news </head> <body class="layout-one-column"> <div id="container"> <div id="container-inner" class="pkg"> <div id="pagebody"> <div id="pagebody-inner" class="pkg"> <div id="alpha"> <div id="alpha-inner" class="pkg"> <p class="content-nav"> <a href="http://patricksomerville.typepad.com/news/2009/04/fivechapters-storybeatrice-piece.html">« fivechapters story/Beatrice piece</a> | <a href="http://patricksomerville.typepad.com/news/">Main</a> | <a href="http://patricksomerville.typepad.com/news/2009/05/the-st-petersburg-times-takes-a-look.html">The St. Petersburg Times Takes a Look »</a> </p> <h2 class="date-header">04/29/2009</h2> <div class="entry" id="entry-66152997"> <h3 class="entry-header"> Washington Post Takes a Gander </h3> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry-body"> <p><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: Georgia;">The Washington Post already had their weekend book content up, and they're <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/28/AR2009042802941.html" target="_blank">running a roundup</a> with a strong, albeit brief, review of the book. Here's what they have to say about The Cradle:</span></p> <p class="blockquote MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40px;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="background-color: #e1c4a8; font-size: 11px; font-family: Georgia;">The adult lost boy in Patrick Somerville's marvelous debut, "The Cradle" (Little, Brown, $21.99) starts out beholden to his pregnant wife's obdurate demand that he retrieve a long-lost cradle. On this dubious premise Somerville builds a road narrative that gradually accumulates the mythic echoes and dreamlike inevitability of allegory. Matt's search for the cradle takes on a picaresque nobility; he's like a blue-collar Odysseus, crisscrossing the Midwest in his quest to return home to his Penelope. What gives "The Cradle" its potent emotional resonance, however, is the way Somerville's prose calmly, relentlessly pulls at the Gothic skein of family tragedies that lurks behind the peeling paint and sagging porches, where a sense of inherited sin settles like a thick fog.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <br /> </div> </div> <div class="entry-footer"> <p class="entry-footer-info"> Posted by Patrick Somerville at 10:05:54 AM </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <script type="text/javascript">  </script>  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://edge.quantserve.com/quant.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript">_qoptions = { tags:"typepad.core" }; _qacct="p-fcYWUmj5YbYKM"; quantserve();</script> <noscript> <a href="http://www.quantcast.com/p-fcYWUmj5YbYKM" target="_blank"><img src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-fcYWUmj5YbYKM.gif?tags=typepad.core" style="display: none" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt="Quantcast"/></a> </noscript>  <script src="http://cdn.media6degrees.com/static/ty2093.js" type="text/javascript"></script></body> </html> <script type="text/javascript"> var captchaImgAttempts = 0; var allowAnonComments = '0'; var registrationRequired = 0; var registrationOptional = 0; var emailRequired = 1; var useAvatars = 0; var jsonURL = "/.services/json-rpc"; var captchaSrc = "/.services/captcha?code_encrypted="; var alertCommentCannotBeBlank = "You can not leave an empty comment. 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