The Lonely Polygamist: A Novel by Brady Udall (Epub)

Description

A New York Times bestseller: “Udall masterfully portrays the hapless foibles and tragic yearnings of our fellow humans.” ―San Francisco ChronicleGolden Richards, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, is having the mother of all midlife crises. His construction business is failing, his family has grown into an overpopulated mini-dukedom beset with insurrection and rivalry, and he is done in with grief: due to the accidental death of a daughter and the stillbirth of a son, he has come to doubt the capacity of his own heart. Brady Udall, one of our finest American fiction writers, tells a tragicomic story of a deeply faithful man who, crippled by grief and the demands of work and family, becomes entangled in an affair that threatens to destroy his family’s future. Like John Irving and Richard Yates, Udall creates characters that engage us to the fullest as they grapple with the nature of need, love, and belonging.Beautifully written, keenly observed, and ultimately redemptive, The Lonely Polygamist is an unforgettable story of an American family―with its inevitable dysfunctionality, heartbreak, and comedy―pushed to its outer limits.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Funny [and] moving, [The Lonely Polygamist] is ambitious and it is tender about man’s endless absurdities and failings.” ― Eric Weinberger, The New York Times Book Review”A riveting emotional tornado of a novel.” ― Entertainment Weekly”The novelist’s affection for his protagonist and sensitivity to his domestic despair yields characters and scenes that are precise and unfailingly rewarding. [Udall] has that gift for writing sinuous and convincing sentences that convey his affection without compromising clarity or truth.” ― Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered, NPR”A wry, sympathetic portrait of a spectacularly dysfunctional family.” ― The New Yorker”There’s something cinematic about the way Udall presents this tale, with at least a handful of dramatic scenes that seem to beg for a big-screen treatment. Furthermore, Udall’s poetic rendering of the Southwestern landscape brings to mind the lingering, panoramic shots of films like Brokeback Mountain and A River Runs Through It. But most of all it’s Golden, Rusty and the novel’s other complex characters that make The Lonely Polygamist a potential classic. They remain with the reader after the last page is turned.” ― San Francisco Chronicle”An audacious and frequently funny new novel.” ― Wendy Smith, Washington Post”A profoundly satisfying read, written with a ferocious verve and authenticity.” ― Cleveland Plain Dealer”An absorbing, moving entertaining novel that will transport the reader into Golden’s chaotic world.” ― Dallas Morning News”[A] compelling, rollicking story.” ― Salt Lake Tribune”What is so great about this unflinching, superbly crafted, big hearted novel is the way it makes us recognize the polygamist(and sister wife) in all of us. Golden Richards’ struggles and desires are no different from ours, he just has them in multiples of four. His story not only demystifies and humanizes polygamist culture, it takes a dramatic stand on behalf of families everywhere―from the most conservative to the most alternative―and suggests a way to foreground, amidst all our failings, the rare moment of success.” ― Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness”The Lonely Polygamist cracks open the door to plural marriage and lets in the light. Brady Udall explores the Richards family with the greatest care and humor, building memorable characters that readers will immediately love. Funny and wise, The Lonely Polygamist stands with other great family novels such as The Corrections and Middlesex, and sets Udall on the top shelf of America’s writers.” ― Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief and Animal Crackers”This is big-hearted American storytelling, the best new book I’ve read in years.” ― Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of American Salvage About the Author Brady Udall is the author of New York Times bestseller The Lonely Polygamist, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, and Letting Loose the Hounds. He teaches at Boise State University and lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and children.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A surprisingly humorous look at a very isolated lifestyle. The author uses our own experiences, especially those who come from a large family, to normalize a very perplexing situation. It brings out the ways we end up living an ideal that we just fell into, and wonder not only how we got there, but what it means. Usually this topic focuses on the multiple brides, mostly married at a very young age. This book depicts the interrelationships between wives who are mature women with various life hardships prior to finding family in this way. It really emphasizes a young boy’s struggle, not only fitting into a large family, with mothers who are not related, and a father who is not there for him,

⭐The Lonely Polygamist is an imaginative riff on families’ fundamental drive to create and maintain the illusion that they are “one big happy family.” It very adeptly and humorously takes Tolstoy’s catchy division of families into happy (they’re all the same) and unhappy (they are each unique) to a whole new level.In the world of The Lonely Polygamist, there is a unity between striving to achieve and hold onto happy family status, and the underlying tensions that erode the illusion. The fundamental lies built into the family structure that range from the little white fibs to the black hole variety that threaten to swallow and crush the family unit are the yin of family culture and work with the constant building, repairing, overhauling, or yang, needed to sustain the illusion of happiness.A disclaimer: a number of reviews here treat the text as if the story is about polygamy. The Lonely Polygamist is about polygamy as Moby Dick is about fishing. The Lonely Polygamist is a thoughtful and humorous allegory, or meditation, on the dynamics of families. As the text clearly states, polygamy was chosen because it intensifies and magnifies the dynamics of families, including monogamous.At the center of the family is Golden Richards (golden riches?) whose bind appears to be that he is a Mormon construction contractor who has undertaken a project to extend a bordello (turns out as the story unfolds that this is not nearly the biggest tension). The moral conflict is justified as a one-time deal to gain the money needed to sustain his company and family livelihood.Then there are the four wives, maintaining the family, but each carrying their own secrets and needs as they plot and work as a political core that keeps the family humming along like a (family?) nuclear generator. Nuclear over atomic because fission – energy release through splitting – is their key dynamic.And then there are the 28 kids, more unstable than uranium, they offer a chaotic background for the emergence of future families.Through trials and tribulations that are compared to those of Jonah, Golden arrives at the conclusion that the way to save the family from disintegrating is to unify the family occupying three houses under one roof. (I can’t help but think of house here as a loose metaphor for mind.)But despite Golden’s grand plan, it is undermined by the notion spelled out in a wonderful description of fallout from an atmospheric test of a nuclear bomb that “when it comes to humans, pain and suffering are passed through the generations like that unfashionable Christmas gift no one wants: disease and mutation, anger and despair, failures of intellect and character, all of it genetic damage in one way or another, all of it nothing less than the curse of the father upon the child, a curse inevitably repaid in kind.”Obviously, Udall uses Mormon polygamy as a literary vehicle for his story. But the thought invested in these pages also weaves allusions to Biblical passages, science (physics, chaos, and genetics), and more than a little Buddhism as well.This is at once a thoughtful, humorous, and entertaining allegory. I was going to pass my copy on to my daughter, but instead am holding onto it and purchased a copy for her. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

⭐i am not sure if this book was meant as a comedy but most of it made me laugh out loud while at the same time being incredibly sad. I loved the story the idea and the characters. The moments of back story helped me a long with their perfect timings. While the book had moments every family, of any sort, would be terrified of happening, Brady came at it from a fresh perspective and with a humorous way of delivery bad news so that you can plunge on and want to know more. I would read more about what happens with these lives. Who else wants a part 2?

⭐I’ve never been much of a fan of family sagas, but the idea of a family saga about polygamist fundamentalist Mormons was intriguing enough to lead me to read Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist. The book is centered around a man named Golden Richards, a well-meaning, but dim-witted cipher, who has been defined his whole life by the people around him. Now a member of radical Mormon splinter group, husband to four sister-wives (including two full-fledged sisters) and father to 28 children, Golden finds himself struggling with a midlife crisis. Secretly working as a contractor building a new addition to a brothel, Golden finds himself tempted by his boss’s common law wife, an emotional and spiritual indiscretion as anathema to polygamists as it is to traditional couples. Meanwhile, his fourth wife, Trish, and troubled son, Rusty, deal with their own existential crises, all caused by the strain of living within a large polygamist family.The lonely polygamist of the novel is nominally Golden, but could also include the other viewpoint characters, Trish and Rusty, as well as members of the sprawling supporting cast. Even surrounded by so much family it is possible to be completely and utterly alone. The various secrets held by the different characters collide at the climax of the book, as desperate and tragic act forces each member of the family to re-evaluate their commitment to each other.I found The Lonely Polygamist to be well-written and enjoyable, even amusing at times, while exploring themes of loneliness and the isolation of being part of a non-mainstream subculture. Udall doesn’t judge his characters so much as present them, and it’s hard not to find some sympathy for Golden, Trish and Rusty. However, I was deeply dissatisfied by the ending, where the character changes were sometimes subtle and not necessarily in the best interests of the Richards clan. If anything, a book that should have been a repudiation of polygamy became an affirmation of it. And where you fall on that issue will largely inform how you ultimately feel about it. I respect it as a novel, but disagree with its ultimate conclusions.

⭐I first heard of this novel when I stumbled across an interview with the author online. The book was also praised on a forum. Now that I have read it I can say it is a good a read.The lead character is a Mormon man who has four wives, and 28 children. If that weren’t enough, the boss’s wife is angling for him. It’s all too much for the poor fellow, especially as his voluminous family is slowly unravelling, with bitterness towards the first (and oldest) wife, the children dividing into separate tribes, and his own incapacity–or simple unwillingness–to deal with the situation. Udall’s novel is quite touching in parts, especiallty when the back stories of certain characters is revealed. Udall knows that people are full of surprises. The Lonely Polygamist is a substantial read, but a delightful one.

⭐Excellent.

⭐This is an immensely satisfying book: like a three course meal. The plot ticks along but it is the characters who keep you page turning and the bursts of lyrical prose which are inspired. I really enjoyed this book.

⭐I loved every aspect of this book – the humour and use of language appealed to me as well as the storyline. Funny and sad and a very good read

⭐I absolutely love everything I have read by Brady Udall. His characters are so believable, the stories fabulous, funny, touching, sad – an emotional roller coaster. An engrossing read which I couldn’t put down.

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