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The Whole World Over
by
Julia Glass
Julia Glass, author of the award-winning novel Three Junes, tells a vivid tale of longing and loss, revealing the subtle mechanisms behind our most important connections to others. In The Whole World Over, she pays tribute once again to the extraordinary complexities of love.Greenie Duquette lavishes most of her passionate energy on her Greenwich Village bakery and her you...more
Paperback, 608 pages
Published
June 12th 2007
by Anchor
(first published May 9th 2006)
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This is the first book I've read by this author, and it will be the last. Although some of the scenes were engaging and well-written, she really shows her northeast provincialism by painting characters from new Mexico as utter good-ol-boy stereotypes. To top it off, after creating a pile of characters who are uninteresting and dull, she tries to ratchet up the emotional involvement by tossing in Sept 11: "Oh gosh! I hope so-and-so wasn't caught in the WTC!" or words to that effect. Thi...more
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As a former New Yorker now living in New Mexico, I could not resist this novel about a Greenwich Village chef (who lived around the corner from where I lived) who relocates to Santa Fe.
Although the book was engaging enough for me to want to finish it, it never took off. The problem for me was that the main characters were never interesting enough to engage me with their marital problems. The lesser characters were more interesting but they were off stage more often than not. And as ...more
Although the book was engaging enough for me to want to finish it, it never took off. The problem for me was that the main characters were never interesting enough to engage me with their marital problems. The lesser characters were more interesting but they were off stage more often than not. And as ...more
I remember loving Glass' previous book, Three Junes, so was excited to finally get her newest novel from the library. And mad props to Glass, b/c it did not disappoint--even though it's mainly the story of a bunch of New Yorkers just before 9/11. It revolves mainly around four characters--Greenie, who is suddenly being wooed by the governor of New Mexico, who needs a personal chef; her husband, Alan, a failing shrink; her friend Walter, a flamboyant restaurateur who takes in his teenage nephew; ...more
I loved the descriptions of food in this book as the main character is a successful pastry chef in New York. I thought that the relationship between Greenie and her husband was interesting and several of the other characters in this book were really intriguing, especially Saga who is a survivor of a traumatic brain injury from a fluke accident. I felt, however, that the author included way too many characters and therefor didn't do them enough justice throughout the book. I get that she was t...more
A novel by the author of "Three Junes," and for which I traded a Vanity Fair and "The Stone Diaries" so I'd have it for plane reading back from the Congo. As with "Three Junes," Julia Glass has created a story of interlocking characters all pursuing happiness as best they can. Glass is talented at creating likable people facing identifiable crises: I went from story to story rooting for the people involved (main characters: Greenie the pastry chef, her depressed psy...more
It took me a long time to finish this book (2 times out of library). A story that begins in Greenwich Village. Greenie Duquette has a small bakery in the West Village that supplies pastries to restaurants, including that of her gay friend Walter. When Walter recommends Greenie to the governor of New Mexico, she seizes the chance to become the his pastry chef and to take a break from her marriage, a psychiatrist with a whole other set of problems. Taking their four-year-old son, George, with ...more
Emily says "Three Junes" (Glass' first book) really is quite good and that this is a disappointing follow-up. I agree with the disappointing part. Too much purple prose, too many annoying character tics (like Saga, who has this annoying habit of telling you about the color and texture of various words. This is annoying! This is a writer who wants her reader to think "ahhh, look at how in love with words Julia Glass is! What a writer!" Instead, her reader thinks "gi...more
I like the "real world" feel of this book. None of the characters really know how they are supposed to act when situations come up that throw their lives into disarray. Glass follows several characters through a time period when they have to make decisions that will change the course of life and love - and none of the characters is perfect. It is a bit annoying at points to switch between characters, a device I have never loved, but it kept me reading (and guessing!). Glass has talent ...more
Like her first book Three Junes, Glass' new novel also follows several storylines although all in the same time frame. The characters are all so deftly written (even the many minor characters) and their stories each so interesting, that their intersections only enhance each other. The main story involves Greenie, a pastry chef in New York who gets the opportunity to move to New Mexico to cook for the governor of that state. She takes the job, even though it will mean uprooting her 4-year-old chi...more
Julia Glass' book "The Whole World Over" celebrates/honors relationships with family and friends in age of post 9/11. Taking place a year and half before 9/11, Glass weaves together a tale about Greenie and Alan, a couple with one son, whose marriage is on the rocks; Walter, a sassy gay restaurateur and Greenie's best friend; and Saga, a drifting woman who loves animals and has suffered from a terrible accident. Fenno McLeod, the center of the triptych of "Three Junes," appe...more
This was the longest book I've ever read-- 500+ pages. I have mixed feelings about the characters. I like the author's writing style-- each chapter from the perspective of a different character and how the characters' live merge with each other in some sort.
Greenie & Alan's relationship was so complex. They were both selfish at different times in their marriage in their infidelities. I was especially disappointed by Greenie's affair and decision to pursue a relationship with some...more
Greenie & Alan's relationship was so complex. They were both selfish at different times in their marriage in their infidelities. I was especially disappointed by Greenie's affair and decision to pursue a relationship with some...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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I remember reading about this book before it came out, and a couple of weeks later the futile attempt to hunt it down at Barnes and Noble based on my memory of the picture on the cover. Some time after that I remembered the author's name, but by then the hardcover editions had been sent back to the publisher in preparation for the arrival of paperbacks. Sigh. Three years later, I finally stumbled upon those hardcovers in the remainder bin at my local bookstore. Hooray!
The happie...more
The happie...more
Who are you? Are you the same person you were when you were 17? Has being married changed you in a fundamental sense? Has parenthood? Has love or the lack of? These are the undercurrents of themes Julia Glass embroiders around her characters in "The Whole World Over," which is a great follow-up to "The Three Junes."
In TWWO, Glass builds storylines around a handful of Manhattanites who are loosely connected through acquaintances and proximity in their neighborhood....more
In TWWO, Glass builds storylines around a handful of Manhattanites who are loosely connected through acquaintances and proximity in their neighborhood....more
This was the most wonderful book. Julia Glass writes lyrical, evocative, and yet precise prose, the type I most love. Here is an excerpt from the book (not representative of the plot but rather her style) that I have read over and over again, risking a library fine:
"When she fed him during the day, her body felt as if it had been made to ensconce a nursing baby the way a saddle was molded to carry a rider--the crevice between her thighs a perfect seat for George's bottom, her wa...more
"When she fed him during the day, her body felt as if it had been made to ensconce a nursing baby the way a saddle was molded to carry a rider--the crevice between her thighs a perfect seat for George's bottom, her wa...more
What luck to read two wonderful novels in a row. The more I read, the more finicky it seems I am becoming. Well, what initially drew me to this novel were the realistic characters that Julia Glass brings to life within the first few chapters. Greenie is a woman a bit lost in her sedated marriage. Walter, my favorite of the characters, is candid and quirky and someone I knew I could be friends with. He struggles in his search to find love. Saga is a sweet and naive character that needs to find he...more
The interwoven stories of a pastry chef, her analyst husband, their small son, the governor of New Mexico and some of his staff, an environmental lobbyist, a restaurant owner with an outsize personality, his teen nephew, a Scottish ex-pat bookseller, a woman with brain damage and her extended family, as they move through New England, New York and New Mexico.
Though the cast is large and the events sprawling -- including 9/11 -- the real beauty of the book is in how Glass knows each o...more
Though the cast is large and the events sprawling -- including 9/11 -- the real beauty of the book is in how Glass knows each o...more
I found the book to be a little slow in the beginning, but once I got into it, I really enjoyed it. This is the second novel I've read by Glass and I think she does a really good job developing her plot lines and her characters. She brings Fenno McLeod back in this book (main character in her first novel Three Junes). The ending was subtly surprising - I was not expecting Greenie to make the decision she did.
The Whole World Over, by Julia Glass. Narrated by Ann Marie Lee, Produced by Books on Tape, and downloaded from audible.com.
Publisher’s Note:
From the author of the beloved novel Three Junes comes a rich and commanding story about the accidents, both grand and small, that determine our choices
in love and marriage. Greenie Duquette, openhearted yet stubborn, devotes most of her passionate attention to her Greenwich Village bakery and her four-year-old
son, George. Her husba...more
Publisher’s Note:
From the author of the beloved novel Three Junes comes a rich and commanding story about the accidents, both grand and small, that determine our choices
in love and marriage. Greenie Duquette, openhearted yet stubborn, devotes most of her passionate attention to her Greenwich Village bakery and her four-year-old
son, George. Her husba...more
In her second novel, Julia Glass, author of the National Book Award?winning Three Junes (2002), again tells a tale of overlapping lives. While some critics compared Whole World Over to her debut novel and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, most agree that Glass's latest effort, while still compelling, delivers a less powerful punch. Critics generally praised the fleshed-out characters (including Fenno McLeod from Three Junes), who move to and from New York, New Mexico, Maine, Massachusetts,
...more
Julia Glass is a talented writer who crafted a cohesive story by creating a large group of complex, flawed and loveable characters who travel in the same circles but don't necesarily know each other. The first Chapter or so took me a long time to read, its the type of book where you read slowly and pay attention to details. Once I got to know the main characters I fell in love with the story and thourghly enjoyed myself. I was impressed by her depth of imagination...I felt like all her main a...more
The mixing of lives in the ways good cooks mis different traditions into their cooking. One of the heronines is a cook at the metaphor comparing cooking to marriage hits the mark. The lives united by September 11, 2001 in this book while I write about my reactions to the book on this tenth anniversary. "Greenie (the heroine) knows, however that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into, taste it, and you know that it i...more
After reading Glass’ Three Junes (2002) I anxiously watched for The Whole World Over. It was all that I hoped for and more.
Greenie is a passionate baker, devoted to her four-year-old son. Her husband falls into a midlife depression while her friend nurses a broken heart. The character and plot development are excellent. I started the book by listening to the recorded disc from Books on Tape read by Anne Marie Lee. The recording is excellent and the narrator captures the drama of the ...more
Greenie is a passionate baker, devoted to her four-year-old son. Her husband falls into a midlife depression while her friend nurses a broken heart. The character and plot development are excellent. I started the book by listening to the recorded disc from Books on Tape read by Anne Marie Lee. The recording is excellent and the narrator captures the drama of the ...more
What a disappointment. I loved her previous book, Three Junes, but from start to finish this book annoyed me. I almost didn't finish it, it's soooo unnecessarily long, but I brought it all the way to Germany, so damnit it was getting read. The author tries to build a web of interconnected characters and trace their lives over the course of about a year (including, gratuitously, Sept. 11). But, perhaps because she has so many characters, none of them were particularly gripping or vivid to me. I f...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Anothe one that had me hooked from moment one. This tells the intesecting stories of several characters in various stages of their lives. It's about love, friendship, the choices that we make in our lives, and the things that happen to is that we don't choose. It makes you think. Well, it made me think anyway....
bleh. what an annoying pile of drivel. what a disappointing read by the author of Three Junes, a book I very much loved! gah! i was just so utterly disinterested in the characters in this book and even less interested in what they were going to do next - probably nothing - oh, wait, maybe they'll mull and think and wring their hands and still do nothing or maybe they'll actually do something and.... still, nothing will happen as a result.
the real icing on the cake was my realiz...more
the real icing on the cake was my realiz...more
The pretty cover delivered a pretty story which is just what I needed to listen to. Greenie is in a marriage that isn't making her happy, and when the governor of New Mexico tastes her cooking and invites her to be his chef, she accepts. She takes their four-year-old son to Santa Fe and finds happiness in her new job, her new friends, and an old friend who loves her. But her Walter, her husband, isn't a happy psychotherapist. Sept. 11 changes everything for the couple and their love and marriage...more
Being a native New Mexican now living in New York, this book obviously intrigued me. I am always skeptical of books that have anything to do with New Mexico because, often people do not accurately depict the landscape, atmosphere, people, food, etc, etc. I was especially wary since the writer does not live in New Mexico. But, Julia Glass did a fairly good job with it. There wasn't as much detail about Greenie's surroundings in New Mexico as there could have been, so maybe the author was playing ...more
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Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes, which won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction, and The Whole World Over. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her short fiction has won several prizes, including the Tobias Wolff Award and the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal fo...more
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“Most inexperienced cooks believe, mistakenly, that a fine cake is less challenging to produce than a fine souffle or mousse. I know, however, that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into it, taste it, and you know that it is nothing of the sort. It is the sublime result oflong and patient experience, a confection whose success relies on a profound understanding of compatibilities and tastes; on a respect for measurement, balance, chemistry and heat; on a history of countless errors overcome.”
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