The Lonely Polygamist
Ratings9
Average rating3.6
From a luminous storyteller, a highly anticipated new novel about the American family writ large.
Golden Richards, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, is having the mother of all midlife crises. His construction business is failing, his family has grown into an overpopulated mini-dukedom beset with insurrection and rivalry, and he is done in with grief: due to the accidental death of a daughter and the stillbirth of a son, he has come to doubt the capacity of his own heart. Brady Udall, one of our finest American fiction writers, tells a tragicomic story of a deeply faithful man who, crippled by grief and the demands of work and family, becomes entangled in an affair that threatens to destroy his family’s future. Like John Irving and Richard Yates, Udall creates characters that engage us to the fullest as they grapple with the nature of need, love, and belonging.
Beautifully written, keenly observed, and ultimately redemptive, *The Lonely Polygamist* is an unforgettable story of an American family—with its inevitable dysfunctionality, heartbreak, and comedy—pushed to its outer limits.
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I don't get the adoration of this book. The characters were too pathetic for me to want to keep reading. I gave up after 200 pages. Second contemporary novel about polygamy I've given up on.
This was another book that did not live up to the premise of its (totally awesome) title. In fact, I found it so boring that I've apparently put off reviewing for two weeks.
What I expected was an exploration of polygamy, emotions, and the idea of being lonely when surrounded by people. Maybe also, being a Jewish woman from the eastern half of the country, and therefore having very little exposure to Mormons and known to FLDS, I have a bizarre fascination with them.
What I got was a quality author acting like he could get away with the most basic of midlife crisis plots by adding a couple extra wives. With four wives and a potential fifth, a mistress, a mob boss, an anarchist bomber and 20-somthing children, you'd think that at least some of the supporting characters would have something in the way of character development. Unfortunately, it was mostly a bumbling, completely unsympathetic putz of a main character and the son cast in his own image with no characterization of the remaining cast.
On the other hand, Udall's use of nuclear experimentation as a foil for interpersonal dynamics worked beautifully (if not a little on the wordplay side of things.)
