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Mr. Ives' Christmas
Hijuelos' novel tells the story of Mr. Ives, who was adopted from a foundling's home as a child. When we first meet him in the 1950s, Mr. Ives is very much a product of his time. He has a successful career in advertising, a wife and two children, and believes he is on his way to pursuing the typical American dream. But the dream is shattered when his son Robert, who is studying for the priesthood, is killed violently at Christmas. Overwhelmed by grief and threatened by a loss of faith in humankind, Mr. Ives begins to question the very foundations of his life.
Part love story—of a man for his wife, for his children, for God—and part meditation on how a person can find spiritual peace in the midst of crisis, Mr. Ives' Christmas is a beautifully written, tender and passionate story of a man trying to put his life in perspective. In the expert hands of Oscar Hijuelos, the novel speaks eloquently to the most basic and fulfilling aspects of life for all of us.
Part love story—of a man for his wife, for his children, for God—and part meditation on how a person can find spiritual peace in the midst of crisis, Mr. Ives' Christmas is a beautifully written, tender and passionate story of a man trying to put his life in perspective. In the expert hands of Oscar Hijuelos, the novel speaks eloquently to the most basic and fulfilling aspects of life for all of us.
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1995
24 people are currently reading
1488 people want to read
About the author
Oscar Hijuelos
34 books218 followersOscar Hijuelos (born August 24, 1951) was an American novelist. He is the first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Hijuelos was born in New York City, in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, to Cuban immigrant parents. He attended the Corpus Christi School, public schools, and later attended Bronx Community College, Lehman College, and Manhattan Community College before matriculating into and studying writing at the City College of New York (B.A., 1975; M.A. in Creative Writing, 1976). He then practiced various professions before taking up writing full time. His first novel, Our House in the Last World, was published in 1983 and received the 1985 Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Rome. His second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was adapted for the film The Mambo Kings in 1992 and as a Broadway musical in 2005.
Hijuelos has taught at Hofstra University and at Duke University.
Hijuelos was born in New York City, in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, to Cuban immigrant parents. He attended the Corpus Christi School, public schools, and later attended Bronx Community College, Lehman College, and Manhattan Community College before matriculating into and studying writing at the City College of New York (B.A., 1975; M.A. in Creative Writing, 1976). He then practiced various professions before taking up writing full time. His first novel, Our House in the Last World, was published in 1983 and received the 1985 Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Rome. His second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was adapted for the film The Mambo Kings in 1992 and as a Broadway musical in 2005.
Hijuelos has taught at Hofstra University and at Duke University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 190 reviews
December 12, 2015
I wouldn't have found this beautifully sad, heartbreaking yet uplifting story if I hadn't read Elyse's review and I may not have read it if I hadn't read Steve's review. I was quite stunned when I read his review, not just because it is as beautiful, sad, inspiring and uplifting as this novel, but because I felt an immediate connection with Steve and his loss . My family and I also lost a loved one to a violent act . Many years ago my brother who 22 at the time was a robbery victim. So of course, I felt a bond with Steve but I also felt a bond with Mr. Ives . However, the connection that was most clear and profound in this story for me is the similarity that I saw between Mr. Ives and my mother, both of them having lost a child and both strong in their faith .
This was not an easy book for me to read. Edward Ives says after losing his son , "You know what it is like ? It was like drowning." I knew that feeling. I kept thinking how impossible it would be for me to be objective while reading this book but then it occurred to me that none of us really are . Reading a book is such a personal thing that we can't help but bring who we are or what we've experienced to the words we read .
We come to know Edward Ives through a third person narrative but it is immediately intimate. We become privy to his thoughts and feelings as the story moves between past and present. I loved Edward Ives from the beginning, an orphan, a foundling , who in his later life is so thankful for what he has been given. His religion, his belief in God is evident even as a young boy and there is a certain sadness about him even though he is adopted and is given a comfortable home , support and love . In spite of the sadness I saw in him , he is so grateful for what he has and gives back throughout the story to the very end . While he's sad and introverted , he seems to make his way and follow his dreams. I loved that he loved gangster movies and girls and that he falls in love with and marries Annie. Annie carries her own burden of sadness as a child and of course losing Robert and then losing a part of Edward. My heart was broken for her too. I loved the connection that Ives makes with his very good friend Ramirez . Perhaps a tip of his hat to his Cuban descent, Oscar Hijuelos depicts Ives who doesn't know his mother and father as being perhaps Cuban or Latino , in any event . He wants to learn Spanish. He endearingly calls his son Roberto and Ramirez is his best friend .
I thought the title should have been Mr. Ives' Christmases. All of the life changing events in his life happen around Christmas . He's adopted around Christmas; he connects with Annie around Christmas and they get married around Christmas. Not all of these Christmas events are happy ones. He buries his son on a Christmas Eve .
I have to admit that I am not and don't know if I'll ever be at that place where forgiveness fills part of the void of losing my brother. Our family did not just lose my brother but for many years we lost the fun loving, good natured , always laughing woman that my mother was , as far back as I can remember. She came around after years to finally being able to watch tv , listen to music and celebrate holidays but she was forever changed . She'll be 90 next month and my sister and I do for her whatever she needs as she did for us but she's still broken hearted after all these years . For that my forgiveness is hard to come by . Even if I can't yet find that forgiveness , I agree with Steve when he says " Let us agree to be kind to each other despite our differences." We need that sentiment now more than ever .
Do yourself a favor and read Steve's https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... More importantly read this book because you don't have to have experienced the loss of a loved one . You don't have to be Catholic and you don't have to believe in miracles. The real miracle is in the shared bond of humanity the reader has with Edward Ives , sharing his grief , love and sadness that are part of the human condition. I don't know if I'll read it every year at Christmas time like Steve does , but I'm certain that I will read it again sometime.
January 14, 2016
SPEECHLESS
For the second time in my life I am speechless, not merely because of Hijuelos's superb book, which stirs up every possible emotion, but for other reasons, as well. I just read Steve Sckenda's review, and am so stricken by his loss, which resonates with mine, that it is impossible for me to add anything further. I know how Steve felt when he found his wife murdered, and I can only imagine how he must endure living with that horror on a daily basis. Both Mr. Ives and Steve have similar stories in that they both dealt with a loved one who was murdered. My story deals with finding my mother dead, but through natural causes. The only similarity is the shock of finding her cold, rigid, body, the memory of which keeps replaying in my mind throughout the years.
This book will speak to anyone who has lost a loved one, particularly through a violent act or through a sudden, unexpected death.
Rest in peace, Mr. Ives' son, Robert, Steve Sckenda's blonde angel, and my beloved mom.
For the second time in my life I am speechless, not merely because of Hijuelos's superb book, which stirs up every possible emotion, but for other reasons, as well. I just read Steve Sckenda's review, and am so stricken by his loss, which resonates with mine, that it is impossible for me to add anything further. I know how Steve felt when he found his wife murdered, and I can only imagine how he must endure living with that horror on a daily basis. Both Mr. Ives and Steve have similar stories in that they both dealt with a loved one who was murdered. My story deals with finding my mother dead, but through natural causes. The only similarity is the shock of finding her cold, rigid, body, the memory of which keeps replaying in my mind throughout the years.
This book will speak to anyone who has lost a loved one, particularly through a violent act or through a sudden, unexpected death.
Rest in peace, Mr. Ives' son, Robert, Steve Sckenda's blonde angel, and my beloved mom.
October 22, 2017
“God’s most common form? The goodness and piety of others.” (93)
Every human being is confronted at some point by a choice between doubt or faith, indifferent despair or spiritual struggle, torn between breaking down and breaking through to a deeper way of learning.
I was raised and educated as a Catholic, but the simple, unquestioned faith in early life always gets tested. I started doubting the idea that death could be the ultimate sacrifice in earthy life to ensure eternal rest in Heaven. I distrusted the image of the man Jesus, welcoming His resurrection to save mankind, I couldn’t find my own revelation, didn’t see Him dressed in great flowing white robes giving me grace as much as I searched everywhere.
As an adult I soon adopted a skeptical and critical attitude towards religious dogma. During years I thought of faith as an easy resource to offer comfort in granting irrefutable answers to unanswerable questions, either in offering balance to restless minds or harboring a sense of communal belonging. My questions have remained unanswered and books and knowledge have become my free-style religion.
And so I read and I pick “Mr. Ives’ Christmas” and only in the first chapters I realize that the voyage of faith is in fact a painful and arduous one.
This short novel, painted in Dickensian brushstrokes, has imbued my incredulous self with illuminating melancholy replete of spiritual revelation and moral insight.
Most of the significant events of Edward Ives’ life seem to occur during Christmas seasons.
Rescued from an orphanage by a kind widower during those festivities in the depressed New York City of the late twenties he is given the gift of a wonderful family that embraces his unknown origins and the Latin mixed blood that shows in his dark features and slanted eyes.
Talented and sensitive, Ives meets Annie, the great love of his life, in art school, they marry and raise their two children in Brooklyn. As Ives quietly develops in his career as a commercial illustrator, he blossoms under his guiding faith and leads a model life full of love, virtue and generosity.
Maybe because of his quest as a young man to search for his identity or because his father worked amiably with Cuban pressmen for years, Ives feels sympathy towards Hispanics and their culture, his best friend Luís being a Cuban, and he and Annie decide to settle in one of the most crime-ridden, ethnically divided urban neighborhoods of the city. Not having much, his most precious heirlooms consisting of some old editions of Charles Dickens’ books, some signed by the author himself, their lives proceed humbly and full of goodwill and youthful idealism, believing in a New York where people make room for each other, where peaceable kingdom floats above the menacing cruelty and squalor of this multicultural city, vibrant with its music and its smells.
When a few days before Christmas in 1967 Ives’ son, a seventeen aspiring seminarian, is shot down by a Puerto Rican kid on his way home from Church, Ives’ foundations shake with consuming grief, repressed rage and incomprehension, each one of his beliefs; faith, generosity and spirituality is put to the test.
As years pass by, Ives soldiers on blindly, refusing to share his sorrow with his wife or friends and the reader shares his growing turmoil, flowing from a mystical experience to a transcendental resurrection from the grave of grief.
I have never believed in miracles.
But life has been challenging my beliefs of late.
Call it fate, chance or spiritual awakening, but the elusive interiority of this novel has called out to me, its wellspring of beauty and mercy has proven to be a liberating revelation.
In the same way that Ives felt his burning love for all things on Madison and forty-first street when one of those evenings he marveled at the glowing red sun and its swirling winds looming over the avenue, I now bow my head, humbled by the redeeming power of love and forgiveness, by the perseverant parable of good will lost and good will regained, by the healing goodness of some people.
People? Or walking miracles?
Miracles, disguised in bone and flesh, that walk around restoring faith to those who listen in spite of having been lurking, in the words of Dante, “in the dark wood, where the right was lost”. The longest journey in this world is between the head and the heart, but with regained optimistic faith as a companion, it is now safe to hope.
Every human being is confronted at some point by a choice between doubt or faith, indifferent despair or spiritual struggle, torn between breaking down and breaking through to a deeper way of learning.
I was raised and educated as a Catholic, but the simple, unquestioned faith in early life always gets tested. I started doubting the idea that death could be the ultimate sacrifice in earthy life to ensure eternal rest in Heaven. I distrusted the image of the man Jesus, welcoming His resurrection to save mankind, I couldn’t find my own revelation, didn’t see Him dressed in great flowing white robes giving me grace as much as I searched everywhere.
As an adult I soon adopted a skeptical and critical attitude towards religious dogma. During years I thought of faith as an easy resource to offer comfort in granting irrefutable answers to unanswerable questions, either in offering balance to restless minds or harboring a sense of communal belonging. My questions have remained unanswered and books and knowledge have become my free-style religion.
And so I read and I pick “Mr. Ives’ Christmas” and only in the first chapters I realize that the voyage of faith is in fact a painful and arduous one.
This short novel, painted in Dickensian brushstrokes, has imbued my incredulous self with illuminating melancholy replete of spiritual revelation and moral insight.
Most of the significant events of Edward Ives’ life seem to occur during Christmas seasons.
Rescued from an orphanage by a kind widower during those festivities in the depressed New York City of the late twenties he is given the gift of a wonderful family that embraces his unknown origins and the Latin mixed blood that shows in his dark features and slanted eyes.
Talented and sensitive, Ives meets Annie, the great love of his life, in art school, they marry and raise their two children in Brooklyn. As Ives quietly develops in his career as a commercial illustrator, he blossoms under his guiding faith and leads a model life full of love, virtue and generosity.
Maybe because of his quest as a young man to search for his identity or because his father worked amiably with Cuban pressmen for years, Ives feels sympathy towards Hispanics and their culture, his best friend Luís being a Cuban, and he and Annie decide to settle in one of the most crime-ridden, ethnically divided urban neighborhoods of the city. Not having much, his most precious heirlooms consisting of some old editions of Charles Dickens’ books, some signed by the author himself, their lives proceed humbly and full of goodwill and youthful idealism, believing in a New York where people make room for each other, where peaceable kingdom floats above the menacing cruelty and squalor of this multicultural city, vibrant with its music and its smells.
When a few days before Christmas in 1967 Ives’ son, a seventeen aspiring seminarian, is shot down by a Puerto Rican kid on his way home from Church, Ives’ foundations shake with consuming grief, repressed rage and incomprehension, each one of his beliefs; faith, generosity and spirituality is put to the test.
As years pass by, Ives soldiers on blindly, refusing to share his sorrow with his wife or friends and the reader shares his growing turmoil, flowing from a mystical experience to a transcendental resurrection from the grave of grief.
I have never believed in miracles.
But life has been challenging my beliefs of late.
Call it fate, chance or spiritual awakening, but the elusive interiority of this novel has called out to me, its wellspring of beauty and mercy has proven to be a liberating revelation.
In the same way that Ives felt his burning love for all things on Madison and forty-first street when one of those evenings he marveled at the glowing red sun and its swirling winds looming over the avenue, I now bow my head, humbled by the redeeming power of love and forgiveness, by the perseverant parable of good will lost and good will regained, by the healing goodness of some people.
People? Or walking miracles?
Miracles, disguised in bone and flesh, that walk around restoring faith to those who listen in spite of having been lurking, in the words of Dante, “in the dark wood, where the right was lost”. The longest journey in this world is between the head and the heart, but with regained optimistic faith as a companion, it is now safe to hope.
December 1, 2015
Today is December 1, 2015. The Christmas Holiday season has officially arrived.
I'm Jewish. I normally don't choose Christmas stories to read. I just don't.
I particularly shy away from books about Christian Faith.
I had a change of heart - earlier this year. After reading *STEVE'S* review. I purchased "Mr. Ives' Christmas", within seconds.
I intentionally waited for the season to read it. This is a novel that can easily be bumped to the top of your TBR list ( even if you've promised to read 23 other books
soon ). Your short time invested is well worth years of personal gifts.
Mostly I'd like to direct 'everyone' to read Steve's review of this slim novel. Even if you've read his review once -there is value to be found reading it several times. I've read *Steve's* review of "Mr. Ive' Christmas" at least 4 times this year - and the hundred +comments from members at least once. NOT TO BE MISSED!
Just a few more comments to 'add' to Steve's review from me. For a Jewish girl ...
who really and seriously does not like to read stories about Christian Faith and Christian Love....I can't deny this 'isn't' a story of just that, because it is!!! ....( including race and class issues).
Point is, so what! Catholic beliefs and Christian love have universal themes. My Jewish bones soaked up the holy STAR of DAVID messages through Oscar Hijuelos's
lovely prose with no problem. The STORY stands out much more than ANY particular religion.
This is remarkable book, allowing us to look at how forgiveness and faith play out in our lives. For example, I found it overwhelmingly sad when Mr. Ives'
internalizes hatred toward himself when tragedy strikes. Yet, I could relate. I think it's a common distorted reaction- ( to internalize grief and punish ourselves), Forgiveness and healing - [in reality] - can take a very long time.
In the same extraordinary spirit and humanity I found in "Stoner", by John Williams and "Our Souls at Night" by Kent Haruf ... I found in this story.
Read Steve's Review!
Thank you, Steve!!!!!
I'm Jewish. I normally don't choose Christmas stories to read. I just don't.
I particularly shy away from books about Christian Faith.
I had a change of heart - earlier this year. After reading *STEVE'S* review. I purchased "Mr. Ives' Christmas", within seconds.
I intentionally waited for the season to read it. This is a novel that can easily be bumped to the top of your TBR list ( even if you've promised to read 23 other books
soon ). Your short time invested is well worth years of personal gifts.
Mostly I'd like to direct 'everyone' to read Steve's review of this slim novel. Even if you've read his review once -there is value to be found reading it several times. I've read *Steve's* review of "Mr. Ive' Christmas" at least 4 times this year - and the hundred +comments from members at least once. NOT TO BE MISSED!
Just a few more comments to 'add' to Steve's review from me. For a Jewish girl ...
who really and seriously does not like to read stories about Christian Faith and Christian Love....I can't deny this 'isn't' a story of just that, because it is!!! ....( including race and class issues).
Point is, so what! Catholic beliefs and Christian love have universal themes. My Jewish bones soaked up the holy STAR of DAVID messages through Oscar Hijuelos's
lovely prose with no problem. The STORY stands out much more than ANY particular religion.
This is remarkable book, allowing us to look at how forgiveness and faith play out in our lives. For example, I found it overwhelmingly sad when Mr. Ives'
internalizes hatred toward himself when tragedy strikes. Yet, I could relate. I think it's a common distorted reaction- ( to internalize grief and punish ourselves), Forgiveness and healing - [in reality] - can take a very long time.
In the same extraordinary spirit and humanity I found in "Stoner", by John Williams and "Our Souls at Night" by Kent Haruf ... I found in this story.
Read Steve's Review!
Thank you, Steve!!!!!
April 26, 2016
Christmas 2015 started for me on October 31. On Halloween night, while my kids were out trick-or-treating and I was home handing out candy, I switched channels on the television, going from Halloween 3: Season of the Witch on AMC, to The Christmas Card on Hallmark. I know. Too soon. I suppose I'm supposed to make moaning noises about "Christmas creep" and all that. But really, there's no harm in expanding the holiday season. Life is full of drudgery. The holidays are a brilliant contrast, full of classic movies, television specials, familiar carols, amazing cookies, gifts, parties, and wine, wine, wine. To me, it makes perfect sense to expand this joyful interlude like taffy, right to its breaking point.
Despite my early start, however, the holiday season flew by in a blink, leaving me with barely enough time to indulge my every Christmas whim. (Alas, the parties have started to take their toll. I lost at least two whole days to hangovers. Oh the wine!) Only a week before the big day did I realize that I hadn't yet read my yearly Christmas book. Usually, I would have gone to that old standby, A Christmas Carol, but I do that every year. This year I wanted to shake things up. So, in a rush, I went to a bookstore and grabbed the first book I saw with "Christmas" in the title. That turned out to be Oscar Hijuelos' Mr. Ives' Christmas.
Hijuelos' novel tells the story of Edward Ives (referred to consistently as Mr. Ives or Ives), a Madison Avenue adman who was raised in a foundling home with no idea of his true heritage. Ives is a living saint. He is a goodhearted, compassionate, and sentimental man imbued with such piousness that he nearly weeps to enter a church and who quivers when he receives the Communion host.
The motivating event of Mr. Ives' Christmas is the murder of his son, Robert - who was about to enter the Seminary - a few days before Christmas in 1967. (Before you rush down to the comments to accuse me of being a spoiler - how uncharitable during the holidays! - it should be noted that Robert's murder is revealed immediately). Robert's death serves to test Job's - er, I mean Ives' - steady faith.
Mr. Ives' Christmas is more parable than traditional novel, and is structured accordingly. It begins with an introductory chapter that traces the outline of Ives' life, Ives' faith, and the powerful effect of Robert's death on both. After this sweeping prologue, in which Ives goes from a young man to old, Hijuelos circles back to begin his narrative of Ives' journey, from foundling to grieving father.
Even without the constant allusions, it's impossible to miss the spiritual connection that Hijuelos is trying to make to Charles Dickens. You see this right down to the choice of an orphan as the main character. But this is Dickens in miniature. At 248 pages, Mr. Ives' Christmas is slim enough to fit in a coat pocket to read before Christmas Eve mass when you're sent an hour early to save everyone seats. Yet when you've finished, it feels much longer, like you've completed an epic. The whole of a man's life precisely revealed through telling incidents and important moments both large and small.
This feels like a personal book. Hijuelos' family came from Cuba, and though Ives' background is unknown, his fondness for his Hispanic neighbors, his interest in the Spanish language, and the cast of his features all allude to the fact that Ives' may share a similar heritage. Like Hijuelos, Ives works at a New York ad agency. The novel's exploration of faith is not a rigorous scholarly analysis or doctrinal exegesis, but an intimate sense of how belief feels. This book struck me as Hijuelos' way of exploring his own relationship to God.
Hijuelos' urge to understand the mystery of faith means that this novel will speak quite differently to different audiences. If you are a believer, you will likely be uplifted and reaffirmed and will likely stuff paperback copies into the stockings of your friends. On the other hand, if you have no patience for matters of faith, you will likely end up feeling the same way you felt when someone you trusted got you to read Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a believer. (I attended Christmas Eve Mass out of tradition and familial obligation). Thus, my response to Hijuelos' novel is more rational than emotional. I responded more to the novel's aesthetic attributes than I did to its heartfelt pleas.
Frankly, parts of this book are hopelessly pedantic. The monologues on spiritual giddiness glanced off my consiousness. As a central character, Ives is Dickensian in the worst possible way: he's one dimensionally boring. Like that ultimate humblebragger Esther from Bleak House, Ives is obnoxiously free of most human flaws. Even the "sharp" edges of his character are presented as the excesses of his virtue.
As I noted above, Mr. Ives' Christmas functions mainly as a parable. Hijuelos is attempting to impart a spiritual lesson. The parts of the book that fell flat for me springs from this reality.
Having said that, Mr. Ives' Christmas is not your typical parable. Hijuelos effortlessly straddles two strikingly different genres, combining soft-focus spiritual fluffery with a realistically-detailed orphan's journey. One moment, Hijuelos is offering a syrupy disquisition on the power of faith; the next moment he is graphically describing a woman falling to her death from an apartment window. The wholesomeness and grittiness stand hand-in-hand, just as they do in life. There are a lot of visits to church (Ives loves churches), but there is also cursing, and sex, and far more descriptions of pubic hair than can be found in A Christmas Carol. Just when you think things are going to turn into a Sunday school lecture, there will be a scene set in a drawing class where a male model gets an unexpected erection and... Well, I won't spoil things. It's enough to say that I remained engaged.
It helps that Hijuelos is a fantastic writer. He is a natural and efficient storyteller. He is especially good at recreating a bustling, ethnically diverse, bursting-at-the-seams New York City, right down to the street names. His sense of time and place are remarkable, and roots the story firmly to earth, where it might otherwise have floated off into the ephemera of allegory.
I don't buy Hijuelos' central tenets. Nevertheless, I found this a powerful and moving novel. Beneath Ives' crisis of faith, to which I can't relate, is an underlying crisis of self - have I become what I hoped to become? - that is all too familiar. This is a very good - perhaps near great - novel. And yet, it is not a good Christmas book. This is important, I think, especially to seasonal readers.
Tonally, Mr. Ives' Christmas is elegiacal. At times it reads as a lament. Hijuelos, in describing the strain on Ives' faith, is simultaneously exploring the nature of grief. Ives' grief is almost classical in its all-encompassing enormity. He maintains his outward goodness and equanimity, while at the same time becoming emotionally severed from the world around him. He becomes distant from his surviving child. He struggles to forgive the boy who killed his son. He nearly estranges himself from his loving wife, while she drowns in her own loneliness. This evocation of mourning is done with extreme skill and nuance. I say this from experience. My family suffered a terrible loss just 6 months ago, and Ives' plight is heartbreakingly familiar: how to live with death. In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis reckoned with the notion of a new, post-loss normality. "Will there ever come a time," he pondered, "when I no longer ask why the world is like a mean street?" The danger, in other words, is that sadness becomes the new reality of life. A death becomes two deaths. One of the body, the other of the soul. Ives is trapped in this gray place for the latter half of the novel. There are times when Mr. Ives' Christmas becomes palpably, even unpleasantly grim.
Christmas can be melancholy, of course. Happiness in others can put our own sadness in stark relief (it can even feel like a cosmic insult, the whole world celebrating while you mourn). The holidays, moreover, are built on tradition, and tradition is built by people, and since the price of life has always been death, the years take from us the people we love. We miss them most keenly when we partake in the traditions they helped create; it is as though we can literally see the hole in the fabric of the world that was left in their absence.
Even still, some of my oldest and best memories are Christmas memories. They are memories of joy. I prefer the magic of Christmas, even if the magic is just a trick we play on ourselves. I respect Hijuelos' emotional verisimilitude, but I think I'd appreciate it more if I had read this in August.
Despite my early start, however, the holiday season flew by in a blink, leaving me with barely enough time to indulge my every Christmas whim. (Alas, the parties have started to take their toll. I lost at least two whole days to hangovers. Oh the wine!) Only a week before the big day did I realize that I hadn't yet read my yearly Christmas book. Usually, I would have gone to that old standby, A Christmas Carol, but I do that every year. This year I wanted to shake things up. So, in a rush, I went to a bookstore and grabbed the first book I saw with "Christmas" in the title. That turned out to be Oscar Hijuelos' Mr. Ives' Christmas.
Hijuelos' novel tells the story of Edward Ives (referred to consistently as Mr. Ives or Ives), a Madison Avenue adman who was raised in a foundling home with no idea of his true heritage. Ives is a living saint. He is a goodhearted, compassionate, and sentimental man imbued with such piousness that he nearly weeps to enter a church and who quivers when he receives the Communion host.
The motivating event of Mr. Ives' Christmas is the murder of his son, Robert - who was about to enter the Seminary - a few days before Christmas in 1967. (Before you rush down to the comments to accuse me of being a spoiler - how uncharitable during the holidays! - it should be noted that Robert's murder is revealed immediately). Robert's death serves to test Job's - er, I mean Ives' - steady faith.
Mr. Ives' Christmas is more parable than traditional novel, and is structured accordingly. It begins with an introductory chapter that traces the outline of Ives' life, Ives' faith, and the powerful effect of Robert's death on both. After this sweeping prologue, in which Ives goes from a young man to old, Hijuelos circles back to begin his narrative of Ives' journey, from foundling to grieving father.
Even without the constant allusions, it's impossible to miss the spiritual connection that Hijuelos is trying to make to Charles Dickens. You see this right down to the choice of an orphan as the main character. But this is Dickens in miniature. At 248 pages, Mr. Ives' Christmas is slim enough to fit in a coat pocket to read before Christmas Eve mass when you're sent an hour early to save everyone seats. Yet when you've finished, it feels much longer, like you've completed an epic. The whole of a man's life precisely revealed through telling incidents and important moments both large and small.
This feels like a personal book. Hijuelos' family came from Cuba, and though Ives' background is unknown, his fondness for his Hispanic neighbors, his interest in the Spanish language, and the cast of his features all allude to the fact that Ives' may share a similar heritage. Like Hijuelos, Ives works at a New York ad agency. The novel's exploration of faith is not a rigorous scholarly analysis or doctrinal exegesis, but an intimate sense of how belief feels. This book struck me as Hijuelos' way of exploring his own relationship to God.
Hijuelos' urge to understand the mystery of faith means that this novel will speak quite differently to different audiences. If you are a believer, you will likely be uplifted and reaffirmed and will likely stuff paperback copies into the stockings of your friends. On the other hand, if you have no patience for matters of faith, you will likely end up feeling the same way you felt when someone you trusted got you to read Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a believer. (I attended Christmas Eve Mass out of tradition and familial obligation). Thus, my response to Hijuelos' novel is more rational than emotional. I responded more to the novel's aesthetic attributes than I did to its heartfelt pleas.
Frankly, parts of this book are hopelessly pedantic. The monologues on spiritual giddiness glanced off my consiousness. As a central character, Ives is Dickensian in the worst possible way: he's one dimensionally boring. Like that ultimate humblebragger Esther from Bleak House, Ives is obnoxiously free of most human flaws. Even the "sharp" edges of his character are presented as the excesses of his virtue.
As I noted above, Mr. Ives' Christmas functions mainly as a parable. Hijuelos is attempting to impart a spiritual lesson. The parts of the book that fell flat for me springs from this reality.
Having said that, Mr. Ives' Christmas is not your typical parable. Hijuelos effortlessly straddles two strikingly different genres, combining soft-focus spiritual fluffery with a realistically-detailed orphan's journey. One moment, Hijuelos is offering a syrupy disquisition on the power of faith; the next moment he is graphically describing a woman falling to her death from an apartment window. The wholesomeness and grittiness stand hand-in-hand, just as they do in life. There are a lot of visits to church (Ives loves churches), but there is also cursing, and sex, and far more descriptions of pubic hair than can be found in A Christmas Carol. Just when you think things are going to turn into a Sunday school lecture, there will be a scene set in a drawing class where a male model gets an unexpected erection and... Well, I won't spoil things. It's enough to say that I remained engaged.
It helps that Hijuelos is a fantastic writer. He is a natural and efficient storyteller. He is especially good at recreating a bustling, ethnically diverse, bursting-at-the-seams New York City, right down to the street names. His sense of time and place are remarkable, and roots the story firmly to earth, where it might otherwise have floated off into the ephemera of allegory.
I don't buy Hijuelos' central tenets. Nevertheless, I found this a powerful and moving novel. Beneath Ives' crisis of faith, to which I can't relate, is an underlying crisis of self - have I become what I hoped to become? - that is all too familiar. This is a very good - perhaps near great - novel. And yet, it is not a good Christmas book. This is important, I think, especially to seasonal readers.
Tonally, Mr. Ives' Christmas is elegiacal. At times it reads as a lament. Hijuelos, in describing the strain on Ives' faith, is simultaneously exploring the nature of grief. Ives' grief is almost classical in its all-encompassing enormity. He maintains his outward goodness and equanimity, while at the same time becoming emotionally severed from the world around him. He becomes distant from his surviving child. He struggles to forgive the boy who killed his son. He nearly estranges himself from his loving wife, while she drowns in her own loneliness. This evocation of mourning is done with extreme skill and nuance. I say this from experience. My family suffered a terrible loss just 6 months ago, and Ives' plight is heartbreakingly familiar: how to live with death. In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis reckoned with the notion of a new, post-loss normality. "Will there ever come a time," he pondered, "when I no longer ask why the world is like a mean street?" The danger, in other words, is that sadness becomes the new reality of life. A death becomes two deaths. One of the body, the other of the soul. Ives is trapped in this gray place for the latter half of the novel. There are times when Mr. Ives' Christmas becomes palpably, even unpleasantly grim.
Christmas can be melancholy, of course. Happiness in others can put our own sadness in stark relief (it can even feel like a cosmic insult, the whole world celebrating while you mourn). The holidays, moreover, are built on tradition, and tradition is built by people, and since the price of life has always been death, the years take from us the people we love. We miss them most keenly when we partake in the traditions they helped create; it is as though we can literally see the hole in the fabric of the world that was left in their absence.
Even still, some of my oldest and best memories are Christmas memories. They are memories of joy. I prefer the magic of Christmas, even if the magic is just a trick we play on ourselves. I respect Hijuelos' emotional verisimilitude, but I think I'd appreciate it more if I had read this in August.
June 18, 2012
"It is difficult to be religious, impossible to be merry, at every moment of life, and festivals are as sunlit peaks, testifying above dark valleys, to the eternal radiance." Clement A. Miles, epigraph to Mr. Ives' Christmas
A Christmas Carol. The Book of Job. Crime and Punishment.
Mr. Ives' Christmas channels all these through Catholic eyes.
But I look at Mr. Ives' Christmas as sort of The Recognitions lite, but completely without the satire. Instead we get unabashed earnestness. As in The Recognitions, a major part of the story takes place over the Christmas season in New York. And, a small boy loses his mother, and is raised to be devout in a religion that totally filters his Weltanschauung. He (Edward Ives) loves to draw, and grows up to be an artist. He is loved by a woman who cannot penetrate the wall that he has built around himself. He didn't abandon the ministry as did Wyatt, but Ives always lives an almost saintly life. Likewise, this book is filled with endless cultural references, but far less obscure. Krazy Kat, comic books, Art Deco, Sant Patricks's Cathedral, Greenich Village. Walt Disney, Albrecht Durer, Raphael, Pitti Palance in Florence.
Currier & Ives.
John Tenniel, Phiz, Cruichshank. John Singer Sargent. Movies about orphans, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Oliver Twist. Betty Grable. Harold Lloyd. Books, books, books. Fielding, Smollett, Trollope, Dickens. Zane Grey. Bleak House. Langston Hughes. A Christmas Carol. A Child's History of England. ¡A veces se habla español! The Egyptian sarcophagi over at the Metropolitan. Hemingway.
Harold Lloyd, "to whom [Ives] thought he bore some kind of resemblance...having to wear glasses as a teenager, Ives chose round tortoiseshell frames like Mr. Lyoyd's...."
There is child abuse.
Santa Clauses, babies and drunks (…à la Tom Waits, Ol '55).
A suicide who disrupts pedestrians with "a woooooomph and a loud whack...mein got!" ...the dead woman with a hair style called the "Peter Pan". Then an opportunist kid trying to sell roses "Buy the rose and leave it for the dead lady". No satire intended! the horrifying details and seriousness wipes away all irony.
Edward Ives's life begins by being abandoned at the age of three. He is put in a Catholic foundling home, but later adopted by a kindly man, who "himself had been an orphan, and had received the name Ives from a priest who had taken if from a Currier & Ives print popular in 1870, the year his adoptive father was born".
Edward, or Eduardo as he is sometimes called, is hired as an illustrator for some Mad Men ad men, i.e., a Madison Avenue advertising agency. He works his way up, creating commendable ad campaigns such as the Imperial Floor Polish housewife, with variations on the theme of a woman and her shiny floor.
Ives has his Esme and Esther - but combined - in Annie McGuire: a lover of literature and music, an occasional artist's model, and ever in Ives's paintings, "he based them upon the appearance of his wife and the intelligent and slightly naughty cast of her face. Not overtly erotic like the women drawn by Antonio Vargas...an understated seductive air about them, in short, like Annie MacGuire"
Ives (similar to George Bailey, another Christmas sufferer) is exempted from active service in the war because of bad hearing, from a swimming accident. He is a constant force of good in the lives of others, his Catholic faith is strong.
The happy Ives family have a son and a daughter, Caroline and Robert. Everything changes when the 17 year old son is the victim of a random, senseless crime, shot in the stomach and dies. This happens at Christmastime. He is a saintly boy Su hijo es un angel who wants to join the Franciscan order. He had broken up with his girlfriend ("Celeste") whom he loves, to do so.
The sadness of this event is unimaginable. I think of my own daughter, nearly 17. She had a dream a few weeks ago, and told me "Mom I dreamt I was going to be killed, and all I could think was 'no I can't die, I wanted to be a doctor. And have babies!'" How could I bear that, if it really were to happen. Perhaps such an event might convert me to religion - though I think rather it would make me blame God like Mr. Ives does. He's devout as ever, but his belief has been tainted with anger,
…Ives still had days when he blamed his son's death on God's 'will.' God had timed things so that his murderer, his face scowling, came walking down the street just as his son and a friend were standing around talking. Pop, pop, pop, three shots in the belly.
The loss of his son basically turns Ives's heart to stone. He really is not interested in life anymore. He gets a nervous condition that afflicts his skin. He needs redemption as much as the murderer, and they are ultimately tied together.
The other main characters, Luis and Carmen Ramirez, their son Pablo, are beautifully rendered.
Stylistically Mr. Ives' Christmas is excellent. The main event of the crime is revealed near the beginning, and the narration touches on it and then jumps around, back and forth in time, as life before and after are compared.
Ives has a vision that has implications throughout the story,
At the same time, he began to feel certain physical sensations: the sidewalk under him lifting ever so slightly, and the avenue, dense with holiday traffic, fluttering like an immense carpet, and growing wider and stretching onward as if it would continue to do so forever, an ever-expanding river of life. And the skyscrapers that lined Madison Avenue…began to waver, the buildings bowing as if to recognize Ives, bending as if the physical world were a grand joke. And in those moments he could feel the very life in the concrete below him, the ground humming , pipes and tangles of cables and wires beneath him...Why, it was as if he could hear molecules grinding, light shifting here and there, the vibrancy of things and spirit everywhere….Then, not knowing whether to shout from ecstasy or fear, he looked up and saw the sun, glowing red and many times its normal size, looming over the avenue, a pink and then flaring yellow corona bursting from it. And then, in all directions the very sky filled with four rushing, swirling winds, each defined by a different-colored powder like strange Asian spices: one was cardinal, one the color of saffron, another gray like mothwing, the last a brilliant violet, and these came from four directions, spinning like a great pinwheel over Madison Avenue and Forty-First Street. Leaning back, nearly falling, Ives was on the verge of running for his life when, just like that, a great calm returned, the sun receding, the blue sky utterly tranquil. The traffic light clicked on and the light changed, traffic and commerce resuming as usual.
That quote is a sample of what to expect from the magic marker of Hijuelos.
Mr. Ives's Christmas is a novel that my goodreads friend Steve has read eleven times. It's story unfortunately is one that Steve can relate to in a very personal way. I have read Steve's review over and over, and I cannot get through it without crying. I think about the story of this book, how life can take sudden twists that punch us in the stomach. I think about how there are so many people who are walking around wounded. Right at this moment, I'm at my laptop outdoors and it's a beautiful day. It's Father's Day and I'm thinking about my own father. He died the previous Easter, his last year spent in misery. I'm thinking about the hours and days and weeks I spent rushing back and forth to the various hospitals and institutions he was kicked to and fro from. The guilt, the horrible guilt I feel from not fighting harder to get the doctors to do more. I'm thinking about how a man, over six feet tall - he'd been a heavy weight boxer in the army, for fuck's sake - can whittle down to less than 140 pounds. And last of all, I think about how very heavy a thin frail body is when the life has finally left it. It seems to weigh ten thousand pounds. I couldn't say this in person, because I'd just break down. But I'll write it here, I guess, just as a thank you to Steve. Somehow I feel I owe him one for his courage.
I'm sitting in my backyard and robins are singing. Cheers!
January 3, 2017
I found MR. IVES' CHRISTMAS to be rather sad and depressing throughout most of the story.
As the novel begins, Edward questions his own life as an unwanted child left at a foundling house with no past history to sustain him. And while there are flashbacks of happy times depict here, a good portion of the rest of story is devoted to Edward's struggle to find spiritual peace after the tragic loss of his son at Christmas time.
As a man of strong faith, with an unbelievably devoted wife, Edward's inability to stop mourning his son consumes his whole life until a powerful message sets him on a path to find answers and forgiveness in his heart.
Tough, but inspirational read.
December 30, 2021
A story of loss, of hope, of letting go of grief, and of faith - struggling with the despair, the loss of faith that follows despair, and regaining it over time.
Edward Ives’ life story begins when he is little more than an infant when the first tragedy occurs, and he is orphaned at the age of two years. Placed in a foundling home in 1924, he is adopted by a man who experienced much the same beginning in life. As the years pass, he learns skills over time working beside his adoptive father in his print shop, as well as gaining a foundation of faith through his example. As time passes, he finds work at an advertising company as a commercial artist, and he begins to create a life of his own. A marriage is followed by children, and they remain living in the city.
The years pass quickly in this story, beginning in the mid-1920’s, when he was adopted, to the 1940’s when he begins working in advertising, followed by marriage, and the children who follow in succession. By 1967, their children were still living at home, life was good, and moving in a direction that was satisfying to them. Their comfortable daily routine offers a soothing every-day-ness, their son Robert, now 17, is contemplating a life in the priesthood, and their lives seem to have settled into a satisfactory daily routine. Christmas is just around the corner, and the city is filled with the joy and the hustle and bustle of the season.
And then, the unthinkable happens. Their son Robert is shot, and killed, by another teenage boy.
The reactions and changes this family goes through are shared, as well as those friends who want to offer their assistance, be it in the form of providing food, holding a hand, being there, as well as others offering their willingness to even the score.
Faith lost, faith found. The divisions that follow, the pulling away, the feeling that no one else can understand, as each family member experiences, endures this grief in their own way. The way it changes each of them, some drawing closer to faith, some pushing it away. For some, despair becomes a pit to sink into and dwell on. For others, there is a reaching for something to hold onto, and a kind of faith is renewed, if slowly.
Heartbreaking, while also sharing the beauty of the gift of both giving and receiving forgiveness.
December 10, 2016
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” – Isaiah 9:2
Last Christmas I read a couple of reviews of “Mr Ives’ Christmas” on Goodreads that were unbearably heartbreaking. I waited a year to get acquainted with Ives and now I know why his story resonated so deeply with individuals who have experienced a tragic loss during what is believed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Oscar Hijuelos’ book is pitch perfect for the season – the light did dawn for those who sat in darkness.
Ives is a dear man for whom you wish a good and successful life because he started life with so little. Christmas held significant memories for him – the happiest and the saddest.
“Mr Ives’ Christmas” raised difficult questions about sudden, violent, personal losses. How does a person go on living from day to day when a personal tragedy plunges his or her world into darkness? Is it possible to do good to your enemy? If there is a reservoir of human goodness, how can it be kept from drying up in the midst of extreme suffering and pain?
Read Ives. Very rarely in a book does one find a credible balance of realism and compassion, evil and goodness, brokenness and healing, despair and hope.
Last Christmas I read a couple of reviews of “Mr Ives’ Christmas” on Goodreads that were unbearably heartbreaking. I waited a year to get acquainted with Ives and now I know why his story resonated so deeply with individuals who have experienced a tragic loss during what is believed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Oscar Hijuelos’ book is pitch perfect for the season – the light did dawn for those who sat in darkness.
Ives is a dear man for whom you wish a good and successful life because he started life with so little. Christmas held significant memories for him – the happiest and the saddest.
“Mr Ives’ Christmas” raised difficult questions about sudden, violent, personal losses. How does a person go on living from day to day when a personal tragedy plunges his or her world into darkness? Is it possible to do good to your enemy? If there is a reservoir of human goodness, how can it be kept from drying up in the midst of extreme suffering and pain?
Read Ives. Very rarely in a book does one find a credible balance of realism and compassion, evil and goodness, brokenness and healing, despair and hope.
December 19, 2018
3.5 Stars rounded up for the writing.
I'm not sure why this book did not resonate with me as it did for so many readers. I was brought up Catholic, and I definitely have my ingrained thoughts about faith, so the focus on faith did not bother me. I generally like reflective works, but this one weighed too heavy on me.
Edward Ives son, Robert, is killed just before Christmas. The whole book is about grief and being unable to move beyond your grief, so your life is moving forward, with total emptiness inside.
The author writes beautifully as he examines how coping with a death affects a couple and a family and a community. He also examines how dealing with such an unsurmountable loss tests the core of your faith. I think most of us have been there at some point- where we question how God could allow someone we love to die. I certainly have. This book does examine that well.
"...for underlying every tragedy was the question: Why? Yet he had to believe in something, otherwise he would have died, he loved his son so much."
So why could I not totally respond to this book? It's Christmas time- I think I needed more joy and more enlightenment sooner.
I'm not sure why this book did not resonate with me as it did for so many readers. I was brought up Catholic, and I definitely have my ingrained thoughts about faith, so the focus on faith did not bother me. I generally like reflective works, but this one weighed too heavy on me.
Edward Ives son, Robert, is killed just before Christmas. The whole book is about grief and being unable to move beyond your grief, so your life is moving forward, with total emptiness inside.
The author writes beautifully as he examines how coping with a death affects a couple and a family and a community. He also examines how dealing with such an unsurmountable loss tests the core of your faith. I think most of us have been there at some point- where we question how God could allow someone we love to die. I certainly have. This book does examine that well.
"...for underlying every tragedy was the question: Why? Yet he had to believe in something, otherwise he would have died, he loved his son so much."
So why could I not totally respond to this book? It's Christmas time- I think I needed more joy and more enlightenment sooner.
December 28, 2017
Mr. Ives’ Christmas has been on my tbr list for a couple of years now to include in my annual December Christmas-themed reads. I knew going in that this was not a “Christmas book” per se from the reviews I’ve read, but what I did not know going in was how deeply this story of Mr. Ives’ life would affect me, would touch me to the core.
I think this will come in as my favorite read of 2017, squeaking in at the 11th hour! Hijuelo’s writing was masterful! He tells you the framework of the whole of Edward Ives’ life in the first twelve pages of the book, including that his son, Robert, was murdered when he was 17 and about to go off to seminary to become a Catholic priest. And then, in the next 236 pages, Hijuelo fills in the details of Ives’ life in looping, non-linear fashion so that we come to know him and the other important figures in his life intimately. From a young age, Ives’, a foundling adopted by a generous and kind widower, was a devout Catholic, but also a spiritual seeker, a seeker of identity and a person who ultimately questions his guiding principles after his faith is shaken by his son’s death. I came to love Edward Ives’, his wife Annie, his daughter Caroline, his best friend Luis – they and the other people who populated the book were fully realized, as if you knew them. I did not want this book to end, but end it did and left me with tears in my eyes and much to ponder about my own life, my own faith and guiding principles.
That New York City was as much a character in this book also delighted me, and I don’t think this story could have taken place anywhere else, nor at a different time. Hijuelos brilliantly unfolds the good, the bad and the ugly of New York City in the Mid 20th Century through the lens of Ives’ life story.
One other note: this was a beautifully designed hardcover book. It was a joy to hold and behold, as well as to read. I’m sad that Hijuelos died at such a young age. I think it’s time to revisit his The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.
HIGHLY recommended.
I think this will come in as my favorite read of 2017, squeaking in at the 11th hour! Hijuelo’s writing was masterful! He tells you the framework of the whole of Edward Ives’ life in the first twelve pages of the book, including that his son, Robert, was murdered when he was 17 and about to go off to seminary to become a Catholic priest. And then, in the next 236 pages, Hijuelo fills in the details of Ives’ life in looping, non-linear fashion so that we come to know him and the other important figures in his life intimately. From a young age, Ives’, a foundling adopted by a generous and kind widower, was a devout Catholic, but also a spiritual seeker, a seeker of identity and a person who ultimately questions his guiding principles after his faith is shaken by his son’s death. I came to love Edward Ives’, his wife Annie, his daughter Caroline, his best friend Luis – they and the other people who populated the book were fully realized, as if you knew them. I did not want this book to end, but end it did and left me with tears in my eyes and much to ponder about my own life, my own faith and guiding principles.
That New York City was as much a character in this book also delighted me, and I don’t think this story could have taken place anywhere else, nor at a different time. Hijuelos brilliantly unfolds the good, the bad and the ugly of New York City in the Mid 20th Century through the lens of Ives’ life story.
One other note: this was a beautifully designed hardcover book. It was a joy to hold and behold, as well as to read. I’m sad that Hijuelos died at such a young age. I think it’s time to revisit his The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.
HIGHLY recommended.
December 18, 2017
Mr. Ives’ Christmas is both heartbreaking and heartwarming story told during various Christmases throughout Mr. Ives life. It is a book about love, loss, faith, and forgiveness. It had me questioning my own beliefs about certain issues and understanding.
December 8, 2015
From the book jacket: Mr Ives has a successful career in advertising, a wife and two children, and believes he has achieved the typical American dream. But that is shattered when his son Robert is killed at Christmas. Overwhelmed by grief and threatened by a loss of faith in humankind, Mr Ives questions the very foundations of his life.
My reactions:
I came across this book only because my Hispanic book club was looking for a Christmas book. I’d read Hijuelos’ Pulitzer-winner The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love before, but had not heard of this work. I loved it, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was a Pulitzer finalist in 1996. It is a lovely, contemplative novel – a character study and philosophical exploration of one man’s search for spiritual peace.
Ives (yes, he has a first name – Edward – but he’s always called Ives in the book) starts his life as a foundling, and is adopted by a man who was also a foundling. He never really knows his background – is he Italian? Cuban? Greek? – but he finds a great affinity for the people in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he is raised, and comes to know the Spanish-speaking workers in the printing plant where his adoptive father is a foreman. Hijuelos paints a picture of a gentle man, with a quiet strength born of his circumstances, and of the influences of both the Church and his adoptive father. It is through them that he learns to love and to endure.
There is much sadness in this book. Certainly the murder of his only son is a horrific event (and one which is referenced very early on, so is no spoiler here). But there are also the kinds of daily disappointments and sorrows any one of us might encounter – a friend’s accident, a burglary, a loved one’s illness, a financial setback. These are balanced by the joys of life – blossoming love, great friendships, camaraderie, favorite books, the birth of a child, or success at work. And that balance, that sense of perspective is what this beautifully written novel is all about.
A couple of quotes:
Of course, while contemplating the idea of the baby Jesus, perhaps the most wanted child in the history of the world, Ives would feel a little sad, remembering that years ago someone had left him, an unwanted child, in a foundling home.
A family photo evokes this:
He loved that photograph because he and Robert were holding hands, and although they did not look particularly alike, they were standing in nearly identical positions, their feet planted wide apart, and each regarding the other with a slightly tilting head, eyes a little sad and enchanted at the same time, smiles nearly forming on the edges of their mouths.
A different view of a city snowfall:
Then they rested, side by side, on the frigid pavement like dummies, wistfully looking upward at nature’s swirling activity. A kind of magnificence, heaven, as it were, coming down on them.”
The quiet love between a husband and wife:
She remembered a time when, without saying a word, she would have a sad thought and he, sitting by an easel or by his drawing board, would somehow know. Putting aside his brushes or pen, he would throw on a jacket and step out to hunt down some chocolates, which she loved, and a bouquet of flowers.
I will be thinking about this gem for a long time, and I’m certain I’ll re-read it.
My reactions:
I came across this book only because my Hispanic book club was looking for a Christmas book. I’d read Hijuelos’ Pulitzer-winner The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love before, but had not heard of this work. I loved it, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was a Pulitzer finalist in 1996. It is a lovely, contemplative novel – a character study and philosophical exploration of one man’s search for spiritual peace.
Ives (yes, he has a first name – Edward – but he’s always called Ives in the book) starts his life as a foundling, and is adopted by a man who was also a foundling. He never really knows his background – is he Italian? Cuban? Greek? – but he finds a great affinity for the people in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he is raised, and comes to know the Spanish-speaking workers in the printing plant where his adoptive father is a foreman. Hijuelos paints a picture of a gentle man, with a quiet strength born of his circumstances, and of the influences of both the Church and his adoptive father. It is through them that he learns to love and to endure.
There is much sadness in this book. Certainly the murder of his only son is a horrific event (and one which is referenced very early on, so is no spoiler here). But there are also the kinds of daily disappointments and sorrows any one of us might encounter – a friend’s accident, a burglary, a loved one’s illness, a financial setback. These are balanced by the joys of life – blossoming love, great friendships, camaraderie, favorite books, the birth of a child, or success at work. And that balance, that sense of perspective is what this beautifully written novel is all about.
A couple of quotes:
Of course, while contemplating the idea of the baby Jesus, perhaps the most wanted child in the history of the world, Ives would feel a little sad, remembering that years ago someone had left him, an unwanted child, in a foundling home.
A family photo evokes this:
He loved that photograph because he and Robert were holding hands, and although they did not look particularly alike, they were standing in nearly identical positions, their feet planted wide apart, and each regarding the other with a slightly tilting head, eyes a little sad and enchanted at the same time, smiles nearly forming on the edges of their mouths.
A different view of a city snowfall:
Then they rested, side by side, on the frigid pavement like dummies, wistfully looking upward at nature’s swirling activity. A kind of magnificence, heaven, as it were, coming down on them.”
The quiet love between a husband and wife:
She remembered a time when, without saying a word, she would have a sad thought and he, sitting by an easel or by his drawing board, would somehow know. Putting aside his brushes or pen, he would throw on a jacket and step out to hunt down some chocolates, which she loved, and a bouquet of flowers.
I will be thinking about this gem for a long time, and I’m certain I’ll re-read it.
January 30, 2016
Mr. Ives' Christmas is the poignant story of a man's grief over his murdered son. it's about other things as well, but the heart of this novel is Mr. Ives, an adopted orphan who finds the greatest joy in his life in his children and the murder of his 19 year old son.
The book is also an amazing depiction of New York City in the mid-20th century. It's very much the city I grew up in and Hijuelos is both accurate and evocative in a way few writers are. He makes that city come to life again and brought back many memories to me.
It's a very sad book; Robert's death dominates the story, as it naturally dominates the father's life. The story of faith is told alongside this story of grief but does not mitigate the pain. I found the book difficult to read at times, the atmosphere is pervaded by the numbness created by great loss. But there are sweet moments of faith and love and a story of redemption that is also moving.
Altogether a book worth reading.
The book is also an amazing depiction of New York City in the mid-20th century. It's very much the city I grew up in and Hijuelos is both accurate and evocative in a way few writers are. He makes that city come to life again and brought back many memories to me.
It's a very sad book; Robert's death dominates the story, as it naturally dominates the father's life. The story of faith is told alongside this story of grief but does not mitigate the pain. I found the book difficult to read at times, the atmosphere is pervaded by the numbness created by great loss. But there are sweet moments of faith and love and a story of redemption that is also moving.
Altogether a book worth reading.
December 25, 2013
Mr. Ives, I am not ready to let you go.
What started off as a slow read for me and a bit of an annoying overabundance of commas turned into an appreciation for what the author accomplished here. I was almost ready to discard this at first because of all the commas the author was using. It was really slowing me down. Then there was the use of lists. If the author was going to tell you what was in Mr. Ives’ basement, you would get the whole inventory. If he was talking about the churches near Mr. Ives’ house, you’d get a whole list of them. This was throughout the book. I’m not sure if these lists were used to give the book some authenticity but after a while I got used to them, feeling like I was a spectator watching Mr. Ives through a snow globe. I was able to completely immerse myself into Mr. Ives’ life.
And what a life of calming peace Mr. Ives led. That is all shattered when his son is killed right before Christmas. All of a sudden his life seems to lose all meaning. And it is heartbreaking to watch it unfold. Mr. Ives is an adopted child who has never really felt like he’s quite belonged. Something always seems to be missing from his life, but one thing he’s always had is faith in God. His adoptive father would take him to church and Mr. Ives continued this with his own children. But yet the tragic event of his son's murder never makes him sway away from his faith, nor does it change his peaceful nature. What it does do is pull the rug out from under him and he mourns for his loss for decades. He seems to become a spectator of everything that is going all around him because life goes on for everybody, but not for him. It is a sadness that you can understand though, but Mr. Ives is such a beautiful person that you can’t help but wish that something will bring him back to life, that he will become a participant of his life again.
I love how beautifully the author described Mr. Ives’ faith, how he didn’t lose his faith despite his tragedy. I loved all the people that came into Mr. Ives life. And we get a whole lifetime in such a short book. I was amazed at how well the author was able to pull this off. He was able to tell exactly who Mr. Ives was through the events in his life, through the people he came into contact with. Everything in this book comes full circle, every little incident, as small as it may seem, is tied in to the story and is important to the story and its authentic feel, including those lists I was grumbling about at first.
This book is sad, overwhelmingly so at times, but it is also uplifting, but never in a manipulative way. It is simply just the story of Mr. Ives and his faith and his tragedy and his life. If faith is not your cup of tea then perhaps it will feel manipulative to you, but if not, then you will wish that there were more people like Mr. Ives in the world and you’ll want to protect them from being hurt. I will be missing Mr. Ives, wishing that somehow he did exist in my own snow globe.
What started off as a slow read for me and a bit of an annoying overabundance of commas turned into an appreciation for what the author accomplished here. I was almost ready to discard this at first because of all the commas the author was using. It was really slowing me down. Then there was the use of lists. If the author was going to tell you what was in Mr. Ives’ basement, you would get the whole inventory. If he was talking about the churches near Mr. Ives’ house, you’d get a whole list of them. This was throughout the book. I’m not sure if these lists were used to give the book some authenticity but after a while I got used to them, feeling like I was a spectator watching Mr. Ives through a snow globe. I was able to completely immerse myself into Mr. Ives’ life.
And what a life of calming peace Mr. Ives led. That is all shattered when his son is killed right before Christmas. All of a sudden his life seems to lose all meaning. And it is heartbreaking to watch it unfold. Mr. Ives is an adopted child who has never really felt like he’s quite belonged. Something always seems to be missing from his life, but one thing he’s always had is faith in God. His adoptive father would take him to church and Mr. Ives continued this with his own children. But yet the tragic event of his son's murder never makes him sway away from his faith, nor does it change his peaceful nature. What it does do is pull the rug out from under him and he mourns for his loss for decades. He seems to become a spectator of everything that is going all around him because life goes on for everybody, but not for him. It is a sadness that you can understand though, but Mr. Ives is such a beautiful person that you can’t help but wish that something will bring him back to life, that he will become a participant of his life again.
I love how beautifully the author described Mr. Ives’ faith, how he didn’t lose his faith despite his tragedy. I loved all the people that came into Mr. Ives life. And we get a whole lifetime in such a short book. I was amazed at how well the author was able to pull this off. He was able to tell exactly who Mr. Ives was through the events in his life, through the people he came into contact with. Everything in this book comes full circle, every little incident, as small as it may seem, is tied in to the story and is important to the story and its authentic feel, including those lists I was grumbling about at first.
This book is sad, overwhelmingly so at times, but it is also uplifting, but never in a manipulative way. It is simply just the story of Mr. Ives and his faith and his tragedy and his life. If faith is not your cup of tea then perhaps it will feel manipulative to you, but if not, then you will wish that there were more people like Mr. Ives in the world and you’ll want to protect them from being hurt. I will be missing Mr. Ives, wishing that somehow he did exist in my own snow globe.
December 8, 2015
Sometimes bad things happen to good people. It did in this book and it did in real life with Steve. Look at what happened in San Bernadino just a few days ago. It could happen to me, to you. This beautiful world has an element of chaos, perhaps madness, that can be devistating and knock you all the way down.
So how does one come to terms with losing the love of your life and cope with the sheer senselessness of it all? Mr. Ives' Christmas tackles this subject. And so Mr. Ives' life has changed forever when his son's life was taken. His mind replays and revisits the event over and over. He has tremendous support from his family and friends, but it doesn't truly heal his broken heart. And so this book is an inward journey which eventually leads to a shift and a path towards healing.
It's a well written book and one which one can relate to. It's not depressing or a book to avoid. Quite the contrary. It shows the high road, the low road. It shows how the mind works and how a shift can occur. Mr. Ives' mind had him thinking so much about the loss of his son, that the good memories and happy times didn't have much of a chance to come through and it took a toll on him. But then a crack appears and it's enough to start on a different path. Oh, this is an excellent book.
Thank you Steve. I know you're on a good path. There's so much to learn here.
So how does one come to terms with losing the love of your life and cope with the sheer senselessness of it all? Mr. Ives' Christmas tackles this subject. And so Mr. Ives' life has changed forever when his son's life was taken. His mind replays and revisits the event over and over. He has tremendous support from his family and friends, but it doesn't truly heal his broken heart. And so this book is an inward journey which eventually leads to a shift and a path towards healing.
It's a well written book and one which one can relate to. It's not depressing or a book to avoid. Quite the contrary. It shows the high road, the low road. It shows how the mind works and how a shift can occur. Mr. Ives' mind had him thinking so much about the loss of his son, that the good memories and happy times didn't have much of a chance to come through and it took a toll on him. But then a crack appears and it's enough to start on a different path. Oh, this is an excellent book.
Thank you Steve. I know you're on a good path. There's so much to learn here.
Read
December 22, 2018This book came highly recommended by a friend, Steve, who is no longer on GRs. He also lost a loved one through a brutal crime*, so he related to this story on a visceral level. I can see this book having such a cathartic usefulness for those suffering from catastrophic losses.
Oh! Despite the title, be advised, it is NOT your usual Christmas novel.
*BTW, I am not giving anything away by telling you this. The author lets you know this almost from the beginning, then leaves the details to emerge throughout the rest of the text—a stream of consciousness of events in the life of the protagonist, Mr. Edward Ives. There is rich period detail for those fascinated with mid-20th century New York, especially in the printing, publishing and art areas.
Oh! Despite the title, be advised, it is NOT your usual Christmas novel.
*BTW, I am not giving anything away by telling you this. The author lets you know this almost from the beginning, then leaves the details to emerge throughout the rest of the text—a stream of consciousness of events in the life of the protagonist, Mr. Edward Ives. There is rich period detail for those fascinated with mid-20th century New York, especially in the printing, publishing and art areas.
December 30, 2012
Oscar Hijuelos' third novel began a bit slowly but in some way I have yet to figure out, took hold of me with a gradually tightening grip and left me gasping for relief at the end. The writing is deceptive. It seemed almost simple, almost pedestrian, until I found myself embedded in the hearts and minds of Mr Ives and his wife.
The couple, Mr Ives of Cuban descent and Mrs Ives of Irish, are bound together by passion, intellect, and faith. Content to remain living in a multicultural neighborhood in Upper Manhattan which has seen better days, they are raising two children and are deeply involved in their church and community when disaster strikes. Robert, their son, who is days from entering the seminary, is killed during an incident of senseless violence by a neighborhood punk. Every good thing in their lives, especially their love for each other and their faith in God, is tested.
The impact of a child's death on a marriage and family has been depicted many times in fiction. Hijuelos makes the story new again, mostly due to his two main characters. In an almost bland third person voice he brings the reader so close to Mr Ives and his lovely, vibrant wife Annie, he dives so intricately into the minute personal differences between them as they deal with grief, with religious belief, with life itself, that the novel tested my own faith in love, in mankind, in a Supreme Being, and in life itself.
I don't know if the amount of emotional turmoil in Mr Ives' Christmas is every reader's cup of tea. I didn't think I would be able to stomach the overtly Catholic views. But then again, I have been drawn in by Graham Greene, especially The Power and the Glory. As I watched the movie version of The Life of Pi on Christmas Eve, I remembered that part of my love for that book was Pi's seriously held and seriously tested faith in the three religions he practiced simultaneously.
Oscar Hijuelos did not turn me back to the Christian faith of my youth. He performed another kind of miracle and renewed my faith in living by one's values and in the divine nature of human love.
The couple, Mr Ives of Cuban descent and Mrs Ives of Irish, are bound together by passion, intellect, and faith. Content to remain living in a multicultural neighborhood in Upper Manhattan which has seen better days, they are raising two children and are deeply involved in their church and community when disaster strikes. Robert, their son, who is days from entering the seminary, is killed during an incident of senseless violence by a neighborhood punk. Every good thing in their lives, especially their love for each other and their faith in God, is tested.
The impact of a child's death on a marriage and family has been depicted many times in fiction. Hijuelos makes the story new again, mostly due to his two main characters. In an almost bland third person voice he brings the reader so close to Mr Ives and his lovely, vibrant wife Annie, he dives so intricately into the minute personal differences between them as they deal with grief, with religious belief, with life itself, that the novel tested my own faith in love, in mankind, in a Supreme Being, and in life itself.
I don't know if the amount of emotional turmoil in Mr Ives' Christmas is every reader's cup of tea. I didn't think I would be able to stomach the overtly Catholic views. But then again, I have been drawn in by Graham Greene, especially The Power and the Glory. As I watched the movie version of The Life of Pi on Christmas Eve, I remembered that part of my love for that book was Pi's seriously held and seriously tested faith in the three religions he practiced simultaneously.
Oscar Hijuelos did not turn me back to the Christian faith of my youth. He performed another kind of miracle and renewed my faith in living by one's values and in the divine nature of human love.
December 21, 2015
This 1995 short novel by Oscar Hijuelos tells the story of the life of Edward Ives. Ives was adopted as a young child by a man who had adopted 3 other children. Edward knows nothing of his birth parents but with his dark Mediterranean looks, he is sometimes discriminated against in New York City where he lives his entire life. Ives is a skilled artist, and goes on to have a long career as an illustrator in advertising. He marries an Irish American woman, Annie MacGuire. Ives is a deeply religious man, and a Catholic. His best friend is Ramirez, a Cuban immigrant who bartends at the Biltmore. Ives studies Spanish and has many Latino friends. He lives in upper Manhattan with his wife and two children, and early in the book we learn his first born Robert, dies as a teenager
Ives life is a story of faith, loss, grief, and considering what forgiveness means. It is a melancholy read but not depressing. Hijuelos paints a portrait of New York from the Depression years through the later decades of the 20th century. Many changes occurs including the closing of many New York landmarks particularly department stores. Ives finds life getting harder in the city as the years go by and his wife gives up teaching high school in NY as it becomes increasingly harrowing.
Not a typical Christmas read but one I highly recommend.
Ives life is a story of faith, loss, grief, and considering what forgiveness means. It is a melancholy read but not depressing. Hijuelos paints a portrait of New York from the Depression years through the later decades of the 20th century. Many changes occurs including the closing of many New York landmarks particularly department stores. Ives finds life getting harder in the city as the years go by and his wife gives up teaching high school in NY as it becomes increasingly harrowing.
Not a typical Christmas read but one I highly recommend.
December 26, 2022
Not a 'cozy' Christmas read, but instead a melancholy, absorbing character study that evades tidy resolution. The titular Edward Ives is a foundling of indeterminate origin who as an adult finds satisfaction in his marriage, his family, his work, his Catholic faith, and his community. When his teenage son, who had decided to be a priest, is murdered, Mr. Ives continues to fulfill his role in the community, engaging in good works and even corresponding with his son's murderer. However, his grief extends through the decades, leaving him profoundly affected. Hijuelos' omniscient narration builds up a sensitive, complex portrait of a man and his family, and of New York over the decades.
September 5, 2020
Did not love this story as much as I had hoped. Maybe it was my own state of mind right now.
December 6, 2015
#2015-Reading-Challenge-Group--Week-47: a book set at Christmas.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Ives thinks "that [God] was of the Spirit and He did not interfere in human affairs...He provided a light toward which to aspire..." This is a remarkably moving story of faith put to the test, of facing heart-breaking loss and spiritual crisis. Ives is a genuinely good person who has done his best in life, loved his wife, family and friends and his God...until one day just before Christmas in 1967, the idyll is shattered when his only son is murdered on a NY street. How to carry on? Should he seek revenge or find a way to forgive? The answers Hijuelos gives make Ives a very remarkable man, one worth getting to know in the pages of this story.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Ives thinks "that [God] was of the Spirit and He did not interfere in human affairs...He provided a light toward which to aspire..." This is a remarkably moving story of faith put to the test, of facing heart-breaking loss and spiritual crisis. Ives is a genuinely good person who has done his best in life, loved his wife, family and friends and his God...until one day just before Christmas in 1967, the idyll is shattered when his only son is murdered on a NY street. How to carry on? Should he seek revenge or find a way to forgive? The answers Hijuelos gives make Ives a very remarkable man, one worth getting to know in the pages of this story.
November 22, 2016
I greatly admire the ability of those rare gifted authors that can take the life of ordinary people and weave them into a story that is both readily identifiable and uplifting. Such stories remind all of us that everybody has a story and in those stories we are the heroes and the villains, the saints and the sinners and that we all have that story to tell but we don't. We don't because none of us feels that our lives are at all interesting or worth discovering. It is authors like this one that writes a story that tells us we are wrong. This book is about a simple man, Edward Ives, that is abandoned by the parents he doesn't remember for reasons he will never know. He is a boy without a family and without a history. He is a foundling left to the charity of others. Fortunately, he is saved from a life of unknown hardship by the adoption of a kindly widower to join his family of other adopted children. His adopted father is loving and nurturing and Edward discovers a talent for drawing and art and hardwork and diligence. All these discoveries serve him well and he manages to build a life for himself. He is also inexplicably devout in his Catholic faith. In post WWII NYC he lives, works, and studies until he meets an Irish girl in one of his art classes. They fall in love, marry, and raise a small family in Upper Manhattan much to the disapproval of the girl's Irish cop father and brothers. Their life is comfortable though hardly flush with the luxuries of life. Their son, their first born, decides to become a priest and is about to enter the seminary when he is murdered in a senseless street incident. It is at this point that the book's purpose begins because it is at this point that Edward's life spins out of control. His faith is challenged and he tries desperately to understand what has happened and why. He is also faced with the necessity of supporting his wife and daughter through their grief as well as his own. Now why the author has decided to juxtapose Christmas with the story of Edward's struggle is an interesting question that I will leave for each reader to ponder for themselves. If you are looking for a book to put you in the Christmas Spirit this might not be what you are looking for but then again maybe it is. It is a moving story that will have you thinking about a lot of different things in life.
January 7, 2012
This is the haunting tale of one man's struggle to find peace, love, and spirituality in his life, particularly after the shocking murder of his only son right before Christmas. The book then tracks Ives throughout his life, focusing on Christmas-time each year. I picked this up in my effort to find peace and spiritual reflection in this hectic holiday season. There were quite a few inspiring moments of the human experiencing the divine, but the deep focus on the Catholic religion and practices, was, unfortunately, not quite what I was looking for. It was inspiring, however, to witness one man's quest to hold on to his faith in an increasingly cynical world and underscored just how difficult this journey can be. Perhaps the lesson I was looking for is here after all.... The detailed descriptions of Hijuelos' New Year from the 40's through the 90's can seem a bit tedious at first, but as you immerse yourself in these lovingly crafted memories, a picture of NYC - and it's evolution over the years - comes into clear focus.
December 18, 2011
2.5 to 3
Engaged me at beginning but became bored third of the way in and thereon. Just continued to plod, plod, plod along.
Engaged me at beginning but became bored third of the way in and thereon. Just continued to plod, plod, plod along.
December 10, 2020
It's the opening scene of "It's a Wonderful Life" and those stars/galaxies are talking:
- "Hello, Joseph. Trouble?"
- "We asked Clarence to arrange Mr Ive's son getting murdered just before Christmas."
- "That must really have ruined Mr Ive's Christmas. But he's a shit and his son is a really nasty piece of work."
- "Yeah? Well Clarence didn't ruin Mr Ive's Christmas. He ruined Mr Ives' Christmas."
- "I don't get it."
- "S apostrophe."
- "That would have been ruining Mr Ives's Christmas, surely?"
- "Who knows."
- "Oh dear. Well, let's just hope Mr Ives's son wasn't an amazing Catholic do-gooding priest-in-waiting."
- "Er....."
- "Oh shit. That does it. Strip Clarence of his wings!"
Cut to ZsuZsu and George Bailey:
- "Look Daddy! Teacher says every time you don't rewrite a sentence to avoid an uncomfortable "s'/s's" dilemma, an angel loses its wings!"
- "Oh shit Clarence..."
I thought this was pretty bleak and depressing. I thought it was going to make me feel good about life at Christmas. It really didn't.
I really didn't like that all the family "knew" something bad was happening ... I'm suspicious of that. And it makes me sad for people who come home from work and find their son dead and go "shit I had no idea, I thought Tuesday was going well". Are those people less than all of the clairvoyant people in the life of Mr Ives (see what I did there)?
- "Hello, Joseph. Trouble?"
- "We asked Clarence to arrange Mr Ive's son getting murdered just before Christmas."
- "That must really have ruined Mr Ive's Christmas. But he's a shit and his son is a really nasty piece of work."
- "Yeah? Well Clarence didn't ruin Mr Ive's Christmas. He ruined Mr Ives' Christmas."
- "I don't get it."
- "S apostrophe."
- "That would have been ruining Mr Ives's Christmas, surely?"
- "Who knows."
- "Oh dear. Well, let's just hope Mr Ives's son wasn't an amazing Catholic do-gooding priest-in-waiting."
- "Er....."
- "Oh shit. That does it. Strip Clarence of his wings!"
Cut to ZsuZsu and George Bailey:
- "Look Daddy! Teacher says every time you don't rewrite a sentence to avoid an uncomfortable "s'/s's" dilemma, an angel loses its wings!"
- "Oh shit Clarence..."
I thought this was pretty bleak and depressing. I thought it was going to make me feel good about life at Christmas. It really didn't.
I really didn't like that all the family "knew" something bad was happening ... I'm suspicious of that. And it makes me sad for people who come home from work and find their son dead and go "shit I had no idea, I thought Tuesday was going well". Are those people less than all of the clairvoyant people in the life of Mr Ives (see what I did there)?
December 22, 2024
This felt very different to Mambo Kings (which in fairness I read a long time ago so is rather hazy…). It’s very quiet and introspective and possibly a bit too quiet and introspective for my mood at the moment.
It’s the story of the whole lifetime of advertising exec Mr Ives, born a foundling and whose latter years are shaped by the murder of his son at Christmas (although the murder takes a small space within the book, many of the other chapters also revolve around the Christmas period). Mr Ives is a deeply religious, decent man and this a more religious book than I was expecting, but he’s not your usual stereotype. Instead he is a more realistic, messy character - he drinks, he has friendships with some morally ambiguous people, there’s plenty of sex.. and he struggles to forgive the man who has murdered his son.
Because of the religious elements this won’t be for everyone. I struggled at times but in the end I liked it for its gentleness, its honesty and the way that it is a hymn to a multi-cultural New York (Hijuelos’s Cuban background certainly comes through even if it is not the main focus of the book).
It’s the story of the whole lifetime of advertising exec Mr Ives, born a foundling and whose latter years are shaped by the murder of his son at Christmas (although the murder takes a small space within the book, many of the other chapters also revolve around the Christmas period). Mr Ives is a deeply religious, decent man and this a more religious book than I was expecting, but he’s not your usual stereotype. Instead he is a more realistic, messy character - he drinks, he has friendships with some morally ambiguous people, there’s plenty of sex.. and he struggles to forgive the man who has murdered his son.
Because of the religious elements this won’t be for everyone. I struggled at times but in the end I liked it for its gentleness, its honesty and the way that it is a hymn to a multi-cultural New York (Hijuelos’s Cuban background certainly comes through even if it is not the main focus of the book).
December 21, 2020
Not your usual Christmas story, but one of Mr Ives struggling with his sons death due to needless violence in 1950’s New York City at Christmas time. This is not an easy or joyful holiday read but a very literary slice of religious life with a protagonist who might be compared loosely with John Williams’ Stoner or maybe even Updike’s Rabbit. 3.5 stars
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December 27, 2015I adore Oscar Hijuelos. As I’ve said in another review of one of his books, there is a subtle, Cuban rhythm that permeates his storytelling, and it is like a warm fragrant beach night. So what could be better than Oscar Hijuelos and Christmas combined? I saw his book Mr. Ives’ Christmas and was immediately attracted to it, figuring a little Christmas salsa would be refreshing. But Mr. Ives’ Christmas is not a light holiday read, nor does it have that rhythm of the previous novels by Hijuelos I’ve read. Mr. Ives is a deeply religious man who as a child was a foundling adopted by the senior Mr. Ives, who himself was a foundling and got his surname from a priest who looked at a Currier and Ives print and declared the child’s name to be Ives. The Mr. Ives who is the protagonist of this novel is an artist who goes into the advertising business. He has a wife and two children. Mr. Ives has an affinity for Hispanic cultures, speculating that that his is heritage, so he lives among the Cubans and Puerto Ricans of New York City. Mr. Ives has a beloved son who, at age seventeen, decides to enter the priesthood. But that is not to be, for the boy dies in a senseless killing. His father spends most of the novel dealing with his grief. That sounds like a real downer, but the book actually is uplifting as we journey with this profoundly Catholic man as he navigates his life of grief, seeking forgiveness in his heart for his son’s killer. Hijuelos has not written an easy novel to read; he has not written a light-hearted Christmas romp; he has not written a novel in the same vein of the others of his I’ve read. But he has written a thoughtful treatise on faith, grief and forgiveness couched in solid storytelling that explores the tenets of all religions, shows appreciation for varied cultures, and uses New York City as almost another character, brilliantly bringing the city to life. This is a relatively short book—only 249 pages—but it is about 95% narrative, so it seems much longer. There is very little dialogue. I prefer an abundance of dialogue and a paucity of narrative myself, but Hijuelos is such a brilliant writer that we eagerly accompany him on this journey. This is elegant writing.
March 30, 2008
This simple, yet beautifully written book deals tenderly with ethics. The eponymous hero has lost his dear seventeen year-old son to murder and is left, with his wife, to test the strength of his Christian values as he meets with his son's murderer. The enormous loss strains the Ives' marriage, and Edward struggles both with his terrible sorrow and with the deterioration of his marriage. This story is quietly written, but the book packs an emotional wallop. This book would be a good choice for a book club as the moral issues at its core should offer many occasions for discussion.
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