Point of No Return: A Novel
Written by John P. Marquand
Narrated by Christopher Lane
4/5
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About this audiobook
A #1 New York Times bestseller by a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist: A successful Manhattan banker is haunted by his humble New England roots.
Raised in the small town of Clyde, Massachusetts, Charles Gray has worked long and hard to become a vice president at the privately owned Stuyvesant Bank in Manhattan. But at the most crucial moment of his career, when his focus should be on reading his boss's intentions and competing with his chief rival for promotion, Charles finds himself hopelessly distracted by the past.
Years ago, the Gray family was featured in a sociological study of their hometown. Charles, his sister, and their parents were classified as members of the "lower-upper class," the unspoken strains of their tenuous social status cast in stark black and white. A chance encounter with the author of the study fills Charles's head with memories—and when a business matter compels him to return to Clyde, it seems as if fate is intent on turning back the clock. As he reflects on the defining moments of his youth, Charles contends with one of the central mysteries of existence: how our lives can feel both predetermined and random at the same time.
Published in 1949, Point of No Return is a brilliant study of character and place heralded by the New York Times as "further proof that its author is one of the most important living American novelists."
John P. Marquand
John P. Marquand (1893–1960) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, proclaimed “the most successful novelist in the United States” by Life magazine in 1944. A descendant of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, shipping magnates Daniel Marquand and Samuel Curzon, and famed nineteenth-century writer Margaret Fuller, Marquand always had one foot inside the blue-blooded New England establishment, the focus of his social satire. But he grew up on the outside, sent to live with maiden aunts in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the setting of many of his novels, after his father lost the once-considerable family fortune in the crash of 1907. From this dual perspective, Marquand crafted stories and novels that were applauded for their keen observation of cultural detail and social mores. By the 1930s, Marquand was a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, where he debuted the character of Mr. Moto, a Japanese secret agent. No Hero, the first in a series of bestselling spy novels featuring Mr. Moto, was published in 1935. Three years later, Marquand won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Late George Apley, a subtle lampoon of Boston’s upper classes. The novels that followed, including H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), So Little Time (1943), B.F.’s Daughter (1946), Point of No Return (1949), Melvin Goodwin, USA (1952), Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955), and Women and Thomas Harrow (1959), cemented his reputation as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary New England society and one of America’s finest writers.
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Reviews for Point of No Return
18 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quite good. I could have done with more parts 1 and 3 and a little less part 2.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book traces Charley Gray's life from about 1912 to 1947, telling of his romance with a richer girl and of his effort to gain a position as a bank officer. It also is funny in depicting a sociology professor making a survey of Clyde, Mass. It is intricately and plausibly plotted, though I found it seemed long--it is 566 pages--but the climactic scene is well-done, though one feels sorry for the social pressure which is depicted. since Charley Gray is a sympathetic figure. At the end I was thinking the book was enjoyable reading, though in about the middle of the book it seemed "long."