A Novel by Kathryn Kramer
Knopf, 1984.$15.95; Vintage Contemporaries, 1985, $5.95
from the dustjacket:
A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Spaceis a novel that gives us -- through the eyes and being of Cyrus Quince, a young American boy filled with classic yearnings but growing up in a no-longer-classic world -- a sharply fresh vision of our time.
We enter the novel through The House at the World's End. A war has been going on, but no one knows how or when it started. On the lawn of the Old Generals' Home, on the outskirts of Winston City, on the American eastern seacoast, the elderly men discuss how improbable, how utterly unlike former wars, this one seems to be: no enemy, no identifiable troops, but so much talk of strategy and being ever on the alert, and in the population at large an insistent feeling of anxiety coupled with a feverish gaiety. For many, the war persists only as a rumor, and others do not even believe in its existence -- especially in Arborville, the suburban town in the heart of the country, where Cyrus Quince was born and which, magically, still thrives in an innocent time of porch swings, picnics, and funny new dance steps: a town in which people still seem able to take life easy and provide for their children the childhoods they themselves never had.
We follow Cyrus on journeys both fabulous and familiar, through a childhood idyllically tidy, from which all trouble has been expunged; through prep school days at Fifield Academy - first love and first betrayal; through his involvement with the "Campers," the super-chic young crowd satirizing themselves and the world as they gypsy through their twenties, wisecracking about the war presumably raging outside the house where they are illegally squatting ("Let the enemy attack, I say! Just let them be quick about it"); through his years at foreign school as he moves with ambivalence into a world of privileged secrecy, becoming the protege of stouthearted, clean-cut men who have had (and in many cases still have) access to the very highest levels of classified mystery; and as he falls in love with a young girl, the violinist Fritz Quadrata, whose family (intimately though obliquely related to his own) has been living for generations in New Jersey as royalty-in-exile from an unspecified country (fretting about succession, practicing incest, playing croquet), and whose moody genius and romantic passion initiate him into the complex terrain of adult love.
As we follow him on his fragile and uncertain quest for love, for a vital identity and authenticity, we begin to piece together a portrait of this generation's connection to our still worshipped but receding traditions: family, religion, patriotism, the ideal of a principled life.
Of this entrancing and deeply original novel Joseph McElroy writes, "The prose is transparent, its burden complex -- a curious design, a fable-like shiver, a humor that casts a deep and subtle shadow."
It marks the debut of a richly gifted writer.
Kathryn Kramer was born in Annapolis, Maryland, and attended Marlboro College in Vermont and Johns Hopkins University.
Jacket design by Naomi Osnos/Jacket art by Rob Wynne
"Triumphantly original."
--THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
"Extraterrestrial beings won't discover in the pages of this accomplished first novel quite all the wonders of our fated planet but they'll feast their senses on vividly caught glimpses. .The novel is thoroughly engaging and introduces an unmistakably gifted new voice in command of stylistic finesse, lively fancy and infectious buoyancy."
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"It's a fable. It's a Farce. It's a world situation tragi-comedy and a: cartoon family romance. It's all about the end of the world. Sweet.. sad ... scary, and how wonderfully well-done. This combination of inspired tenderness and brilliant technique is ... characteristic throughout; it reads as if it were written by a very witty angel."
--Timothy Evans, BOSTON HERALD
"Funny, resonant ... precisely expressive language. All the supporting characters are drawn with loving detail and complex stories of their own."'
-- Gina Covina, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Haunting ... For all its kaleidoscopic vision and fragmented structure Kramer' s novel is pleasurable for conventional reasons - the tantalizing enjoyment of surprise, of discovering who knows what about whom."
-- Catherine Bush, NEWSDAY
"This first novelist juggles big, weighty themes ... with remarkable agility and surprising strength ... She is an entertainer with both courage and conviction."
-- Art Seidenbaum, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
"The work of a powerful imagination ... a rarity among first novels, a rich multi-layered construct. Kathryn Kramer is a writer to be watched "
--THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
"A mad fairy -tale that unexpectedly turns out to be true. Ms. Kramer is such an engaging storyteller that we willingly submit, believing the impossible."
-- Carol Sternhell, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"Romantic and surrealistic ... muses over the end of the world with a gloom reminiscent of Doris Lessing and a wackiness befitting Tom Robbins."
--THE BOSTON GLOBE
"A delightful first novel with an uncommon amount of human wisdom and novelistic good sense. Kathryn Kramer is a natural."
--JOHN BARTH
"Nobody who loves novels should miss it."
-- THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR