Cheever's debut novel is skittish, mercurial and ringing with life Guardian The best introduction to Cheever's work...richly inventive and vividly told New York Times Magazine A tapestry woven from the threads of emotion, tragedy, comedy...and the irony so wonderfully evident in the author's short stories...a literary mosaic...Cheever is a pleasure to read San Francisco Chronicle A brilliantly written novel, vastly and sometimes sadly, amusing Time
Meet the Wapshots of St Botolphs. There is Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea-dog and would-be suicide; his licentious older son, Moses; and Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly. Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, and partly based on Cheever's adolescence in New England, "The Wapshot Chronicle" is a family narrative in the finest traditions of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James.
