THE CONDOR PASSES

by Shirley Ann Grau ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 1971

Few Southern writers escape the taint of dissolution and it hangs heavily over Miss Grau's predatory novel in which the condor, the legendary bird with gold dust in its feathers, is more than an emblematic symbol. In the person of a black servant, he is waiting for the death of the Old Man whose life is reduced to little more than a twitch since, like a ""crab its bait,"" he clenches what little is left. He is more than ninety years old and has survived many massive strokes to live in the wheelchair which might as well be a coffin. What went before is filled in in the early section of the book from the time when Thomas Henry Oliver left home at thirteen to settle in Storeyville, New Orleans. He trafficked everywhere in everything, achieved millions as a bootlegger, married for companionship in middle age and fathered two girls. One remembers only his acquisitiveness. The magnificent grotesque is left behind as the story proliferates through the lives of his two daughters -- the perfect, too perfect Anna, and the belle laide Margaret, and the Cajun Robert they both loved while he loved elsewhere. This is not Shirley Ann Grau's best book but the sensory prose is close lo a physical presence which lulls here, animates there, almost simultaneously. Under the wingspread of the giant bird, one sees only the thinning margins of human existence gravid with a sense of time remembered and time running out.

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1971

ISBN: 141281250X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION