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Testing the Current - William McPherson, D.T. Max
Testing the Current
by: (author) (author)
4.00 10
Growing up in a small upper Midwestern town in the late 1930s, young Tommy MacAllister is scarcely aware of the Depression, much less the rumblings of war in Europe. For his parents and their set, life seems to revolve around dinners and dancing at the country club, tennis dates and rounds of... show more
Growing up in a small upper Midwestern town in the late 1930s, young Tommy MacAllister is scarcely aware of the Depression, much less the rumblings of war in Europe. For his parents and their set, life seems to revolve around dinners and dancing at the country club, tennis dates and rounds of golf, holiday parties, summers on the Island, and sparkling occasions full of people and drinks and food and laughter. But curious as he is and impatient to grow up, Tommy will soon come to glimpse the darkness that lies beneath so much genteel complacency: hidden histories and embarrassing poor relations; the subtle (and not so subtle) slighting of the “help”; the mockery of President Roosevelt; and “the commandment they talked least about in Sunday school,” adultery.     In Testing the Current William McPherson subtly sets off his wide-eyed protagonist’s perspective with mature reflection and wry humor and surrounds him with a cast of vibrant characters, creating a scrupulously observed portrait of a place and time that will shimmer in readers’ minds long after the final page is turned.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9781590176023 (1590176022)
ASIN: 1590176022
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Pages no: 352
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
What I Happen to Be Reading At the Moment
What I Happen to Be Reading At the Moment rated it
4.0
Testing the Current develops slowly. It's a coming of age story with a perceptive main character, Tommy, who witnesses the varieties of life in his WASP centered upper middle class life. His family has made it finically through the Depression, but things are of course only calm on the surface. Tommy...
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