Helpful Score: 1
With writing like "...the towel could have sanded the faces off Mount Rushmore", Lou Berney certainly knows how to turn a phrase, but that's just icing on the cake of November Road. He also is no stranger to crafting a fast-paced, spellbinding story populated with fully-fleshed, memorable characters. The story is told in three voices: Frank's and Charlotte's, the two people on the run, and a hitman most refer to simply as Barone.
The circumstances revolving around the assassination of JFK are more than plausible, and some of the scenes brought back a childhood memory or two, as well as Guidry's escape route along Route 66. The cat-and-mouse chase can make your heart pump a little faster as first we learn where Guidry and Charlotte are before switching to Barone who's rapidly closing the distance between them. Part of me wanted a fairy-tale ending for Frank and Charlotte, who begin to fall in love the closer they get to Las Vegas, but the other part of me was still in the real world. Berney proved to be skilled at leading me on.
No matter how strong the story and the writing are-- and they are-- it's the characters who make November Road something special. Theodore, a black teenager who finds himself traveling with a hitman. Charlotte, in despair over her life and the life she's giving her children, changes as she makes her escape from her sot of a husband, and her two daughters, Joan and Rosemary, are easily capable of stealing the show from time to time-- a necessary lightening of the tension that builds throughout the book. But those two children are also strong characters in their own right without becoming cloying caricatures. Even Guidry, who's spent his life living in the moment for whatever pleasure he feels like experiencing, undergoes a transformation when he comes into Charlotte's orbit.
Did I get my fairy-tale ending? That's for you to find out. November Road is a marvelous book, in turn nerve-wracking, funny, heartbreaking, and almost impossible to put down. It's going to be a long time before I forget characters like Charlotte and Theodore, and it goes without saying that I'm on the lookout for more books by Lou Berney.
The circumstances revolving around the assassination of JFK are more than plausible, and some of the scenes brought back a childhood memory or two, as well as Guidry's escape route along Route 66. The cat-and-mouse chase can make your heart pump a little faster as first we learn where Guidry and Charlotte are before switching to Barone who's rapidly closing the distance between them. Part of me wanted a fairy-tale ending for Frank and Charlotte, who begin to fall in love the closer they get to Las Vegas, but the other part of me was still in the real world. Berney proved to be skilled at leading me on.
No matter how strong the story and the writing are-- and they are-- it's the characters who make November Road something special. Theodore, a black teenager who finds himself traveling with a hitman. Charlotte, in despair over her life and the life she's giving her children, changes as she makes her escape from her sot of a husband, and her two daughters, Joan and Rosemary, are easily capable of stealing the show from time to time-- a necessary lightening of the tension that builds throughout the book. But those two children are also strong characters in their own right without becoming cloying caricatures. Even Guidry, who's spent his life living in the moment for whatever pleasure he feels like experiencing, undergoes a transformation when he comes into Charlotte's orbit.
Did I get my fairy-tale ending? That's for you to find out. November Road is a marvelous book, in turn nerve-wracking, funny, heartbreaking, and almost impossible to put down. It's going to be a long time before I forget characters like Charlotte and Theodore, and it goes without saying that I'm on the lookout for more books by Lou Berney.
This kept me turning pages. It started out in New Orleans with a protagonist (Frank Guidry-ruthless but charming) working for the mafia. He finds he is unwittingly involved in the assassination of President Kennedy and has become a liability. Then we meet Charlotte from small town, Oklahoma who decides to leave behind her predictable life and change things for her 2 young daughters and herself. The 2 daughters (Rosemary and Joan) are the glue that holds this tale together. Guidry is on the run and meets up with Charlotte and her daughters. He devises a plan to use them as cover to throw off the hitmen on his trail but finds himself in over his head as they come to mean more to him. Ultimately it was good all the way through but in the end I felt it lacked something and didn't quite hit the mark. I suspect that may just be me though.
Frank is in the mob and the organization is connected to the assassination of President Kennedy. He knows too much so he is the next hit and he is on the run. Along the way he sees Charlotte and her two young girls. An Oklahoma housewife who is on the run from an alcoholic husband and a boring life in a small town. Perfect cover for him. Her car has broken down so he picks her up and they travel together to Vegas where he plans to escape the country. But several people are after him. Good story, good suspense, good outcome. I liked the characters even though their emotions didn't run too deep (because male author instead of female author ??). Spoiler: he falls in love with Charlotte and her girls and the normalcy they bring to life, wants her to escape with him, but she wants to forge her own life (she was smart, I liked that) so he knows that the people after him have identified Charlotte and her girls. He is afraid that if he escapes out of the country that they will go after her. So he returns to New Orleans and offers himself up to save her. He dies, she lives a long life. That is it in a nutshell, but very well written with lots of bad guys and suspense along the way.
