Synopses & Reviews
Review
"It would be an understatement of major proportion to say that Robert Coover's fiction is not for everyone. If, as you read Gerald's Party, you find it to be inventive, amusing, in a phrase, right up your alley, I
suggest that your psyche perhaps is due for a major overhaul. The novel has no real plot, not that the author likely ever intended that it should. Nominally, it's about a murder at a cocktail party, but this chronicle of the absurd is chiefly a parody on the social and sexual mores of a self-proclaimed avant-garde. While Coover has some clever insights, these are buried under piles of tedious — and to say tedious is being generous — tripe. Readers who make it through the 300-plus pages of this silly book should receive a prize. A refund of the purchase price might be appropriate." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
Robert Coover's wicked and surreally comic novel takes place at a chilling, ribald, and absolutely fascinating party. Amid the drunken guests, a woman turns up murdered on the living room floor. Around the corpse, one of several the evening produces, Gerald's party goes on a chatter of voices, names, faces, overheard gags, rounds of storytelling, and a mounting curve of desire. What Coover has in store for his guests (besides an evening gone mad) is part murder mystery, part British parlor drama, and part sly and dazzling meditation on time, theater, and love.