Perennial Classics
2 total works
Once upon a time the Wapshots of St Botolphs were distinguished for their unshakable good opinion of themselves. But in John Cheever's simultaneously poignant and hilarious companion volume to "The Wapshot Chronicle", the family members drift far from their New England village - and into the demented caprices of the mighty, the bad graces of the IRS, and the humiliating abyss of adulterous passion. "The Wapshot Scandal" is a novel of a large and tender vision, filled with pungent characters and outrageous twists of fate and, above all, with Cheever's luminous compassion for all his hapless fellow prisoners of human nature.
Meet the Wapshots of St Botolphs. There is Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea-dog and would-be suicide; his licentious older son, Moses; and Moses's adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly. Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, and partly based on Cheever's adolescence in New England, The Wapshot Chronicle is a family narrative in the finest traditions of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James