Kirkus Reviews QR Code
ASSEMBLY by John O'Hara

ASSEMBLY

by John O'Hara

Pub Date: Nov. 23rd, 1961
Publisher: Random House

A get together of many shorter pieces, ranging from in and around Gibbsville to other favorite O'Hara haunts, includes at a rough guess- some forty to fifty stories, sketches and profiles of people who are in a sense well known to this writer as well as his readers. One might suspect that some of the material is not recent, and little of it marches the sharpness of last year's three-in-one presentation. Perhaps it is a reflection on the collection as a whole that it is difficult to isolate any particular story for particular mention , although all of them have the case, the fluency of the spoken word, the ? detail which bares the soft spots in average lives. The conclave here of O'Hara Lypes includes all kinds-dowagers, drunks, show people, bankers, tramps, and a host of email town sinners- many of them middle-aged, looking backwards. All in all, it offers a motley collection of greater volume than depth, and if it is all eminently recognizable, it sometimes pays the prices and backslides into banality.