Oh! by Mary Robison

Oh! by Mary Robison

At first, Oh seems a satire, a sitcom stripped of its sentiment and foolishness. But it is far more. Mary Robison is trying to show us how the the incredibly complicated dance of family life works. --The New Yorker

Those who know Mary Robison's work will not be surprised that her first novel leaps from one prodigal moment to the next, for as Kenneth Burke has said of this startling writer, Robison outguesses the shrewdest reader--even several times on a single page.

In Oh , these marvels have their source in a summer's romp with a madcap Midwestern family flourishing under the eccentric protection of a father like no other. He is the wifeless Mr. Cleveland, now an enthusiast at gardening and insobriety since passing from active service as ruler of his soda-pop and miniature golf domain.

Cleveland's is the contented life of the man who knows who he is. The same might be said for his motherless children, Mo and Howdy, though they are scarcely children still. The loutish, loafing Mo is, in fact, a young single mother to little Violet.

Like the rest of the Clevelands, Violet is nobody's fool. For in all their seeming misadventures, the Clevelands are guided by the reliable intelligence of the heart. Beneath the pastel frames of their lives, the Clevelands have modeled a design for living with the unlucky nature of things, a way of being happy in the world.

Robison, Mary: - MARY ROBISON was born in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Johns Hopkins, where she studied with John Barth. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, an O. Henry Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. She is the author of four novels, Oh! (1981), Subtraction (1991), Why Did I Ever (2001), and One D.O.A., one on the way (2009), and of three other story collections, Days (1979), An Amateur's Guide to the Night (1983), and Believe Them (1988). Robison has written for Hollywood and has been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1977. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780394509471
ISBN 10	0394509471
Title	Oh!
Author	Mary Robison
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Book
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Year published	1981-01-01
Number of pages	209
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.