The Crazyladies Of Pearl Street by Trevanian (2005, Abridged, Compact Disc)

Synopsis
In this highly autobiographical saga of life in the '30s, the LaPointe family--Jean-Luc, Anne-Marie, and their mother--settle in Albany, NY, on Pearl Street, an Irish-American enclave. It's been years since they've seen the man of the house, who flitted out of their lives and is always threatening to flit back in--but never does. Meanwhile, Jean-Luc is a bookish, inventive, and unfailingly interesting boy, and his childhood is lovingly chronicled by the writer known as Trevanian (Rodney Whitaker) in a setting brought to life with all its local color intact.

Key Details
Author:	Trevanian
Language:	English
Publisher:	Random House
Format:	Audio
ISBN-10:	0739319639
ISBN-13:	9780739319635

Additional Details
Edition Description:	Abridged

Size
Thickness:	1 in
Weight:	5.6 oz

Publisher's Note
A poignant autobiographical novel about growing up poor in America during the Depression follows the life of six-year-old Jean-Luc, living with his little sister and young mother after being abandoned by his con artist father, in the middle of Albany's Irish-Catholic slum. By the author of The Eiger Sanction. Simultaneous.

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching autobiographical novel destined to become a classic American coming-of-age story.

The place is Albany, New York. The year is 1936. Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and their spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned—again—by his father, a charmer and a con artist. With no money and no family willing to take them in, the LaPointes manage to create a fragile nest at 238 North Pearl Street. For the next eight years, through the Great Depression and Second World War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, with its ward heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. As Jean-Luc discovers, it’s a neighborhood of “crazyladies”: Miss Cox, the feared and ridiculed teacher who ignites his imagination; Mrs. Kane, who runs a beauty parlor/fortune-telling salon in the back of her husband’s grocery store; Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarch of a thuggish family across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spends every day tending to her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War; and Jean-Luc’s own unconventional, vivacious mother.

Jean-Luc is a voracious reader who never stops dreaming of a way out of the slum. He gradually takes on responsibility for the family’s survival with a mix of bravery and resentment while his mom turns from spells of illness and depression to eager planning for the day when “our ship will come in.” It’s a heartfelt and unforgettable look back at one child’s life in the 1930s and ’40s, a story that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.


My sister, my mother and I sat in a row on the front stoop of 238 North Pearl Street, feeling overwhelmed and diminished by the unfamiliar bustle of the big city. Beside the stoop was a stack of twine-bound cardboard boxes bulging with bedding, clothing and kitchen things. Around them were clustered our few scraps of furniture looking scuffed and shabby in the unforgiving glare of daylight. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and the mid-March sun felt good, but chill winter air still lurked in the shadows. The year was 1936; I was six years old, my sister was three, my mother was twenty-seven, and we were beginning a new life.

We had been sitting on that stoop long enough for the gritty brownstone to mottle the backs of my legs between my short pants and my knee-high stockings. My sister wore a starched, frilly dress that Mother had bought out of money meant to tide us over until we got on our feet because she wanted Anne-Marie to look pretty the first time her father saw her, but the dress had got crushed during the long drive with the three of us crammed into half of the front seat of my uncle’s rattletrap of a truck. And now we sat hip to hip on that step, Mother in the middle, my sister and I drawing comfort from contact with her, while she drew maternal strength and determination from contact with us. Anne-Marie was hungry and sleepy and close to tears. Taking her onto her lap, Mother looked anxiously up and down the street for my father whom she hadn’t seen for four years, not since the morning he went out to look for work and didn’t come back, leaving her with a toddler, a baby, and two dollars and some change in her purse.

—from The Crazyladies of Pearl Street


Look for these Trevanian classics from Three Rivers Press: Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, The Summer of Katya, and The Main.


From the Hardcover edition.

Industry Reviews
"Recollections of the good bad old times can verge into sepia-tinted nostalgia, but the sheer size and splendor of Trevanian's canvas wins out in the end."
Kirkus Reviews (03/15/2005)

eBay Product ID: EPID43763508

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