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Joseph Cowley
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN-10: 0738831751
Type: Fiction
Pages: 147
Copyright: 2000
In HOME BY SEVEN Joseph Cowley, author of the sensitive and moving novel THE CHRYSANTHEMUM GARDEN, applies his unique talents to capture the story of a man on a "lost weekend" at the moment his life is coming unraveled, and what happens, seventeen years later, when it finally does.
This novel took first place in a contest for unpublished novels by Tupelo Press.
The central figure in HOME BY SEVEN is Charlie Stoddard, husband, father, commuter, and managing editor of Business Publications, Inc., whose life starts coming apart when he is inadvertently responsible for the death of a fellow editor. The novel begins with a black humor which gradually fades as Charlie is caught up in the swirl of events caused by his drinking.
The novel takes place over a five day period in November 1963, a few weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy. The scenes are laid in New York City, the suburbs, on the commuting trains, and in Bermuda, where Charlie finally flees to try to put his life together. His efforts to salvage his marriage, his job, and himself, however, seem preordained to failure because of his passion for women and booze.
In stark prose that drives relentlessly forward, the novel, like Charles Jackson's LOST WEEKEND, is a graphic, blow by blow description of Charlie's involvement with alcohol and women over a long, crisis-filled weekend. The last chapter, seventeen years later, picks up Charlie again on a "lost month" when he finally hits his bottom and is ready for the help that is long overdue.
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Excerpt
We found out about the accident on Wednesday morning after crossing the tracks for our usual seven-forty-seven train into the city. A cluster of commuters on the platform were gathered around a little, fat-faced guy who had set his attache casse at his feet so he could gesture with his pudgy, beringed hands, and we paused, McGarrity, Sabine, and I, to listen to him.
"...wedged between the car and the platform," he was saying, his voice trembling, his talcum-powdered jowls shaking, "because he was scraped along here. They found a leg back there and an arm here, but his torso was carried half way down the track."
Later, wen we got more of the details, we realized this guy was full of shit and was making a career out of telling the story. But at the time we didn't know that, and Dave McGarrity, who was all heart, instinctively bared his head.
The wind lifted his red hair, what there was left of it. Tall, slightly on the thin side, he was still handsome, though in his late thirties. His thin, white skin was freckled and marred with cancer scars; his pale, blue eyes seemed always to be smiling when he talked to you, as if sharing a private joke.
He turned to me and Jack Sabine and said, still clutching his gray Irish walking hat in his hands, "Poor bastard!"
Sabine, a head and a half shorter and maybe a couple of years older, shoved him along. "Nothing the finks like better than a good bloody story," he snarled. "Come on. And for Christ's sake, put on your hat before you catch cold."
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