Ostlund richly evokes the rural Minnesota of Aaron’s childhood, where fine distinctions are made between Norwegians, Swedes and Finns and, through Aaron, she casts a sharp eye on the generation of closeted gay men Walter and his friends belong to, men whose campiness both disguises and expresses their shame. The teaching scenes, in which Aaron’s adult students ponder the mysteries of American English expressions and American customs, are warm, lively and engrossing. “ powerful debut novel… After the Parade provides considerable pleasure and emotional power. Hanya Yanighara, bestselling author of A Little Life "A beautiful, elegant, honest, and compassionate book about trauma-and the difficult process through which we come to make sense of our lives." Richard Russo, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of Empire Falls "Lori Ostlund's wonderful novel After the Parade should come with a set of instructions: Be perfectly still. After the Parade is a glorious anthem for the outsider. “Everything here aches, from the lucid prose to the sensitively treated characters to their beautiful and heartbreaking stories.An example of realism in its most potent iteration: not a nearly arranged plot orchestrated by an authorial god but an authentic, empathetic representation of life as it truly is” ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “Touching and often hilarious.Ostlund writes with acuity and refreshing honesty about the messy complexity of being a social animal in today’s world.” ( Booklist, starred review).
And when, all these years later, a new friend in San Francisco offers Aaron a way to locate his mother, his past and present collide, forcing Aaron to rethink his place in the world. But Aaron’s sense of rejection runs deep: when Aaron was seventeen, Dolores-his loving yet selfish and enigmatic mother-vanished one night. But soon after establishing himself in San Francisco, Aaron sees that real freedom will not come until he has made peace with his memories of Mortonville, Minnesota-a cramped town whose four hundred souls form a constellation of Aaron’s childhood heartbreaks and hopes.Īfter Aaron’s father died in the town parade, it was the larger-than life misfits of his childhood who helped Aaron find his place in a world hostile to difference. After twenty years under the Pygmalion-like care of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to take control of his own fate. Sensitive, bighearted, and achingly self-conscious, forty-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confinements of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast.
The debut novel from award-winning author Lori Ostlund-“smart, resonant, and imbued with beauty” ( Publishers Weekly) that “provides considerable pleasure and emotional power” ( The New York Times Book Review)-about a man who leaves his longtime partner in New Mexico for a tragicomic road trip deep into the mysteries of his own Midwestern childhood.
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