolia Moore Simmons, with whom he had a son. A biography of Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard, Beauregard: The Great Creole, soon followed and won its author critical acclaim. Basso also worked for New Republic, frequently writing about the South, and in 1935 he became its associate editor.
In the early 1940s, Basso moved to New York, where he wrote for Time magazine and then the New Yorker, where he worked as associate editor from 1944 to 1961. In the 1950s, two of his novels, Days Before Lent (retitled Holiday for Sinners) and The View From Pompey’s Head, were made into movies. Basso also wrote a book of travel sketches titled A Quota of Seaweed and edited a reissue of W. L. Herndon’s 1842 Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon. He also edited The World from Jackson Square, a collection of essays about New Orleans, with his wife. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, where he also served as vice president.
Basso died in New Haven, Connecticut, on May 13, 1964. Today his work is frequently studied within the context of the southern literary renaissance, a sudden outpouring of literature by southern writers between World War I and the end of World War II. Like many of his colleagues at the Double Dealer, often cited as key players in the renaissance, Basso’s writing shows a willingness to critically examine his region of birth. Frequently, Basso expressed his criticism through a protagonist who, in many of his novels, returns to the South (after living somewhere else) and encounters social injustice. Unlike writers who romanticized the antebellum plantation South and its aristocratic traditions, Basso and his cohorts expressed a desire to see change and progress, particularly in terms of race relations.
His 1959 novel The Light Infantry Ball, a prequel to The View from Pompey's Head, was a finalist for the 1960 National Book Award.
Basso died in 1964, at age 59, in Weston, Connecticut.
Born September 5, 1904, in New Orleans, Basso was the son of Italian Americans. In 1922, he enrolled in Tulane University to study law. While at Tulane, he became friends with a group of aspiring writers living in New Orleans, including William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Lyle Saxon, and Edmund Wilson, each of whom contributed to the Double Dealer, a magazine subtitled “The National Magazine of the South.” Inspired by his conversations with these writers, Basso dropped out of Tulane in 1926, three months before his scheduled graduation, to begin a career as a journalist. He went to work as a reporter for the New Orleans Morning Tribune, the New Orleans Item, and finally the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where he became the night city editor.
Encouraged by his friends at the Double Dealer, Basso published his first novel, Relics and Angels, in 1929. In 1930, he married Etolia Moore Simmons, with whom he had a son. A biography of Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard, Beauregard: The Great Creole, soon followed and won its author critical acclaim. Basso also worked for New Republic, frequently writing about the South, and in 1935 he became its associate editor.
In the early 1940s, Basso moved to New York, where he wrote for Time magazine and then the New Yorker, where he worked as associate editor from 1944 to 1961. In the 1950s, two of his novels, Days Before Lent (retitled Holiday for Sinners) and The View From Pompey’s Head, were made into movies. Basso also wrote a book of travel sketches titled A Quota of Seaweed and edited a reissue of W. L. Herndon’s 1842 Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon. He also edited The World from Jackson Square, a collection of essays about New Orleans, with his wife. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, where he also served as vice president.
Basso died in New Haven, Connecticut, on May 13, 1964. Today his work is frequently studied within the context of the southern literary renaissance, a sudden outpouring of literature by southern writers between World War I and the end of World War II. Like many of his colleagues at the Double Dealer, often cited as key players in the renaissance, Basso’s writing shows a willingness to critically examine his region of birth. Frequently, Basso expressed his criticism through a protagonist who, in many of his novels, returns to the South (after living somewhere else) and encounters social injustice. Unlike writers who romanticized the antebellum plantation South and its aristocratic traditions, Basso and his cohorts expressed a desire to see change and progress, particularly in terms of race relations.
His 1959 novel The Light Infantry Ball, a prequel to The View from Pompey's Head, was a finalist for the 1960 National Book Award.
Basso died in 1964, at age 59, in Weston, Connecticut.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 5, 2021
This was my mother's edition, which finally disintegrated this year; see the LSU paperback for a blurb.
Real Rating: 2.5* of five, rounded up because it's peculiarly subversive for 1954
There are over 400pp of words, more or less elegant, telling this story of snobbery, racism, infidelity, and unhappiness. The prose is mid-century bestseller (forty weeks on the 1954-1955 New York Times list; finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction) bog-standard stuff, with a very few memorable lines; here's one:
Why I wouldn't rate the book lower is the Southern transplant sent "home" to solve an apparent embezzlement wrote a book as a young scholar called Shinto Traditions in the American South, which is fucking genius and, in fact, needs to be written ASAP.
The 1955 film gets the same 2.5* of five
Go listen to the love theme from the film. It is gorgeous, lush, intense...all the things the film just...isn't. It's beautiful, and curiously empty. But goodness me, what a spectacle!
Real Rating: 2.5* of five, rounded up because it's peculiarly subversive for 1954
There are over 400pp of words, more or less elegant, telling this story of snobbery, racism, infidelity, and unhappiness. The prose is mid-century bestseller (forty weeks on the 1954-1955 New York Times list; finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction) bog-standard stuff, with a very few memorable lines; here's one:
The white man could not accept the Negro as an equal—he simply could not, and yet, since the Negro was walking, talking, living, he could not deny his reality as a human being.
Why I wouldn't rate the book lower is the Southern transplant sent "home" to solve an apparent embezzlement wrote a book as a young scholar called Shinto Traditions in the American South, which is fucking genius and, in fact, needs to be written ASAP.
The 1955 film gets the same 2.5* of five
Go listen to the love theme from the film. It is gorgeous, lush, intense...all the things the film just...isn't. It's beautiful, and curiously empty. But goodness me, what a spectacle!
April 12, 2023
Recently I read an article published several years ago in The Boston Globe about two prominent 20th Century writers who are now largely forgotten. Perhaps it says something about me that I have read both and enjoyed their work. They are Calder Willingham and Hamilton Basso.
I finished Basso's The View from Pompey's Head just last week. It is slow moving in a pleasant, languid, distinctly Southern manner. Basso gradually develops memorable characters, crafts fine scenes and steadily hones the plot - culminating with the ultimate shocker of miscegenation.
The View From Pompey's head spent 40 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List in the 1950s and was made into a Hollywood motion picture starring Richard Egan and the ravishing Dana Wynter. Basso published 11 books and edited The New Yorker for 20 years, but is now virtually forgotten. Basso and The View From Pompey's Head deserve a wider audience and greater appreciation from readers today.
I finished Basso's The View from Pompey's Head just last week. It is slow moving in a pleasant, languid, distinctly Southern manner. Basso gradually develops memorable characters, crafts fine scenes and steadily hones the plot - culminating with the ultimate shocker of miscegenation.
The View From Pompey's head spent 40 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List in the 1950s and was made into a Hollywood motion picture starring Richard Egan and the ravishing Dana Wynter. Basso published 11 books and edited The New Yorker for 20 years, but is now virtually forgotten. Basso and The View From Pompey's Head deserve a wider audience and greater appreciation from readers today.
May 31, 2012
Interesting, the ways we find our ways to books. I've encountered this title many times over the years in used bookstores, and though I had no interest in it, the title and the author's name have always stuck with me.
I recently came across a mention of it during some internet-surfing about something else, and was intrigued by a mention of its main plot: "Manhattan attorney Anson Page returns to his Southern roots after 15 years, arriving in Pompey's Head, South Carolina, to investigate the mystery surrounding missing royalties due famous author Garvin Wales."
I discovered that copies of the book are still in my county's public library system, and put in a request for it (my request for now-obscure titles such as this one, and FENGRIFFEN, THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO, THE ORACLE and LOVERS ALL UNTRUE must have librarians - especially younger ones - scratching their heads as they head into the stacks.
5/02: Although this got off to a slow start, by about a quarter of the way through it became quite engrossing. Anson Page's return to his roots causes him to reflect back on his life in Pompey's Head and the people he knew there. The result is an entertaining novel about growing up in the South during the 1920s/1930s, and its ingredients are pretty much everything we've inevitably come to expect of such novels set in the South: economical (economic changes have come to several residents), social (resulting from those economic changes, and everyone worries a great deal over what will be thought or said about whatever they do), and racial (there is an account of a trial to obtain financial damages for an injured black man who works for Anson’s father).
At 409 pages the novel is a bit flabby - excising a few unnecessary repetitions would have tightened it up a bit. Looking back from 2012, the big secret regarding the missing royalties doesn’t really carry the impact it would have in 1954, but that's to be expected; all in all I think this falls comfortably into the "They Don't Write 'em Like This Anymore" category.
I recently came across a mention of it during some internet-surfing about something else, and was intrigued by a mention of its main plot: "Manhattan attorney Anson Page returns to his Southern roots after 15 years, arriving in Pompey's Head, South Carolina, to investigate the mystery surrounding missing royalties due famous author Garvin Wales."
I discovered that copies of the book are still in my county's public library system, and put in a request for it (my request for now-obscure titles such as this one, and FENGRIFFEN, THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO, THE ORACLE and LOVERS ALL UNTRUE must have librarians - especially younger ones - scratching their heads as they head into the stacks.
5/02: Although this got off to a slow start, by about a quarter of the way through it became quite engrossing. Anson Page's return to his roots causes him to reflect back on his life in Pompey's Head and the people he knew there. The result is an entertaining novel about growing up in the South during the 1920s/1930s, and its ingredients are pretty much everything we've inevitably come to expect of such novels set in the South: economical (economic changes have come to several residents), social (resulting from those economic changes, and everyone worries a great deal over what will be thought or said about whatever they do), and racial (there is an account of a trial to obtain financial damages for an injured black man who works for Anson’s father).
At 409 pages the novel is a bit flabby - excising a few unnecessary repetitions would have tightened it up a bit. Looking back from 2012, the big secret regarding the missing royalties doesn’t really carry the impact it would have in 1954, but that's to be expected; all in all I think this falls comfortably into the "They Don't Write 'em Like This Anymore" category.
February 28, 2015
1/2 cup Heart of Darkness
1/3 cup To Kill a Mockingbird
1/4 Stop Time
Mix together dry above with a splash of Southern Comfort and a generous dose of "don't you dare leave this place or we'll never forgive you" Bake at 90 degrees for 375 pages then put out in torrential downpour to get the full effect of the ending.
I can see why this book was featured in Dow Mossman's best books of the 50s in the documentary Stone Reader. The writing is strong enough to keep the reader's attention even though the first two parts are just lawyers sitting around talking in between Anson's memories. It really gets interesting when Anson returns to Pompey's Head. Yes, it is about "you can't go home" but it's also about "home" being a place Anson needed to identify with/feel belonging but never could. Home is home, no matter if one did not belong there. The entrenched practices and beliefs in place are still there although Anson has long since moved on from the class and race divisions that people in Pompey's Head cling so desperately to in order to forge their own identities and find meaning.
"Home" is so complex: some things you can't wait to escape but they are manifest in you somewhere; "home" is where they never forgive you for leaving; "home" is where they speak lies and everyone understands the lies are part of the language--the lies make sense when the truth is unthinkable; "home" is where that one person you are intertwined with so deeply and for ever loved still lives--that person who you love down to your bones but you can never be together because...well, you just can't...it's the place you needed meaning and connection from the most but did not and will never get it.
1/3 cup To Kill a Mockingbird
1/4 Stop Time
Mix together dry above with a splash of Southern Comfort and a generous dose of "don't you dare leave this place or we'll never forgive you" Bake at 90 degrees for 375 pages then put out in torrential downpour to get the full effect of the ending.
I can see why this book was featured in Dow Mossman's best books of the 50s in the documentary Stone Reader. The writing is strong enough to keep the reader's attention even though the first two parts are just lawyers sitting around talking in between Anson's memories. It really gets interesting when Anson returns to Pompey's Head. Yes, it is about "you can't go home" but it's also about "home" being a place Anson needed to identify with/feel belonging but never could. Home is home, no matter if one did not belong there. The entrenched practices and beliefs in place are still there although Anson has long since moved on from the class and race divisions that people in Pompey's Head cling so desperately to in order to forge their own identities and find meaning.
"Home" is so complex: some things you can't wait to escape but they are manifest in you somewhere; "home" is where they never forgive you for leaving; "home" is where they speak lies and everyone understands the lies are part of the language--the lies make sense when the truth is unthinkable; "home" is where that one person you are intertwined with so deeply and for ever loved still lives--that person who you love down to your bones but you can never be together because...well, you just can't...it's the place you needed meaning and connection from the most but did not and will never get it.
February 24, 2020
I don’t know what prompted me to have a book from 1954 on my TBR list, but it was and so I did.
This story of a South Carolina man gone back to his roots from New York after 15 years is a wonderful study of how our life is formed by place. It is richly enhanced with detail which brings the reader right along with the characters. For me, it was a slow read, but well worth the time, especially if you are interested in “the southern way”.
This story of a South Carolina man gone back to his roots from New York after 15 years is a wonderful study of how our life is formed by place. It is richly enhanced with detail which brings the reader right along with the characters. For me, it was a slow read, but well worth the time, especially if you are interested in “the southern way”.
November 25, 2018
One of my all-time favorite novels!
Want to read
July 25, 2021From "midnight in garden of good and evil pg 29
Read
May 16, 2023I think I learned about this novel from reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but if not, something along the same lines that references this novel as examples of a Southern, urbane, low-key novel. And well, it's definitely those things. It's also a novel that spends most of the time not focusing on issues of race and racism, but there's still a significant section within the middle that deals with racism in a curious, if not especially satisfying way.
The novel is about Anson Page, a 40ish lawyer from the town of Pompey's Head, a stand-in or blend of Charleston and Savannah, who lives in New York now, and is tasked with returning to his hometown to investigate a financial mystery related to a local author. The author's finances have been recently called into question because a series of withdrawals are unaccounted for from two decades worth of writing and it's unclear whether the author is aware of them or not, or if he had been being taken advantage of. This plotline is mostly a MacGuffin.
The main thrust of the novel is Page's return and his thinking about his return, and his thinking about the women in his life and how this return will affect those things.
Mostly the novel is fine. It's mostly well-written, but has a bizarre naming convention throughout. There are some well-rendered scenes, especially in the build-up with Anson and a girl he almost married. It's also just kind of a midcentury novel that can't quite do what Thomas Wolfe did in You Can't Go Home Again or James Agee in Death in the Family in terms of being away and returning, and cannot handle the racial complexity of something like Go Down Moses or Light in August.
The novel is about Anson Page, a 40ish lawyer from the town of Pompey's Head, a stand-in or blend of Charleston and Savannah, who lives in New York now, and is tasked with returning to his hometown to investigate a financial mystery related to a local author. The author's finances have been recently called into question because a series of withdrawals are unaccounted for from two decades worth of writing and it's unclear whether the author is aware of them or not, or if he had been being taken advantage of. This plotline is mostly a MacGuffin.
The main thrust of the novel is Page's return and his thinking about his return, and his thinking about the women in his life and how this return will affect those things.
Mostly the novel is fine. It's mostly well-written, but has a bizarre naming convention throughout. There are some well-rendered scenes, especially in the build-up with Anson and a girl he almost married. It's also just kind of a midcentury novel that can't quite do what Thomas Wolfe did in You Can't Go Home Again or James Agee in Death in the Family in terms of being away and returning, and cannot handle the racial complexity of something like Go Down Moses or Light in August.
June 25, 2011
If you don't like a lot of detail, then this book is not for you. But I do, so I gave it a 4 star rating. The setting was in the 30's primarily and the plot explored social standings and the focus put on ancestors background to establish those standings. The main character struggled throughout his life with finding acceptance within himself. The author exposes how small town values influence those who live there and especially those who try to escape that influence by moving away.
November 16, 2017
Not an easy book to read; heavy, slow moving but worth the effort I feel. Would not do well now days in the "politically correct area" but definitely gives insight to small town southern life in 30's, 40's and 50's. No happy ending as such but reality.
Read
February 7, 2015I'm not sure what book is described in the "book description" but it is not The View from Pompey's Head by Hamilton Basso
March 29, 2024
Charmingly written, the skeletal structure of a plot is mostly ignored - the mystery of a flagship author’s missing $20,000 in royalties - and performs the necessary function of bringing New York lawyer (why is it always New York?) back home to Pompey’s Head, a southern town where no breach of the classist, racist, ancestor worshipping societal expectations can escape scandal and gossip. We come to realize that even the ones thought to be immune - either by fleeing (the protagonist) or by bucking societal expectations - are caught up in the same restrictive web they were brought up in.
The author’s points are belabored, and at least a few of the side quests could have been easily excised. There’s no lack of cliches, and the romance plot lines were almost entirely superfluous (and perhaps actively worsening the reading experience by the end) but I couldn’t help but take a liking to this book! Basso clearly, despite elucidating its many flaws, loves the south and the people that live there, and seems to want to change it for the better, at least in terms of socioeconomic class and racial discrimination is concerned.
Very genuine. I can see why both that this book was popular at the time as well as being mostly forgotten today. Definitely not one of those “every word matters” or beautiful writing kinds of books, but certainly accessible and enjoyable while navigating difficult themes.
I found a lot of similarities in To Kill a Mockingbird (a much better book obviously) down to a courtroom where black man is unfairly treated by the justice system, but this book did come first!
The author’s points are belabored, and at least a few of the side quests could have been easily excised. There’s no lack of cliches, and the romance plot lines were almost entirely superfluous (and perhaps actively worsening the reading experience by the end) but I couldn’t help but take a liking to this book! Basso clearly, despite elucidating its many flaws, loves the south and the people that live there, and seems to want to change it for the better, at least in terms of socioeconomic class and racial discrimination is concerned.
Very genuine. I can see why both that this book was popular at the time as well as being mostly forgotten today. Definitely not one of those “every word matters” or beautiful writing kinds of books, but certainly accessible and enjoyable while navigating difficult themes.
I found a lot of similarities in To Kill a Mockingbird (a much better book obviously) down to a courtroom where black man is unfairly treated by the justice system, but this book did come first!
April 6, 2024
A good, solid novel like so many of this era (1940s and early '50s), not great literature but generally unforgettable, and so worth the reading
November 14, 2025
Good novel. Writing is good, but books moves very slowly.
January 25, 2014
"Voices of the South" is a better title, also: View from Hilton Head island. Written in 1954.
Anston (Sonny) Page is somewhat working to make partner in the lawfirm of Roberts, Guthrie Barlowe & Paul, appropriately called by his wife, Margaret (Meg), 'Boring, Barlowe Tedious and Impossible.' He is pulled into Barlowe's office to go back to Pompey's Head, where he grew up. Mrs. Lucy Wales is suing Phillip Greene for $20,000 (quite a bit of money in 1954) for money her husband, Garvin Wales, a writer, which was "stolen" by Mr. Greene, who has since died. The checks were paid to Anna Jones over 21 years, from 1936-1940. Did Wales, who is now blind, know about the $20,000? Anston will find out, and incidentally, will learn why he left.
The book is Anston wandering around Pompey's Head, and thru reminiscences and recollections. This is a time when Negros were servants. Anston pulls some ideas from Shintoism, ancestor worship, to cover the founding families of Pompey.
"The white man trying to protect his identity-or so he imagines-and the Negro trying to establish his." That's what it's been about for generations. "The white man could not accept the Negro as an equal- he simply could not, and yet, since the Negro was walking, talking, living, he could not deny his reality as a human being." The white man could pretend, however, ". . . drawing on Gospel and ancient law, building up his theory of a Greek republic, . . always there was the Negro, another person, another human being-- and determined, even in those early days when he was most inarticulate, even from the depths of bondage, to insist that he WAS a human being, to insist on his own identity."
Pompey's Head is comprised of 20 founding families, and nothing much has changed, in 200 pages.
Anston (Sonny) Page is somewhat working to make partner in the lawfirm of Roberts, Guthrie Barlowe & Paul, appropriately called by his wife, Margaret (Meg), 'Boring, Barlowe Tedious and Impossible.' He is pulled into Barlowe's office to go back to Pompey's Head, where he grew up. Mrs. Lucy Wales is suing Phillip Greene for $20,000 (quite a bit of money in 1954) for money her husband, Garvin Wales, a writer, which was "stolen" by Mr. Greene, who has since died. The checks were paid to Anna Jones over 21 years, from 1936-1940. Did Wales, who is now blind, know about the $20,000? Anston will find out, and incidentally, will learn why he left.
The book is Anston wandering around Pompey's Head, and thru reminiscences and recollections. This is a time when Negros were servants. Anston pulls some ideas from Shintoism, ancestor worship, to cover the founding families of Pompey.
"The white man trying to protect his identity-or so he imagines-and the Negro trying to establish his." That's what it's been about for generations. "The white man could not accept the Negro as an equal- he simply could not, and yet, since the Negro was walking, talking, living, he could not deny his reality as a human being." The white man could pretend, however, ". . . drawing on Gospel and ancient law, building up his theory of a Greek republic, . . always there was the Negro, another person, another human being-- and determined, even in those early days when he was most inarticulate, even from the depths of bondage, to insist that he WAS a human being, to insist on his own identity."
Pompey's Head is comprised of 20 founding families, and nothing much has changed, in 200 pages.
September 7, 2011
The author, Hamilton Basso, was a popular writer in the '50s and had some best sellers, including this book, The View from Pompey's Head (Note: Pompey's Head is the name of a fictional town in the Low Country of South Carolina). The book is definitely a product of the '50s both in style and in the setting, including the characters. It is the story of an attorney who works for a New York law firm, and is asked to return sent to his home town of Pompey's Head to help investigate a "mystery" surrounding a famous writer who has retired in the area.
The book today may appeal to someone who has grown up along the coastal areas of South Carolina and enjoys reflecting on the old South and its culture as it was perceived over 50 years ago, but the author's style is now dated in many respects, primarily in that he spends too much converstational time between the protangonist and his old acquaintenances from his younger years. The reader can easily get bogged down in reading about realtionships that have very little to do with the plot other than to set the tone... the feel of the times between the 1930s and 1950s. I read it based on a recommendation by a well-read and published librarian, but if someone told me to quit by the time I got to page 50, I would have done so, but I plugged on in hopes that there were some redeeming graces to the book.
The book today may appeal to someone who has grown up along the coastal areas of South Carolina and enjoys reflecting on the old South and its culture as it was perceived over 50 years ago, but the author's style is now dated in many respects, primarily in that he spends too much converstational time between the protangonist and his old acquaintenances from his younger years. The reader can easily get bogged down in reading about realtionships that have very little to do with the plot other than to set the tone... the feel of the times between the 1930s and 1950s. I read it based on a recommendation by a well-read and published librarian, but if someone told me to quit by the time I got to page 50, I would have done so, but I plugged on in hopes that there were some redeeming graces to the book.
January 15, 2014
It certainly held my interest even though the narrative was slow in a few places. It was fun to read a period piece about a time and place I know so little.
January 22, 2016
A really good story in the tradition of Southern authors. Anson returns to Old Pompey on assignment, but learns about a lot himself and Southern society while he is there.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews