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Larry's Party Paperback – September 1, 1998

by Carol Shields (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 274 ratings
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The San Diego Tribune called The Stone Diaries a "universal study of what makes women tick." With Larry's Party Carol Shields has done the same for men. Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony, and tenderness. Larry's Party gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997, that seamlessly flash backward and forward. We follow this young floral designer through two marriages and divorces, and his interactions with his parents, friends, and a son. Throughout, we witness his deepening passion for garden mazes--so like life, with their teasing treachery and promise of reward. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larry moves through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties, and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search for self. Larry's odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy, and faultless wisdom.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    339 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Publishing Group
  4. Publication date
    September 1, 1998
  5. Dimensions
    5.06 x 0.8 x 7.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0140266771
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0140266771
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carol Shields (1935-2003) is the author of The Stone Diaries, which won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Canada's Governor General's Award. Her other novels and short-story collections include The Republic of Love, Happenstance, Swann, The Orange Fish, Various Miracles, The Box Garden, and Small Ceremonies (all available from Penguin).

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group (September 1, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 339 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140266771
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140266771
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.1 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.8 x 7.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 274 ratings

About the author

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Carol Shields

Carol Shields

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Carol Shields (1935–2003) was born in Oak Park, Illinois. She studied at Hanover College, the University of Exeter in England, and the University of Ottawa. In 1957, she married Donald Shields and moved to Canada permanently. She taught at the University of Ottawa, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Manitoba, and served as chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. She wrote ten novels and three short story collections, in addition to poetry, plays, criticism, and a biography of Jane Austen. Her novel The Stone Diaries won the Pulitzer Prize, the Governor General’s Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; it was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Shields was further recognized with a Canada Council Major Award, two Canadian National Magazine Awards, the Canadian Authors Association Award, and countless other prizes and honors.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
274 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Anne Else
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the finest creations of a contemporary male character in recent fiction
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2015
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One of the finest creations of a contemporary male character in recent fiction. I wish my husband had been alive to read it, he would have enjoyed it enormously.
One person found this helpful
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Steven Cain
4.0 out of 5 stars Larry's labyrinth...
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2007
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A decent book, which loosely suggests a maze-like labyrinthine feel during the story evolution; but this is more implied than actively structured, unlike the way Emily Bronte consciously used structure in Wuthering Heights.

Just as when men try to write about female characters, there are some shallow and stereotypical touches, especially regarding Larry's sexuality. His instantly responsive penis is the stuff of fantasy, as many men experience erection loss the first time or two with a new woman, and often during the very first time having sex.

While he shows a number of stereotypical reactions to the onset of middle age and the theatrical trauma of hitting forty, there is no recognition of the fact that a man with Larry's quasi-morbidity would be experiencing levels of erectile dysfunction from his late twenties onwards.

As with The Stone Diaries, Carol tends to write epics about people who simply do not lead epic lives, even in their own heads, and Larry's Party is such a novel.

Despite the inherent flaws and the tendency towards over-writing, I still consider it worth a read.
5 people found this helpful
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Ulla Geiger
5.0 out of 5 stars Larry's party
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2014
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The book arrived in just a couple of days, I think it was a record speed! And I love the book and intend to purchase also all the other novels of this auteor.
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Elite Reader
3.0 out of 5 stars Writing to Savour
Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2013
This is not the book to read if you're looking for a fast-moving and gripping plot. In fact, there isn't much plot to speak of. Instead the novel follows the life of a man named Larry from his late twenties through to his late forties. I first read the book when I was in my mid-twenties and didn't think much of it. I enjoyed it more this time around, partly because I have a much better understanding of the themes.

It isn't a book you can't put down, it's one you read to savour the language and the insights. Carol Shields is an amazing writer, there's no doubt about that, and for a while I wondered why I didn't like this book more when I first read it. Then I got to the end.

*SPOILER ALERT* Quite a few people claim that they felt rewarded for slogging through Larry's Party because there was an emotional pay-off when Larry finds his way to the beginning of the maze and gets back together with Dorrie. I felt the exact opposite. It was just so trite and clichéd, and it's not an exaggeration to say I hated it.

Are we really expected to believe that over the course of one dinner party everyone can see that Dorrie and Larry still love each other? Even Larry's current partner of over a year, who just happens to find a new love interest herself that night, gives him her blessing. How convenient. Beth is revealed for the self-absorbed cow she's always been and Larry and Dorrie are left to live happily ever after. Give me a break. As for the dinner party conversation, reading it was like listening to someone scrape their nails down a blackboard.

I thought this was going to be a four-star effort, but I have to take half a star off for the terrible ending to what was otherwise a very satisfying read. 3.5 stars
2 people found this helpful
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Peggy Vincent
4.0 out of 5 stars A story of a life lived and observed
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2003
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Carol Shields has a way of writing about the ordinary that elevates it to the sublime. We follow Larry, an ordinary guy, through his life through jumps in time of several years at a leap. Through the chapters, we follow him through a callow youth, through a first marriage and parenthood, divorce, his parents and sister's relationships with him and each other, remarriage and re-divorce, and most central to the book, his mundane job and rise to stellar status in his field of maze designer, of all things. But of course the maze is a metaphor for the complexities of life, trying to find ones way in the world. The dinner party at the end is clearly meant to represent the 'goal,' the center of the maze, but it's left to the readers to decide if Larry is likely to find his way out again.
A lovely tour de force.
7 people found this helpful
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Nancy Marx
5.0 out of 5 stars Carol Shield is an unbelievably great writer. Every page is filled with literary poetry ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2015
Carol Shield is an unbelievably great writer. Every page is filled with literary poetry and insight in to the intricacies of the human condition. This book chronicles the life of Larry who an essential everyman though his successive marriages and relationships as well as some reach background of how he became who he was and is. The beauty of the mood is the use of Larry's obsessional and professional interests as a maze maker. The metaphor of the book as well as a figurative maze leading each chapter puts on the introspective of one's ramblings and false starts though the journey of life. Enthusiastic beginnings, disappointments, blind endings, turn arounds, repetitions, and ultimately and hopefully finding one's center make the the metaphor a realistic portrayal of Larry's and the readers life. The book is supported by some excellent historical documentation of mazes thought the world and was fun to read on Kindle where I could highlight the location and search on Wikipedia.
2 people found this helpful
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Lesley West
4.0 out of 5 stars Intersting in a voyeursitic manner
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2000
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The Larry in question is a man whose entire adult life is studied minutely in this novel, and this is what is fasinating about it. It has certainly held my attention, even though there is no real adventure or substance in the plot - it is all about Larry. Having said this it is certainly an entertaining book, and the sub plot of his obsession with hedges is different, but all in all I think Larry is a guy we can all identify with, and Ms Shields does a very good job of making us care what happens to him.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Fly Me to the Moon
5.0 out of 5 stars Loved this book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 2, 2024
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Just wonderful, very funny, affectionate portrait of one everyman called Larry.
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Slobodanka Graham
5.0 out of 5 stars Larry’s party is where you want to be
Reviewed in Australia on January 26, 2018
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What is it like to be a man at the end of the 20th Century? Hard to tell if you’re a woman - like me - but I certainly empathized with Larry. All his twists and turns through the maze of his life, they all lead him to the same place . . .
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Zandra
4.0 out of 5 stars Very unusual writing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 18, 2013
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There is something very unusual about the structure and tone of this novel. The voice of the narrator feels at once close and distant from the main character, Larry, a lover of horticulture who makes mazes. It doesn't exactly have a plot, and maybe that makes the book unusual - there is no particular beginning middle and end - but in that way it feels very close to how real life is: a series of events and relationships and thoughts and realisations, rather than a structured development.

I think it will be easy for anyone to tell by reading the sample whether they are going to like it, because the tone is very similar right the way through. I liked it very much, for the beautiful writing and the sense of being in the middle of another person's world - nobody particularly unusual or special, but with his own intense inner life.
3 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 17, 2019
Verified Purchase
It is so introspective and it is wise. The writing is gorgeous and I could not put it down. It is the story of a man inthe twentieth century: what he feels what he thinks he wants what he deserves and what he gets. Engrossing.
One person found this helpful
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M E PERROTT
4.0 out of 5 stars I found the book rather boring.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2015
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An interesting approach with each chapter being on a different topic. I found the book rather boring.
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