All-TIME 100 Novels

Falconer

A story of suffering and redemption, told in Cheever’s fullest register. Ezekiel Farragut, university professor, family man, drug addict, is in Falconer State Prison for having killed his brother with a poker. In this shabby purgatory, he struggles with his memories, his guilt, and his need to remain human in a dehumanizing place, until an affair with a fellow prisoner reawakens his ability to love, even if the young man is a cynical operator and love is just another burden to bear. In some ways this book represented Cheever going far afield from the suburbs where he had made his name. (Not too far: Sing Sing was near his home in Ossining, N.Y. He had taught prisoners there in the early 70′s.) But Farragut is not so different from Cheever’s lawn-mowing householders. Yearning, wayward, beset by anger and need—he’s just a Cheever character in extremis. He suffers beautifully, but he suffers to a purpose. When he finds a rapprochement with the world, however tenuous, it speaks to the prisoner in us all.

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