Old Scores

by Nicholas Delbanco

Book Overview

Twenty-five years ago, Paul Ballard was a young college professor, and Elizabeth Sieverdsen was his adoring student. Now, he is a retired and reclusive man, and she is a recently divorced and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446520462
• ISBN13: 9780446520461
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Amodern day classic

In 1969, thirty-something Professor Paul Ballard teaches philosophy at Vermont's Catamount College. Paul is normally aloof in the classroom until Elizabeth Sieverdsen attends his class. The student and the teacher fall in love and begin a torrid affair that abruptly ends when she rejects his marriage proposal. She leaves him without informing him she carries his baby. Not long afterward, Paul is injured in an accident, ends his teaching career, and becomes a hermit on his remote farm. Elizabeth gives up the baby for adoption. Over the years, Elizabeth marries and has children with her spouse, but never forgets her first love for Paul nor her abandonment of their child. With her marriage over and her nest empty, Elizabeth finally returns to Vermont for the first time in a quarter of a century. She meets Paul and hesitantly they try to regain what they lost. OLD SCORES is an intriguing modern day retelling of the classic Abelard and Heloise tale. The story line works, especially the subplot occurring in 1969, due to the genuine feel of the interrelationships between the characters. Although not quite as masterful as WHAT REMAINS, Nicholas Delbanco provides a complex, intelligent tale centering on the difficulty of forging a relationship even when love ties the players together.Harriet Klausner

a peerless stylist

Nicholas Delbanco is an extraordinary stylist with a compelling purchase on the human condition. In this, his latest novel,the author scores an ancient story (love found, relinquished, and recovered) so that it resonates and sustains long after the final notes are struck. Delbanco has found the emotional center of his subject without the sentimentality or maudlin cliches with which a lesser writer might have been content. Here, instead, we have a discerning wisdom that rises from the particularities of our lives so that the story, the characters, the emotional terrain emerge fresh and real amidst sentences that delight, vivify, ring true.