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49th out of 84 books
—
76 voters
The Cradle
by
Patrick Somerville (Goodreads Author)
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
Marissa is expecting her first child and fixated on securing the same cradle she was once rocked in for her own baby. But her mother, Caroline, disappeared when Marissa was a teenager, and the treasured cradle mysteriously vanished shortly thereafter. Marissa's husband, Matthew, kindly agrees to try to track down the cradle, whi...more
Marissa is expecting her first child and fixated on securing the same cradle she was once rocked in for her own baby. But her mother, Caroline, disappeared when Marissa was a teenager, and the treasured cradle mysteriously vanished shortly thereafter. Marissa's husband, Matthew, kindly agrees to try to track down the cradle, whi...more
Hardcover, 200 pages
Published
March 9th 2009
by Little, Brown and Company
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This slim novel, from the many effusive reviews' distilled plot summary and on through each station of the plot's serendipitous collisions, teetered precariously on the brink of the mawkish, the whimsical, the high-concept. I pictured a certain kind of Sundance film, until I got a few pages in, and then suddenly I was done, engrossed, entranced, delighted.
At every step Somerville gracefully floats above the big-booted possibilities to produce something far lighter on its feet. Part of his succes...more
At every step Somerville gracefully floats above the big-booted possibilities to produce something far lighter on its feet. Part of his succes...more
At the annual Wisconsin Library Association conference this year, I was lucky enough to sit in on a panel discussing some of 2010's best books. One of the books mentioned was Somerville's, "The Cradle." Clocking in at a mere 200 pages, it can be read in a couple of sittings--which is easy to do when a book is as descriptive and flows as well as this one does.
The story centers on Matthew Bishop and his wife Marissa who are looking to recover an antique cradle Marissa slept in when she was a chil...more
I'm not giving this book five stars because Patrick Somerville gave us (Barrelhouse) a story or because he seems like a genuinely decent human being whose success I'd be more than happy to help along in my tiny, tiny way. I was prepared to give it five stars for those reasons, but then the book turned out to be amazingly good. It's not flashy, the prose is deceptively simple, there are no tricks. Well, okay, there's one trick, but it's not even a trick, really, just an interesting temporal/struc...more
4 likes · like · see review
**Warning: May contain spoilers.**
It’s 1997 and Matt and Marissa are a young married couple expecting their first baby in a month or so. Marissa’s mother left her family when Marissa was 15 and Matt is an orphan. When Marissa is 8 months pregnant she decides the baby must have the cradle she slept in as a child and wants Matt to get it for her. The problem is that Marissa’s mother took the cradle with her when she left. The only lead Matt has is an address for Marissa’s aunt (her mother’s sister...more
It’s 1997 and Matt and Marissa are a young married couple expecting their first baby in a month or so. Marissa’s mother left her family when Marissa was 15 and Matt is an orphan. When Marissa is 8 months pregnant she decides the baby must have the cradle she slept in as a child and wants Matt to get it for her. The problem is that Marissa’s mother took the cradle with her when she left. The only lead Matt has is an address for Marissa’s aunt (her mother’s sister...more
1 like · like · see review
Short, powerful, well-written and so touchingly sad but not maudlin, sweetly hopeful, wonderful characterization. All so impressive in a debut that I could finish in a few hours. Just .. wow. Sometimes you find these tender little jewels of books and are stunned at how good they are. Like Amy Bloom and Kent Haruf, I wonder where have you been and why aren't you winning prizes and making millions on slim beautiful books and why don't you write more. And then I remember I live in a world that idol...more
A slim book in terms of length and depth. Too many coincidences and deliberately quirky characters. Avoids some of the deeper emotions to which it alludes. Reads like a literary version of a weepy movie-of-the-week. A kernel of the real exists here, but it's swamped by sentimentality.
4 likes · like · see review
From My Blog...[return][return]Family is the central theme in Patrick Somerville's debut novel The Cradle, which consists of two differing stories told ten years apart. The reader is first introduced to Matt and Marissa, who are expecting their first child and Marissa, eight months pregnant, is insistent that Matt find the Civil War cradle that mysteriously was stolen from her home when she was 15, the day after her mother walked out on her family. Somerville then propels the reader ahead ten ye...more
this was an interesting story about the cradle and Matt, Renee and Joe. 2 stories are taken place at a different time line. Matt being in foster homes and not knowing his mother Renee. Renee can't over her first love that died in war and giving up her child Matt. She moved on with her life and had memories of her first love while her son enrolled in the military. Renee was talking to her son Adam in not going to the military but Adam does not know about Renee's first love that died in the war. M...more
From My Blog...
Family is the central theme in Patrick Somerville's debut novel The Cradle, which consists of two differing stories told ten years apart. The reader is first introduced to Matt and Marissa, who are expecting their first child and Marissa, eight months pregnant, is insistent that Matt find the Civil War cradle that mysteriously was stolen from her home when she was 15, the day after her mother walked out on her family. Somerville then propels the reader ahead ten years to present d...more
Family is the central theme in Patrick Somerville's debut novel The Cradle, which consists of two differing stories told ten years apart. The reader is first introduced to Matt and Marissa, who are expecting their first child and Marissa, eight months pregnant, is insistent that Matt find the Civil War cradle that mysteriously was stolen from her home when she was 15, the day after her mother walked out on her family. Somerville then propels the reader ahead ten years to present d...more
One of the first signs of the felicitous writing in this short novel is the graceful switch between voices in the first two chapters, from Matt, a man in his twenties who is about to become a father and who is charged by his wife, Marissa, with a mysterious task; to Renee, a woman in her fifties who has a secret. From there the novel takes Matt on a classic American road trip, but with a difference -- this picaresque journey has a serious purpose, in the noble tradition of the Grail quest. Inter...more
With only about 200 pages in its entirety, The Cradle has a rather immediate opening with Matt's very pregnant wife, Marissa, insisting he find her long-lost antique cradle from childhood. We quickly discover, via a series of flashbacks, that both Matt and Marissa have unresolved issues from their youth, stemming from Matt's adoption and foster care experiences and Marissa's mother's unexplained abandonment. In the first of many "coincidences," Marissa's father recalls the last known address of...more
I knew going into the book that the request was a bit out there, but it wasn't until toward the end of the book that I understood Marissa (not her motivations so much, the narrations *tells* us what her motivation is, more what it was about her personality and the nature of Matt and Marissa's relationship) that I believed that Matt would go on a wild goose chase for this cradle. I think it would have helped if readers were eased into the narrative before she made her request. Instead she asks he...more
The review I read of this novel (NY Times?) and the actual book's inside flap made it sound wondrous and miraculous and close to transcendent. It is. Certainly it's not perfect, but the amount of story compacted into however few pages there are comes close. Vendela Vida does a lot in a shorter format too, but much starker and more depressing. In The Cradle, every strange discovery leads to another, even stranger discovery, and the best part is that the entire chain of events seems so believable....more
In Patrick Somerville's debut novel: The Cradle, two stories are woven together -- both stories are about family histories.
In the first story we meet Marissa and Mark. Marrissa is very pregnant with the couple's first child. She becomes obsessed with locating an antique Civil War cradle that her mother took with her when she abandoned the family many years earlier. Matt, wanting to please his wife, as this cradle seems so important to her, sets out on a mission to find it. Along the way, he reco...more
In the first story we meet Marissa and Mark. Marrissa is very pregnant with the couple's first child. She becomes obsessed with locating an antique Civil War cradle that her mother took with her when she abandoned the family many years earlier. Matt, wanting to please his wife, as this cradle seems so important to her, sets out on a mission to find it. Along the way, he reco...more
This book was quite short, for all that was packed into it. I frequently found myself thinking of it as a fable. The two main characters are very clearly drawn, but in pencil - no extra colors or shapes or irritating background scenes, just their "beings," if that makes any sense at all. Their histories are told in short bursts that focus only on the critical memories that have shaped who they are. As someone who frequently wonders why I don't remember more than I do and why I remember the rando...more
This novel was shortlisted for the Centre for Fiction First Novel Prize. It has two storylines. The first is around young Matthew Bishop and his wife Marissa. Marissa is eight months pregnant with their first child and expresses a sudden need for the cradle used for her own infancy. The cradle was taken by her mother years ago when she left Marissa and her father. Matthew takes on the quest to find the cradle, following lead after lead on its trail, and discovering something completely unexpecte...more
"What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin."
~Henry Ward Beecher
I originally picked this book up because it was in a Barnes & Noble Discover recommendation. I enjoy reading books from this seasonal pamphlet of first-time writers for a number of reasons:
- I really want to support first-time writers and if I like the book I like to follow their writing career.
- I am always looking for books that are outside of the realm of books I usually read.
- I have read ot...more
I originally picked this book up because it was in a Barnes & Noble Discover recommendation. I enjoy reading books from this seasonal pamphlet of first-time writers for a number of reasons:
- I really want to support first-time writers and if I like the book I like to follow their writing career.
- I am always looking for books that are outside of the realm of books I usually read.
- I have read ot...more
This was a rather unusual book, chosen by one of the women in our book club. It took me longer than I thought it would to finish it, distracted with life happening around me, but an indication that I wasn't totally absorbed with it either. I had a little trouble with the sequence of events. There were two interlocking stories going on, in different time points, and it was not always - I should say never - clear when events were playing out and who the people in the book were. I wasn't even sure...more
Really enjoyed this book for various reasons. The Upper Midwest setting not only was familiar to me, but the author nailed the attitudes and speech patterns of the area. Most of all, I appreciated the protagonist. Matt could have been portrayed as a person whose difficult childhood made him a mess as an adult, but instead, apart from a moment or two, he had a full, competent grasp on life. I also liked seeing a young, lower-middle class family portrayed, a socio-economic group that is woefully l...more
Nov 02, 2009
Lori
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Everyone!
Recommended to Lori by:
LP's Book Club - Liz Giannini Host
Shelves:
family
Hardcover 208 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: March 9, 2009
Beautifully written! Read it, then pass it to your significant other.
In the spirit of Somerville's novel and the words of Strunk and White, I'll try to "eliminate unnecessary words" in my recommendation. The Cradle is a fantastic, wonderfully written story. It is compelling and unsentimental. Most characters are likeable but when they aren't, you'll enjoy disliking them. He paints a beautiful pictue in only 200 pages....more
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: March 9, 2009
Beautifully written! Read it, then pass it to your significant other.
In the spirit of Somerville's novel and the words of Strunk and White, I'll try to "eliminate unnecessary words" in my recommendation. The Cradle is a fantastic, wonderfully written story. It is compelling and unsentimental. Most characters are likeable but when they aren't, you'll enjoy disliking them. He paints a beautiful pictue in only 200 pages....more
Critics uniformly praised Somerville's moving debut about the meaning of family and its power to heal. Somerville's spare but buoyant prose strikes the right emotional balance, expressive without being sentimental, and his fast-moving plot steers steadily between the profound and the whimsical toward a satisfying conclusion without ever veering into melodrama. Despite a few flawsósome awkward narrative shifts, one-dimensional characters, and clich»sóThe Cradle is a finely crafted full-length nov
...more
Young man with history of multiple abandonments (in of process of being relinquished for adoption.) The story is not "about" adoption, but certainly has that theme at its center. The portrayal of American adoption, all given obliquely in the course of the story's action, is harsh. The somewhat poetic asides in the book were not always successful in my view..they changed the pace of the reading more than I could manage without stumbling...but that may just be me, and is a small thing overall. The...more
This book caught my attention when I read daughter-in-law, Jessica's review of it here on Goodreads. Parallel stories are revealed. Matt is on a mission to find a cradle used by his wife when she was a baby and that she desperately wants for their baby to come. The departure of her soldier son, triggers deeo and secret memories for Renae of the loss of her first love to the war in Vietnam. Matt's personal integrity and caring spirit are touchingly revealed during the many encounters he has durin...more
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 Penelo...more
This is a great story. The protagonist, Matt, goes on a journey in search of a cradle his wife had when she was young. This journey becomes so much more. Matt travels all over the Midwest (I liked this since I am from the Midwest) meeting some very selfish individuals and learns of a secret, he now has to decide if he should share this with his wife. I really felt a connection to Matt and his overwhelming feeling of gratitude toward life.
There was a second story told also of Renee and a secret t...more
There was a second story told also of Renee and a secret t...more
I was captivated by the book jacket, but disappointed once inside. The characters were not well developed at all. There were actually points that I was enthralled with the plot and couldn't put it down. Not familiar at all with the areas where the book took place, however, I felt I could have used a map while reading it. In the end, I discovered a major literary flaw in that he had two plot lines running through the book (confusing as it was) and it wasn't revealed until the end that they were f...more
Sep 05, 2011
Candice
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Candice by:
Missy
Two stories are interwoven here. The main story is of Matt and Marissa. Marissa is 8 months pregnant and desperately wants to use the cradle she slept in as a baby for her soon to be born child. The only problem is she doesn't know where the cradle is. It was stolen from their home soon after her mother left the family. With just one clue to go on, Matt starts off on a journey to recover the cradle for his wife. The other story is of Renee Owen, an author of children's books, who has a secret fr...more
This could have been a story about a pregnant woman asking her husband to pick up some furniture. Instead Patrick Somerville wrote about a modern day quest for family. The classic elements of the quest are represented: helping an old woman in return for information. Otherworldly assistance from a troll, or just some guy with half a dozen computers who lives in his mother's attic. Answering a riddle to gain the ultimate prize. What I truly loved was the blending of modern cultural aspects with my...more
A very quick, enjoyable read. The premise is a bit ridiculous but sets in motion an engaging plot: the protagonist Matt, a 27 year old working class guy in Milwaukee, is asked by his 8 months pregnant wife Marissa to locate the family heirloom cradle that she slept in as a child and which was taken by Marissa’s mom when her mom abandoned her family when Marissa was 15. In a parallel plot, we meet a children’s author who (we slowly learn) put Matt into foster when she had him at age 19. Matt and...more
Lately I find myself gravitating towards books that are memoirs of a sort or have a profound meaning to them, I know , deep. I guess to keep my mind from spoiling in a way. This particular book was very interesting to read in that it had a few stories intertwined that were all connected. A bit confusing, it jumps forward and back in time without warning, but in the end all the loose ends are tied up, sort of. I loved however that there was a meaning to it all, and with all the twists and turns a...more
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Apr 21, 2009 09:14am