The Flaming Corsage: 8

by William Kennedy

Book Overview

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed explores the seething, contradictory impulses of our humanity, lusts, and furies in this thrilling novel in the Albany Cycle. Moving back and forth... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670858722
• ISBN13: 9780670858729
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

"It's quite uncanny what one sets in motion by being oneself."

Even when he is writing a novel that is not his most memorable, William Kennedy still inspires awe. This novel, the sixth in the "Albany Cycle," differs from the more famous novels that have preceded it, taking a close view of the lives of the upper class of Albany and those Irish who have "made it," rather than his more familiar stories of Irish who are scrambling for a foothold, trying to drown their sorrows because of their failures, or adapting to the environment, often political, which can ensure their long-term survival. Opening the novel with a 1908 "love nest murder-suicide," told as if it were a stage play, the author then moves backward to 1885 and the love story of Edward Daugherty and Katrina Taylor. Daugherty is the son of poor Irish from North Albany, a boy taken under the wing of a wealthy benefactor, who has provided him with an education and an annuity so that he can "progress" beyond his early beginnings. Daugherty eventually becomes a novelist and playwright, falling in love with and marrying Katrina, descended from Dutch Protestants and Oliver Cromwell. Set a generation before any of the other novels, this novel provides background for the cycle, dealing with the same themes--fathers and sons, the process by which children seize the American dream and rise above their fathers, the joys of love and its fragility, and the overwhelming grace of forgiveness for transgressions. Here we see both Katrina and Edward engaging in affairs, and Katrina's, with the ballplayer Francis Phelan, echoes throughout the Albany cycle. Edward and his friend Maginn know the Irish ward bosses and politicians who eventually dominate Albany and New York state politics (and the Albany novels set in the 20th century), and the tensions between the old guard Protestants in Albany and the rising Irish immigrant population reverberate throughout. Though the novel does not follow a strictly linear format, the story of Edward and Katrina dominates, and Kennedy clearly specifies dates--the Love Nest Murder/Suicide in 1908, Edward and Katrina's marriage in the mid-1880s, and the fatal fire at the end of the novel in 1912. This novel, though less intense than novels like Ironweed, is still atmospheric, filled with the local color which characterizes the other novels in the cycle. Its characters, though less sympathetic initially, are as carefully drawn as those from the grittier neighborhoods of Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and Ironweed. Ultimately, the reader sees that the same issues plague both the wealthy and the destitute--families, the need for forgiveness, and one's hopes for the future. n Mary Whipple

love and madness

Having first read Ironweed and Billy Phelan, The Flaming Corsage fit right into the mix. I found the structure a bit choppy but the story of Katrina, or is it the story of Edward's love of Katrina, to be most compelling.Every character, no matter how small, is as true as life itself. Tragedy, crime, class struggle, vengence, loss, carnality, and finally madness played out on a finely drawn historical background. I cried for them all.

Um...better than some reviews would imply...

I had to write something to counteract that unfair review by the gentleman from Switzerland. Is _The Flaming Corsage_ Kennedy's best? Nope (that w/b Very Old Bones, no contest). This isn't the first book to start with on Kennedy; since several characters show up from other books of Kennedy's Albany Cycle (Ironweed and Legs, I believe), it is helpful to read those first to get a better appreciation of some of the implied goings-on of this text; it certainly helps with the time-jumpyness of the story, which goes back and forth between the late 1800s and early 1900s, right before Francis Phelan drops the baby...in another book.Kennedy has a natural gift for storytelling, but as my previous sentence might imply, there's a sort of neo-Faulknerian insularity in _Corsage_; it helps to know about the other novels Kennedy wrote, and maybe even Kennedy's own life as a budding playwright himself (interesting parallel btw. the play in this book, and Kennedy's own progress in getting his first play produced), before tackling this one; otherwise it may make for a fairly confusing 200 pages. But insiders would disagree with me on that. And that's my point.Memo to Mr. Kennedy...when _Roscoe_ is finished, please, PLEASE come to Bellingham to promote your work!