Compass Rose

It's been more than two decades since "Spartina" won the National Book Award and was acclaimed by critics as being "possibly the best American novel . . . since "The Old Man and the Sea"" ("The New York Times Book Review"), but in this extraordinary follow-up novel barely any time has passed in the magical landscape of salt ponds and marshes in John Casey's fictional Rhode Island estuary. Elsie Buttrick, prodigal daughter of the smart set who are gradually taking over the coastline of Sawtooth Point, has just given birth to Rose, a child conceived during a passionate affair with Dick Pierce--a fisherman and the love of Elsie's life, who also happens to live practically next door with his wife, May, and their children. A beautiful but guarded woman who feels more at ease wading through the marshes than lounging on the porches of the fashionable resort her sister and brother-in-law own, Elsie was never one to do as she was told. She is wary of the discomfort her presence poses among some members of her gossipy, insular community, yet it is Rose, the unofficially adopted daughter and little sister of half the town, who magnetically steers everyone in her orbit toward unexpected--and unbreakable--relationships. As we see Rose grow from a child to a plucky adolescent with a flair for theatrics both onstage and at home during verbal boxing matches with her mother, to a poised and prepossessing teenager, she becomes the unwitting emotional tether between Elsie and everyone else. "Face it, Mom," Rose says, "we live in a tiny ecosystem." And indeed, like the rugged, untouched marshes that surround these characters, theirs is an ecosystem that has come by its beauty honestly, through rhythms and moods that have shaped and reshaped their lives. With an uncanny ability to plunge confidently and unwaveringly into the thoughts and desires of women--mothers, daughters, wives, lovers--John Casey astonishes us again with the power of a family saga.

About the Author :
John Casey was born in 1939 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the University of Iowa. His novel "Spartina" won the National Book Award in 1989. He lives with his wife in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is a professor of English literature at the University of Virginia.

Review :
"Beautiful and elegaic...[This] bit of a world is complete unto itself, with its own force fields, its own variations off true north, its own ways of tilting into alignment." ---The New York Times Book Review "Casey writes old-fashioned novels in the best sense - character driven, thick with dialogue, nuanced and multilayered as they reveal relationships." ---Kirkus "Gratifyingly complex. [The] novel hums with energy." ---Wall Street Journal "Much of the enjoyment of this novel is derived from the unobtrusive skill with which Casey charts the entanglements, convergences, repulsions, and compromises of life in a close-knit community...Perhaps the greatest achievement of Casey's unadorned, clear, and flexible writing is its setting [of] rare moments of individual displacement and transcendence within a narrative that dramatically relates the complex procedures of human relations both public and intimate." ---Boston Globe "This is the kind of novel you don't just read -- you dwell in -- and when you come to the final scenes...you hate to see it end and hope that Casey won't wait too many decades to 'finish the story.'" ---Hudson Valley News