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Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home

by Anthony Caplan (Goodreads Author)

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 16 ratings · 14 reviews

A coming of age novel about a boy overcoming divorce and cultural dislocation. When Father and Mother, a highflying young American lawyer and his party-hard bride, fall prey to the self-destructive lure of alcohol and sexual liberation, Will and his sisters pay the price in divorce and kidnappings that take them back and forth between the rain forest hideaways of coastal L...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published June 30th 2012 by Hope Mountain Press

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May 19, 2013 Joanna rated it 3 of 5 stars

First of all, I should say I went to college with Anthony Caplan (I am struggling not to refer to him as Tony, oops) and he sent me a copy of his book for review. I probably wouldn't have picked it up for myself.

That said, I quite liked it. If Goodreads allowed fractional stars, my rating would have been more of a 3.5 or 3.8.

Good: He has a delicate way with a sentence, at times achieving a quasi-James-Salter-esque style of shimmering reminiscence and narrative subtlety. I appreciated how the mai...more First of all, I should say I went to college with Anthony Caplan (I am struggling not to refer to him as Tony, oops) and he sent me a copy of his book for review. I probably wouldn't have picked it up for myself.

That said, I quite liked it. If Goodreads allowed fractional stars, my rating would have been more of a 3.5 or 3.8.

Good: He has a delicate way with a sentence, at times achieving a quasi-James-Salter-esque style of shimmering reminiscence and narrative subtlety. I appreciated how the main character, Will, initially presents an oblique view of his childhood and young adulthood which gradually becomes more clearly defined. As the character matures, his understanding of his situation deepens. By the end of the novel I was rather hoping there will be a second volume describing Will's experiences at Yale and into his 20s. I want to know what happens next.

Not-so-good: The writing style is a little uneven and in need of editing. After a series of well-wrought phrases, I would be abruptly bounced out of the mood by a paragraph-closing clunker of an observation. There are some copy-editing errors, too, where a character will suddenly and mysteriously change names for a few sentences. However, this is true of most books from lower-tier presses, as are the generic cover and typography (I imagine that shouldn't bother most readers, but I am sensitive to book design). Characters other than Will are underdeveloped, especially his siblings (by the end of the book his sisters have basically disappeared). The whole drama of the divorce and the parental kidnappings come off as kind of flat (in part, due to Will's emotional inadequacy as a viewpoint character, which while true to his persona, doesn't really do the reader any favors).

Other: I enjoyed reading this, in part because I am of course familiar with the era and some of the culture, but also because on the whole it's engaging. But it seems clearly to be a rather autobiographical novel and I'm curious as to why ~~Tony~~ Anthony Caplan chose to write it as fiction rather than memoir. Aren't there enough young-man-grows-up-experiences-some-setbacks-on-the-way-to-maturity-and-the-Ivy-League bildungsromans in the world already?

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Sep 27, 2012 Reader's Paradise rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Growing up, life in general can be hard, but when faced with divorce a family can be devastated. The parents trying to find their emotional sanctuary, fighting, and trying to find reasoning. But what about the children, when your parents are all you know? The children don’t know where to go, or what to do, or how to act!

Will’s story takes place in two different part of the world, growing up in Venezuela and the U.S. dealing with the dissolution of his family core, the self-destruction of his mot...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Roberto Mattos rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is a masterpiece in terms of analyzing the psychological effects of a broken marriage into the mind of a young boy, how he deals with that and how he finds his way in life in his quest to feel belonging to a community, to a group, to a family.
The author did a superb job creating a set of characters with complex personalities. The plot develops through Chapters alternating life in the USA and Venezuela. Our main character, Will, suffers with the initial separation of his parents and sub...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Ruth Hill rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was very difficult for me to get into. I struggled to connect with the characters and the story line, and I will say up front that this is probably not my kind of book. Much of the story did not grab my attention, but it's not the author's fault in any way. It is just my personal preference and not necessarily my cup of tea.

I did enjoy the little historical and cultural references that the author interjected into the story. I had never considered the difficulties and even social stigma...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Grady rated it 5 of 5 stars

'The life urge is ever present in the most extraordinary places.'

LATITUDES covers a lot of territory both physically and emotionally and author Anthony Caplan manages to navigate this difficult tale with finesse. His technique of relating the story in brief chapters, each with a title of place and time, helps keep the bifurcated life of young Will - a lad who is the son of a father committed to a life in Venezuela and a mother who prefers to maintain her residency in the USA - manageable for the...more 'The life urge is ever present in the most extraordinary places.'

LATITUDES covers a lot of territory both physically and emotionally and author Anthony Caplan manages to navigate this difficult tale with finesse. His technique of relating the story in brief chapters, each with a title of place and time, helps keep the bifurcated life of young Will - a lad who is the son of a father committed to a life in Venezuela and a mother who prefers to maintain her residency in the USA - manageable for the reader. This is a story of a family and home that breaks, results in divorce, argues over the custody of the four children to the point of kidnapping back and forth from South America to North America and the schism that creates in our main character's development. Embroidering the loomed picture of modern day family dysfunction are descriptions of parental physical fighting, alcohol abuse, infidelity and obsession with sexual partnering - all aspects that produce indelible tattoos of pain on the recipient children.

Anthony Caplan makes this story work by using language that is smart and poignant. `Those were Will's parents in a nutshell, the hair-trigger, physical impetuousness of Mother that bordered on absurdity and Father's curiously ambivalent combination of desire and resignation.' He is able to see the world for a child's vantage: `Will waited for the coming of the seasons, for the ebb and flow of gentle time, for some kind of normalcy, but most of all for the end of the empty silence between his parents.' And at times Caplan shows his depth of understanding literature of the past in deciphering consequences of the present: 'The idea attributed to Tolstoy, to the effect that happiness in a family is the template, and the unhappy family, by contrast, is the breeding ground for the stuff of art, has been turned on its head. Nowadays, the mold by which we form our children is a broken one, and the stable home setting is the exception, or at least it increasingly seems so judging by the books in the racks of bookstores. But Will and his family were pioneers of the coming age, the Me Decade as it was termed in the news magazines.' And here and there Caplan drops such salient statements as `When the world is broken for a child, the adults who have done the breaking are rarely in a position to do the gluing' and `Will felt trapped in a world that beggared description, between two languages, adrift in a land where he did not belong, without a reference or a model for life'.

To summarize, LATITUDES is a captivating story about issues that make the headlines today but more importantly, it is a book about those issues that go undiscussed today. Children have needs and solid parenting is the resource for those needs. The decision to bear children is a heady one and one that takes a life commitment from those who create a child. Anthony Caplan has successfully written a taut and engrossing novel, but he has also taken a stand on critical subjects that direly need our attention. Highly recommended.

Grady Harp
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Jul 24, 2012 Tiffany Cole rated it 4 of 5 stars

Latitudes is a story about life - specifically, Will's life from youth until adulthood. Simply put, it's a bildungsroman. Apart from the prologue, which begins in California in 2009, the story is mostly in chronological order. 1966 is the actual starting point. Will is a child, probably no older than five. His sister Marina is the new baby, and his sister Jeanette is yet to be born, let alone conceived. The moment you start reading, it's easy to tell that there won't be a solid plot with steps...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Marsha rated it 3 of 5 stars

I began reading “Latitudes A Story of Coming Home” by Anthony Caplan on Friday. Because it was a novel I knew that I would have to begin the book uninterrupted, at least until the plot was developed. I restarted reading the book on Saturday, for me this is not good. As I got into the book I realized that it really was not ‘my kinda’ book’. BUT before you decide not to read it you must understand why.
“Latitudes” is a plot rich book requiring a lot of foundational information once the reader unde...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Teressa Morris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Latitudes is a very intense story of childhood and family relationships, and how, as we get older, those relationships change.

Our family recently went through the trauma of a foreclosure and move, all at the same time my youngest was graduating high school. One thing Art and I kept reminding each other and the children was "we still have each other." That stability of our family staying together really helped us all to make it through that rough time.

In the book, Will struggles throughout his ch...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Latitudes: A Story of Coming Home (Anthony Caplan, Hope Mountain Press 2012) could be considered a coming of age story, but rather than seeking answers to the questions that plague all of us as we come of age and continue “becoming,” Latitudes offers various perspectives on the different aspects of this process. Family, religion, belonging, peer relationships, and self-discovery are all themes running throughout the novel.

Will, a relatable and ultimately likable character, is presented to us bot...more Latitudes: A Story of Coming Home (Anthony Caplan, Hope Mountain Press 2012) could be considered a coming of age story, but rather than seeking answers to the questions that plague all of us as we come of age and continue “becoming,” Latitudes offers various perspectives on the different aspects of this process. Family, religion, belonging, peer relationships, and self-discovery are all themes running throughout the novel.

Will, a relatable and ultimately likable character, is presented to us both in his adult form, then through his life as it spans from childhood to entry into adulthood. Will lives between two different worlds, one in Venezuela and the other in New York City/Long Island, as his parents engage in underhanded activities to keep their children despite their divorce. This split of the family is a constant undercurrent in the book that could be explored in more depth, as we do not really get to understand how Will relates to his siblings, how he feels about his parents' actions toward him and his siblings, or how this shapes Will's decision-making process throughout his development.

Despite some missing depth in the family descriptions, Will's adventures and motivations are made clear through rich description, a flowing prose that rarely misses a beat. The book is very engaging, drawing the reader into Will's world, keeping the suspense going about what might happen next. There is little judgment passed on Will's actions; rather, they are presented as simply a part of the “process” of belonging and discovering a sense of self while shifting between various worlds. The shifting between worlds and resultant ambiguity about many things are representative of the journey that many of us travel as we navigate the various environs we are exposed to in our quest to become adults.

Overall, a highly recommended read; this book will leave readers with more questions than answers, but the questions are important ones, inviting readers to consider and face the continually unanswered questions surrounding the act of becoming.(less)

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Jul 23, 2012 Toni Sinns rated it 4 of 5 stars

Latitude is a great plot line, well written, highly described, web of the ins and out of Will's life. I would recommend this to people whom read a lot. However I would not recommend it to people that just randomly pick up a book now and again. It isn't the easy to page through stories that some books are. This one includes having to use your mind. (Which I love when I have to engage myself with the story.) You have to keep straight who is who and which person did what and how this affects this a...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Eline rated it 3 of 5 stars

Wow... difficult book to review. I liked it, I really did, but I also found it somewhat strange. "Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home" tells us the story of Will Kogan and his road to adulthood. I think we can see this book as a kind of Bildungsroman because we see the long road Will travels from a child with little knowledge of the world to a teenager who wishes he never had to learn the world as good as he did. It's a difficult road with many obstacles and Will has to take them all. He can't ig...more Wow... difficult book to review. I liked it, I really did, but I also found it somewhat strange. "Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home" tells us the story of Will Kogan and his road to adulthood. I think we can see this book as a kind of Bildungsroman because we see the long road Will travels from a child with little knowledge of the world to a teenager who wishes he never had to learn the world as good as he did. It's a difficult road with many obstacles and Will has to take them all. He can't ignore them and go around them... he can't and he doesn't want to.

I liked the story because I could connect with Will. I understood him (not always, but most of the times I did) and had the same feelings as he did. I also appreciated the writing style of author Anthony Caplan. At the start I thought it was incoherent in a way but the more I read of the book, the more I understood this incoherent writing reflected the incoherent life Will knew when he was growing up. In the beginning of the book I didn't always understand the situations, but that's the idea (I believe) because Will also didn't understand most of the situations in his life. He didn't understand why his father hit his mother, why they divorced in an ugly way, why he and his sisters didn't get the love of a normal family,... In the beginning we only seem to get some tatters like they are the only thing Will remembers from being an innocent child.
Later on we get longer memories and more coherent ones... They reflect the growth of Will emotionally.

One thing I had difficulties with, is the fact the beginning of the book doesn't seem to have much connections with the rest of it. There are connections, but to me they didn't matter. Don't know what to think of it... The story also doesn't seem to lead somewhere. Ok, in the end we see a different Will (and that's the point of a Bildungsroman) but still... It's a totally uncompleted story and that's just not my thing ;)

All in all I can say: good book, but maybe not really my genre after all.(less)

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Sep 09, 2012 Malla rated it 4 of 5 stars

This beautifully written work carries a poignant undertone of love lost and how we will always search to find it. The break up of Will's family is dramatic and charged yet Will manages to find ways to cope. Written in biographical tones, it seems that Will becomes stronger the more he suffers, and yet the scars remain, deeply hidden. Coming of age entails an eventual acceptance of the past when Will openly grieves for his mother. Delicate, subtle, deeply powerful, this is a book about the human...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Brian Bigelow rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am reading a preview copy for this review.

This is a wonderfully engaging story that is well written and edited and has drawn me in. I'm having a difficult time putting it down. Following the lives of the children around the world is quite interesting with the way the author has presented their story.

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Nov 17, 2012 Jane rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am over half way through this book. It just has not caught my attention. But if you stick with it, you can get into the book about half way through. Could not finish it.

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May 17, 2013 River marked it as to-read

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Nov 14, 2012 Turning Pages rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About Anthony Caplan

Anthony Caplan is an independent writer, teacher and homesteader in northern New England. He has worked at various times as a shrimp fisherman, environmental activist, journalist, taxi-driver, builder, window-washer, and telemarketer, (the last for only a month, but one week he did win a four tape set of the greatest hits of George Jones for selling the most copies of Time-Life’s The Loggers.) Cur...more

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