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A review by kmccubbin
Four Freedoms by John Crowley
5.0
John Crowley is a national treasure and I will stamp my feet while standing on Nicholson Baker's coffee table and explain it to him while the vacuum is on!
While the oft made comparison of Crowley to Robertson Davies is apt, this book resembles, in my mind at least, something more akin to Saroyan than Davies; though to be fair there is simply no way to pigeonhole the man's work this easily. Nevertheless, this book describes a striking, funny, sort of Americana that you always knew was there, but only in the back of your mind. How astonishing it is to have it draped across your ballustrade as if it's been there since the last Fourth of July!
The story follows Prosper Olander, almost entirely crippled from the waist down, Connie Wrobleski, abused and terrified wife and mother and a Thimble Theater-full of not-soldiers who would not have ever been given the opportunity to flourish in communities, to hold down difficult, exacting, jobs, to excel at life, but World War II allows them to walk onto the playing pitch that was previously roped off to them. They move in to a pre-fabricated town and begin building bombers for the war effort. They become society.
At this exact point in time, in this exact place a miracle happens, and the miracle speaks to the oft-dismissed grandness of normal life... Well, mostly normal.
The book is a delight.
While the oft made comparison of Crowley to Robertson Davies is apt, this book resembles, in my mind at least, something more akin to Saroyan than Davies; though to be fair there is simply no way to pigeonhole the man's work this easily. Nevertheless, this book describes a striking, funny, sort of Americana that you always knew was there, but only in the back of your mind. How astonishing it is to have it draped across your ballustrade as if it's been there since the last Fourth of July!
The story follows Prosper Olander, almost entirely crippled from the waist down, Connie Wrobleski, abused and terrified wife and mother and a Thimble Theater-full of not-soldiers who would not have ever been given the opportunity to flourish in communities, to hold down difficult, exacting, jobs, to excel at life, but World War II allows them to walk onto the playing pitch that was previously roped off to them. They move in to a pre-fabricated town and begin building bombers for the war effort. They become society.
At this exact point in time, in this exact place a miracle happens, and the miracle speaks to the oft-dismissed grandness of normal life... Well, mostly normal.
The book is a delight.