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Matters of Honor
From the acclaimed author of Wartime Lies and About Schmidt, a luminous story of a brilliant but haunted outsider driven to transcend his past.
At Harvard in the early 1950s, three seemingly mismatched freshmen are thrown Sam, who fears that his fine New England name has been tarnished by his father’s drinking and his mother’s affairs; Archie, an affable army brat whose veneer of sophistication was acquired at an obscure Scottish boarding school; and Henry, fiercely intelligent but obstinate and unpolished, a refugee from Poland via a Brooklyn high school. As roommates they enter a world governed by arcane rules, where merit is everything except when trumped by pedigree and the inherited prerogatives of belonging. Each roommate’s accommodation to this world will require self-reinvention, none more audacious than Henry’s. Believing himself to be at last in the “land of the free,” he is determined to see himself on a level playing field, playing a game he can win. The ante is high—virtual renunciation of his past—but the jackpot seems even higher—long dreamed-of esteem, success, and arrival. Henry will stay in the game almost to the last hand, even after it becomes clear he must stake his loyalty to his parents and even to himself.
Reserved and observant, Sam recounts the trio’s Harvard years and the reckonings that his own struggle with familial demons and his rise as a novelist; a coarsened Archie’s descent into drink; and, most attentively, Henry’s Faustian bargain and then his mysterious disappearance just as all his wildest ambitions seem to have been realized. Love and loyalty will impel Sam to discover the secret of Henry’s final reinvention.
An unforgettable portrait of friendship and a meditation on loyalty and honor—Louis Begley’s finest achievement.
At Harvard in the early 1950s, three seemingly mismatched freshmen are thrown Sam, who fears that his fine New England name has been tarnished by his father’s drinking and his mother’s affairs; Archie, an affable army brat whose veneer of sophistication was acquired at an obscure Scottish boarding school; and Henry, fiercely intelligent but obstinate and unpolished, a refugee from Poland via a Brooklyn high school. As roommates they enter a world governed by arcane rules, where merit is everything except when trumped by pedigree and the inherited prerogatives of belonging. Each roommate’s accommodation to this world will require self-reinvention, none more audacious than Henry’s. Believing himself to be at last in the “land of the free,” he is determined to see himself on a level playing field, playing a game he can win. The ante is high—virtual renunciation of his past—but the jackpot seems even higher—long dreamed-of esteem, success, and arrival. Henry will stay in the game almost to the last hand, even after it becomes clear he must stake his loyalty to his parents and even to himself.
Reserved and observant, Sam recounts the trio’s Harvard years and the reckonings that his own struggle with familial demons and his rise as a novelist; a coarsened Archie’s descent into drink; and, most attentively, Henry’s Faustian bargain and then his mysterious disappearance just as all his wildest ambitions seem to have been realized. Love and loyalty will impel Sam to discover the secret of Henry’s final reinvention.
An unforgettable portrait of friendship and a meditation on loyalty and honor—Louis Begley’s finest achievement.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
9 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
Louis Begley
44 books85 followersLouis Begley is an American novelist.
Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi at the time part of Poland and now in Ukraine, as the only child of a physician. He is a survivor of the Holocaust due to the multiple purchases of Aryan papers by his mother and constant evasion of the Nazis. They survived by pretending to be Polish Catholic. The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 and settled in New York in March 1947. Begley studied English Literature at Harvard College (AB '54, summa cum laude), and published in the Harvard Advocate. Service in the United States Army followed. In 1956 Begley entered Harvard Law School and graduated in 1959 (LL.B. magna cum laude).
Upon graduation from Law School, Begley joined the New York firm of Debevoise & Plimpton as an associate; became a partner in January 1968; became of counsel in January 2004; and retired in January 2007. From 1993 to 1995, Begley was also president of PEN American Center. He remains a member of PEN's board of directors, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
His wife of 30 years, Anka Muhlstein, was honoured by the French Academy for her work on La Salle, and received critical acclaim for her book A Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine.
His first novel, Wartime Lies, was written in 1989. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first work of fiction in 1991. The French version, Une éducation polonaise, won the Prix Médicis International in 1992. He has also won several German literature prizes, including the Jeanette Schocken Prize in 1995 and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Literature Prize in 2000.
His novel About Schmidt was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jack Nicholson.
Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi at the time part of Poland and now in Ukraine, as the only child of a physician. He is a survivor of the Holocaust due to the multiple purchases of Aryan papers by his mother and constant evasion of the Nazis. They survived by pretending to be Polish Catholic. The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 and settled in New York in March 1947. Begley studied English Literature at Harvard College (AB '54, summa cum laude), and published in the Harvard Advocate. Service in the United States Army followed. In 1956 Begley entered Harvard Law School and graduated in 1959 (LL.B. magna cum laude).
Upon graduation from Law School, Begley joined the New York firm of Debevoise & Plimpton as an associate; became a partner in January 1968; became of counsel in January 2004; and retired in January 2007. From 1993 to 1995, Begley was also president of PEN American Center. He remains a member of PEN's board of directors, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
His wife of 30 years, Anka Muhlstein, was honoured by the French Academy for her work on La Salle, and received critical acclaim for her book A Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine.
His first novel, Wartime Lies, was written in 1989. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first work of fiction in 1991. The French version, Une éducation polonaise, won the Prix Médicis International in 1992. He has also won several German literature prizes, including the Jeanette Schocken Prize in 1995 and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Literature Prize in 2000.
His novel About Schmidt was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jack Nicholson.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
June 18, 2015
Louis Begley writes, sometimes –many times—about the same things: upper class Americans in moral situations. He does so again in Matters of Honor. Here we follow five people from Harvard (and Radcliffe) from the late forties to some kind of end for three of them. Along the way he writes probably the most interesting novel ever created about property law. Throw in some holocaust material, some coming of age sex in the ‘fifties, and a scintillating international scene and you have quite a book. In fact you have both too much and not enough.
Begley sometimes gets bogged down in plot lines that seem endless. And then, the conclusion, if not quite a “I have a letter,” is not much better. We have invested too much attention to be thrust away with a “I found him and he was happy.”
What I liked most about the book is the almost invisible narrator. He is a participant, but we know almost nothing of him. In fact, he knows little of himself except he is an orphan and has turned into a fine writer. I hope these are both positives, but I am not sure.
I have read all of Begley, and he continues the J.P. Marquand tradition quite admirably.
Begley sometimes gets bogged down in plot lines that seem endless. And then, the conclusion, if not quite a “I have a letter,” is not much better. We have invested too much attention to be thrust away with a “I found him and he was happy.”
What I liked most about the book is the almost invisible narrator. He is a participant, but we know almost nothing of him. In fact, he knows little of himself except he is an orphan and has turned into a fine writer. I hope these are both positives, but I am not sure.
I have read all of Begley, and he continues the J.P. Marquand tradition quite admirably.
July 9, 2024
Snooze fest for me personally
July 27, 2011
Hmmm I liked reading about what going to Harvard was like in the 50's, but the main characters were a bunch of New York intelligentsia snobs who thought they were above being snobby, which made them even more snobby... rather depressing. It seems like it was somewhat in imitation of a Robertson Davies book, what with the intellectual old man reflecting too much on others lives because he's lonely and got nothing else to do, only not nearly as good.
February 21, 2021
Such intelligence and grace shine on every page. He's like an American Anthony Powell. He should be better known. I've read everything now and highly recommend him.
December 25, 2013
Either one of Louis Begley's careers would be an extraordinary accomplishment. As a partner at a New York law firm, he maneuvered giant deals through the treacherous landscape of overlapping European legal systems. And as the author of eight novels, he has won wide critical acclaim, been nominated for a National Book Award and served as president of the PEN American Center. Much of his fiction -- beginning with his first novel, Wartime Lies, published in 1991 when he was 57 -- has been marked by his youth as a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazis and remade himself in America.
His new novel, Matters of Honor, is another thoughtful reflection on this experience. Both sides of his life are personified here: one as the narrator, a famous novelist; the other as his best friend, an international lawyer. The story opens at Harvard in the early 1950s, when the comically effete students are pampered by waiters, maids and masters determined to arrange "a social bouquet worthy of a great salon." Sam Standish comes from the modest branch of a wealthy New England family; he's embarrassed by his profligate parents, glad to be away from them and gladder to have recently learned that he was adopted and is the beneficiary of a large, mysterious trust fund that will free him from them entirely.
His roommate, Henry White, is engaged in an even more dramatic process of separation and reinvention. The only child of Polish parents who hid themselves and him from the Nazis, he's come to Harvard on a scholarship (as Begley did) and hopes to escape his mother's grasping affection and her efforts to make him more Jewish. "I feel no more Jewish than a smoked ham," he says and quickly enlists Sam to teach him the ways of upper-class WASPs. "I am going to remake myself in the image I carry inside me."
Over the next several hundred pages, Sam describes his friend's futile efforts to transform himself and win the heart of a sophisticated, high-society girl -- his "long-term project" -- who represents everything he wants. (Hearing echoes of The Great Gatsby? In a particularly apt aside, this wealthy young woman compares her antics to those "in some novel F. Scott Fitzgerald hadn't written.")
Henry is a brilliant scholar, and Sam does everything he can to advise him, however disingenuously, about the American meritocracy, but, of course, the whole enterprise is tinged with tragedy. No matter how hard he tries to speak and dress correctly, Henry doesn't fit in with the "golden lads and lassies"; he cannot match their "blandness and satisfaction with the place they occupied by divine right." Even when he succeeds in "passing," he endures the shame of that deception, and when he discloses his Jewish background, he feels the humiliations of being considered exotic or being pestered for dramatic stories about his ordeal under the Nazis.
Begley's analysis of class and anti-Semitism in America is often brilliant, but this is a demandingly static novel. The plot moves slowly through a series of disconnected parties and conversations, frequently drifting into complex side stories that never feel relevant. Henry and Sam's third roommate seems a significant presence in the novel for many chapters until he's summarily dispensed with offstage. While cocktails and decor receive elaborate attention, a number of life-changing events fly by without warning or ramification: Sam falls into a bout of crippling depression as suddenly as you might sprain your ankle, then undergoes decades of weekly analysis about which we hear almost nothing. One chapter begins, "My friendship with the Japanese writer and sojourns in Kyoto came to an abrupt end." What friendship with a Japanese writer? What sojourns in Kyoto?
Compounding the demands of this 50-year, desultory plot is the novel's narrator. Sam speaks in a cool, strictly modulated voice, no matter what he's describing: Whether he's being beaten to a pulp by hoodlums, sodomized by transvestites, or called to the scene of a bloody suicide, everything takes place at a great distance from us, stripped of any color, heat or immediacy. What seems at first restrained and elegant eventually sounds merely disaffected and dull.
But in the final chapters, the novel suddenly snaps back into focus and concentrates on the final moral crisis of Henry's life as a successful lawyer still reaching for acceptance, for dignity, for the girl who got away. "You might rightly ask," he tells Sam, "what has my self-negation got me. My Jewism is still with me, like bad breath. . . . I have gotten nothing, zero, or less than zero. My wages are disgrace and shame." It's a deeply troubling evaluation, gorgeously evoked and dramatically embedded in the sort of complex legal plot Begley must have confronted as a lawyer himself. Henry's final, courageous act of reinvention is a bittersweet closing argument, but one hopes the members of the reading jury will pay attention long enough to reach it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
His new novel, Matters of Honor, is another thoughtful reflection on this experience. Both sides of his life are personified here: one as the narrator, a famous novelist; the other as his best friend, an international lawyer. The story opens at Harvard in the early 1950s, when the comically effete students are pampered by waiters, maids and masters determined to arrange "a social bouquet worthy of a great salon." Sam Standish comes from the modest branch of a wealthy New England family; he's embarrassed by his profligate parents, glad to be away from them and gladder to have recently learned that he was adopted and is the beneficiary of a large, mysterious trust fund that will free him from them entirely.
His roommate, Henry White, is engaged in an even more dramatic process of separation and reinvention. The only child of Polish parents who hid themselves and him from the Nazis, he's come to Harvard on a scholarship (as Begley did) and hopes to escape his mother's grasping affection and her efforts to make him more Jewish. "I feel no more Jewish than a smoked ham," he says and quickly enlists Sam to teach him the ways of upper-class WASPs. "I am going to remake myself in the image I carry inside me."
Over the next several hundred pages, Sam describes his friend's futile efforts to transform himself and win the heart of a sophisticated, high-society girl -- his "long-term project" -- who represents everything he wants. (Hearing echoes of The Great Gatsby? In a particularly apt aside, this wealthy young woman compares her antics to those "in some novel F. Scott Fitzgerald hadn't written.")
Henry is a brilliant scholar, and Sam does everything he can to advise him, however disingenuously, about the American meritocracy, but, of course, the whole enterprise is tinged with tragedy. No matter how hard he tries to speak and dress correctly, Henry doesn't fit in with the "golden lads and lassies"; he cannot match their "blandness and satisfaction with the place they occupied by divine right." Even when he succeeds in "passing," he endures the shame of that deception, and when he discloses his Jewish background, he feels the humiliations of being considered exotic or being pestered for dramatic stories about his ordeal under the Nazis.
Begley's analysis of class and anti-Semitism in America is often brilliant, but this is a demandingly static novel. The plot moves slowly through a series of disconnected parties and conversations, frequently drifting into complex side stories that never feel relevant. Henry and Sam's third roommate seems a significant presence in the novel for many chapters until he's summarily dispensed with offstage. While cocktails and decor receive elaborate attention, a number of life-changing events fly by without warning or ramification: Sam falls into a bout of crippling depression as suddenly as you might sprain your ankle, then undergoes decades of weekly analysis about which we hear almost nothing. One chapter begins, "My friendship with the Japanese writer and sojourns in Kyoto came to an abrupt end." What friendship with a Japanese writer? What sojourns in Kyoto?
Compounding the demands of this 50-year, desultory plot is the novel's narrator. Sam speaks in a cool, strictly modulated voice, no matter what he's describing: Whether he's being beaten to a pulp by hoodlums, sodomized by transvestites, or called to the scene of a bloody suicide, everything takes place at a great distance from us, stripped of any color, heat or immediacy. What seems at first restrained and elegant eventually sounds merely disaffected and dull.
But in the final chapters, the novel suddenly snaps back into focus and concentrates on the final moral crisis of Henry's life as a successful lawyer still reaching for acceptance, for dignity, for the girl who got away. "You might rightly ask," he tells Sam, "what has my self-negation got me. My Jewism is still with me, like bad breath. . . . I have gotten nothing, zero, or less than zero. My wages are disgrace and shame." It's a deeply troubling evaluation, gorgeously evoked and dramatically embedded in the sort of complex legal plot Begley must have confronted as a lawyer himself. Henry's final, courageous act of reinvention is a bittersweet closing argument, but one hopes the members of the reading jury will pay attention long enough to reach it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
November 25, 2012
This novel begins in the early 50s with the narrator meeting his two roommates in his freshman year at Harvard and ends with two of the survivors in their seventies. Despite the time span, the book never really leaves Harvard. One of the narrator's roommates is Henry, a Jew from Poland who survived the Holocaust by hiding in a friend's room for two years--much of the book deals with his assimilation into WASPish society, the discrimination he often faced and the eventual consequences.
Interestingly, when I finished the book I read about the author. I had assumed reading the book that the narrator's life was somewhat autobiographical, however the author had actually lived Henry's life.
The first half of the book recounts the four college years, the second half covers the next 50 years. As a result, the characters and stories become more superficial and less interesting. What started as a good novel turned into somewhat of a grind to finish
Interestingly, when I finished the book I read about the author. I had assumed reading the book that the narrator's life was somewhat autobiographical, however the author had actually lived Henry's life.
The first half of the book recounts the four college years, the second half covers the next 50 years. As a result, the characters and stories become more superficial and less interesting. What started as a good novel turned into somewhat of a grind to finish
November 28, 2016
Inane. Didn't finish.......
June 12, 2024
I had a hard time figuring out what Matters of Honor was about. What was Begley trying to say in this novel? Some of the themes are male friendship, social class, antisemitism, and whether success is everything.
But then, what about them? On the surface, it is about three young men who are roommates at Harvard in 1953 and what happens to them as time goes on. Sam Standish, the narrator, comes from an old New England family, the big cheeses in the small city of Pittsfield. Or maybe he doesn't. Just before he comes to college, the family lawyer tells him he was adopted, and the patriarch of the family had set up a trust fund for him. This is a relief to our Sam, as he despises his alcoholic parents. However, he is pretty clearly a Standish as he looks like the Standishes. A puzzle.
Then there is Henry White, or Weiss, as he was originally named. Henry is Jewish but trying to pass, somewhat unsuccessfully. He and his parents spent World War I in Krakow, hiding from the Nazis. He is a victim of the casual antisemitism of the 50s and 60s among the upper crust in New York and Boston, the prejudice that led my uncle to constantly inform me that men we met on the street in Manhattan were Jewish.
Archie Palmer is the third roommate. He is from a military family and spends his time socializing with the wealthy, well-connected Harvard students, and in Sam's view, drinking way too much. Sam and Henry become friends, endlessly discussing what it means for Henry to be Jewish, and how much antisemitism is responsible for him not getting into prestigous clubs. We find out a lot about Henry and Sam on some levels, nothing on others. Begley is not big on description. We don't find out what Sam's aunt and uncle's house looks like, or Henry's parents' house in Brooklyn. Does it matter? I would have liked the book better if the narration hadn't been so interior.
After graduation, Sam becomes a successful writer. We know he becomes a writer and churns out the books steadily, but we the readers, have no idea what his books are about. That bothered me, anyway. We don't know if Sam is happy in his chosen metier. Henry, who becomes a very successful corporate lawyer, is happy.
I finished this book, so I didn't hate it, but I certainly didn't love it.
But then, what about them? On the surface, it is about three young men who are roommates at Harvard in 1953 and what happens to them as time goes on. Sam Standish, the narrator, comes from an old New England family, the big cheeses in the small city of Pittsfield. Or maybe he doesn't. Just before he comes to college, the family lawyer tells him he was adopted, and the patriarch of the family had set up a trust fund for him. This is a relief to our Sam, as he despises his alcoholic parents. However, he is pretty clearly a Standish as he looks like the Standishes. A puzzle.
Then there is Henry White, or Weiss, as he was originally named. Henry is Jewish but trying to pass, somewhat unsuccessfully. He and his parents spent World War I in Krakow, hiding from the Nazis. He is a victim of the casual antisemitism of the 50s and 60s among the upper crust in New York and Boston, the prejudice that led my uncle to constantly inform me that men we met on the street in Manhattan were Jewish.
Archie Palmer is the third roommate. He is from a military family and spends his time socializing with the wealthy, well-connected Harvard students, and in Sam's view, drinking way too much. Sam and Henry become friends, endlessly discussing what it means for Henry to be Jewish, and how much antisemitism is responsible for him not getting into prestigous clubs. We find out a lot about Henry and Sam on some levels, nothing on others. Begley is not big on description. We don't find out what Sam's aunt and uncle's house looks like, or Henry's parents' house in Brooklyn. Does it matter? I would have liked the book better if the narration hadn't been so interior.
After graduation, Sam becomes a successful writer. We know he becomes a writer and churns out the books steadily, but we the readers, have no idea what his books are about. That bothered me, anyway. We don't know if Sam is happy in his chosen metier. Henry, who becomes a very successful corporate lawyer, is happy.
I finished this book, so I didn't hate it, but I certainly didn't love it.
May 9, 2019
3.5 stars...I kept thinking that something would "happen" in this book, and while nothing really did...their lives did. Looking back, there really was a beginning, middle and an end -- just not quite as defined (?) as most novels are... but then there was something really sweet about that -- that it was just a story about some friends. I guess.
August 3, 2011
Most of the story is set in Harvard, but it’s less about college life than it is about the search of identity and life-long friendship.
Early in the 1950s the three protagonists first meet when they move into the same suite of the college dormitory. Sam Standish – the narrator – is the son of an old New England family who hasn’t yet come to terms with the rather recent discovery that he had been adopted as a baby by his parents who belong to an impoverished branch of the Standishes and who are so miserable about it that they took to drinking. As time progresses he becomes a renowned writer. Archibald P. Palmer, short Archie, is from a Texan army family that never stayed in the same place for long. From the beginning he is the socialite of the friends, someone who enjoys taking risks and hard drinks. The third of the party is Henry White, born Henryk Weiss, a Polish Jew from Krakow who survived the war by hiding and who came to the USA with both his parents in 1947. He strives for acceptance and tries to shake off his Jewish heritage. Anti-Semitism is strong in the USA at the time. Eventually Henry becomes a lawyer in the Paris subsidiary of a big New Yorker law firm, but then...
Discover yourself!
See also my blogpost at:
http://edith-lagraziana.blogspot.com/...
Early in the 1950s the three protagonists first meet when they move into the same suite of the college dormitory. Sam Standish – the narrator – is the son of an old New England family who hasn’t yet come to terms with the rather recent discovery that he had been adopted as a baby by his parents who belong to an impoverished branch of the Standishes and who are so miserable about it that they took to drinking. As time progresses he becomes a renowned writer. Archibald P. Palmer, short Archie, is from a Texan army family that never stayed in the same place for long. From the beginning he is the socialite of the friends, someone who enjoys taking risks and hard drinks. The third of the party is Henry White, born Henryk Weiss, a Polish Jew from Krakow who survived the war by hiding and who came to the USA with both his parents in 1947. He strives for acceptance and tries to shake off his Jewish heritage. Anti-Semitism is strong in the USA at the time. Eventually Henry becomes a lawyer in the Paris subsidiary of a big New Yorker law firm, but then...
Discover yourself!
See also my blogpost at:
http://edith-lagraziana.blogspot.com/...
July 6, 2012
#4 Summer Sub Club read with Beth.....This is a sleeper of a novel. On the surface it is simply a tale of four post-WWII Harvard freshmen and their coming of age with typical life struggles in the arenas of career, family, and relationships. However, Begley's writing subtly draws the reader into a much bigger theme which is self-invention and re-invention. We meet Sam, our narrator whose parents were not up to snuff by many standards. We meet Archie, who is a burgeoning alcoholic who refuses to transform. We meet Margot who has it all and yet has nothing. We meet our very dear Henry, a Polish, Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, who is gifted in the area of re-invention. So, the novel resonates for anyone who has wanted to re-invent themselves, leaving behind those aspects of their identity which are distasteful, socially unacceptable, frightening, and/or which stand in the way of what we seek in life. There were a few sections which seemed to drag, perhaps not feeling quite necessary to the forward motion of the story, and the use of language was subtly powerful, but not exquisite enough for a 5 star rating. Very good novel!
August 3, 2008
This book follows three young men who are college roommates at Harvard during the early 1950s. One is from an old New England family, but has conflict with his parents. Another is a Jewish refugee from Poland, trying to fit in to a largely gentile society at Harvard. The third is from a military family, and has traveled around throughout his life.
The characters were interesting and well-written, and the book provided interesting insight into the world of upper-class New England in the 1950s. It also gave me a sense of how much things have changed over the years.
My only complaint was that I felt the second half of the story, which followed the three characters after they left Harvard, was somewhat rushed; trying to cover too much material in too few pages.
The characters were interesting and well-written, and the book provided interesting insight into the world of upper-class New England in the 1950s. It also gave me a sense of how much things have changed over the years.
My only complaint was that I felt the second half of the story, which followed the three characters after they left Harvard, was somewhat rushed; trying to cover too much material in too few pages.
March 24, 2008
This is the first book by Louis Begley I've read.
The book begins in the mid-50's, at Harvard, and, as a novel, it's really a bit old fashioned.
The story centers on Henry White, a Polish Jewish immigrant who goes to Harvard, and his efforts to adopt the prevailing WASP culture of Harvard. It follows White and his roommates and friends through the years.
The book begins in the mid-50's, at Harvard, and, as a novel, it's really a bit old fashioned.
The story centers on Henry White, a Polish Jewish immigrant who goes to Harvard, and his efforts to adopt the prevailing WASP culture of Harvard. It follows White and his roommates and friends through the years.
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April 23, 2008
If you don't mind time moving around oddly, [mainly large jumps ahead in time with no/little explanations] then this is worth the read. I felt tied in to some of the characters, and intrigued by most of them. Worth reading.
February 25, 2009
I liked this book- the time period was kind of interesting, following three guys from post-WWII Harvard to present day. I liked the characters, but I rated it a 3 because it was kind of slow reading. More like a 3 1/2. I am interested in trying out more of this author's books.
October 28, 2007
Pulled this off the new-fiction shelf at the library.
December 27, 2007
Good Bildungsroman.
http://www.amazon.com/Matters-Honor-L...
http://www.amazon.com/Matters-Honor-L...
July 14, 2008
AWFUL. I will never read anything else by this author it was so awful.
June 29, 2008
Flat story with flat characters: Polish Jew goes to Harvard in 50s, excels as a lawyer, then drops out.
January 20, 2010
The only book I've ever read by Louis Begley - really enjoyed it. Memorable characters.
Want to read
February 22, 20103 friends from Harvard 1950's southern France
February 10, 2011
I loved this book for about 3/4. Then it got a little bogged down. And I still have a couple of questions. Foremost, who were Sam,s real parents? Was he gay?
July 29, 2012
This book was pretty interesting until the last few chapters. The ending made no sense to me--I expected a lot more.
July 9, 2012
Boring.
July 23, 2012
Rating: 4 1/2 stars.
June 20, 2013
it`s slowly, wonderful and it spells
February 10, 2016
Well written but I was slightly disappointed.
January 7, 2023
Begley is one of my favorite authors and I think this is one of his best books. He takes subtlety to the highest level. I need to re-read this one.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews