Review Thursday: The Old Cape Magic

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo (2009)

As Richard Russo’s novel That Old Cape Magic opens late middle-aged Jack Griffin, the screenwriter turned college professor main character, is on his way to a summer wedding on Cape Cod with his father’s ashes in an urn in the trunk of his car. It ends a year later with two weddings, and becomes the story of Griffin’s own marriage to his wife, Joy, as well as that of his parents, a bitter, eternally dissatisfied academic couple, and the impending marriage of his daughter, Laura. (Russo indicated in an interview that both of his daughters had gotten married while he was writing the novel, and he planned to pay for their weddings with the proceeds from the writing of this novel.)

It’s a novel about happiness, which is always on the horizon, never where Griffin is standing. It’s a paean to our common neuroses, written for people who are terrified of becoming their parents. That Old Cape Magic is bittersweet, humorous, affecting, insightful, and wise, and conveys a good sense of place. Fans of Russo’s work will delight in his latest. Newcomers should be drawn in by the Pulitzer Prize winner’s power as a novelist.