Starting Out in the Evening Book

This thoughtful and intelligent novel presents us with three individuals at different points in their lives: the first, Leonard Schiller, a 71-year-old author who, after two heart operations, knows he is close to death but is still determined to finish his last novel, even as his four previous works have gone out of print; the second, his 39-year-old daughter, Ariel, a dancer who has become an exercise instructor and is hoping to find fulfillment in becoming a parent finally; the third, Heather Wolfe, a 24-year-old graduate student looking to launch her career as a literary critic in New York and writing her thesis on the author who inspired her early pursuit of freedom. (There is a fourth character whose thoughts we also follow but I won't identify, as this individual enters the book only in the latter half.)

Morton is a master at getting into each of the character's minds, though they're of different generations, race, sex, and preoccupation, and he manages to make them each incredibly sympathetic even as they frustrate us and challenge our patience.

Even as the book itself weaves quotes from great artists into the fabric of the conversation on how to best live one's life, though never in a pedantic or obtrusive manner, it constantly presents the reader with its own passages worth recording and mulling over: on pursuing a creative life, having fun, striving, and struggling. This is a book whose ideas are worth contemplating, even if the plot urges us to speed through it to find out what happens next: my favorite combination.

What if the work you create inspires lessons that you don't necessarily intend? Is it worth creating if the product of your efforts will never be shared with others? What should drive us in our career: recognition, posterity, enjoyment, discipline, morals? What ought we to do if furthering our own goals means sacrificing the goals of others? At what point is it degrading to seek the approval of our mentors?

Though the word can make me queasy, it is true that this is an immensely tender book. Just don't read it in a car or plane if that unsettles you.