Reviews for Old Newgate Road

Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Set among the tobacco fields of rural Connecticut, this novel by Scribner (Miracle Girl) relates the story of a house, a family, and the bitter legacy of tragedy. After 30 years away, Cole Callahan, an Oregon architect with a failing marriage, returns to his childhood home, a colonial house in East Granby that his family was slowly restoring when his father murdered his mother. Amazingly, he finds his father, an old man out of prison and in mental decline, living there in semi-squalor. Cole begins to manage his obstinate parent's affairs, and the two get back to completing the long-delayed restoration. He also makes contact with high school girlfriend Liz and her brother, Kirk, who spent time in prison himself for a crime after being implicated by Cole. Daniel, Cole's troubled son, eventually joins him in East Granby, taking a job in the tobacco fields Cole worked as youth alongside Kirk's son. Facing a crisis in his life, Cole is driven to come to terms with his "unfinished business" in an "unfinished house." As he struggles against the legacy of a past that has haunted everything he's done since leaving, he strives to find a future by discovering a way to forgive both his father-and more surprisingly-himself. VERDICT Recommended.-Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A man returns to his hometown to dismantle a barn, a symbol for his confrontation with the broken home he was raised in.Cole, the hero of Scribner's fourth novel (The Oregon Experiment, 2011, etc.), fled as far from his upbringing as possible, leaving his native Connecticut for Portland, Oregon. But he's back in East Granby because his high-end construction business demands quality chestnut wood like the kind used to build a tobacco drying shed back in his hometown. He's sidestepping family problems in Oregon: an estranged wife, Nikki, and a teenage son, Daniel, who's courting school expulsion for his defiant freegan attitude. But he's got family problems back east, too, where his father, Phil, has returned home after a prison stint for murdering Cole's mother. Ignoring dad is tempting but difficult since he's displaying symptoms of Alzheimer's. That's a lot of domestic drama to carry (not to mention Cole's run-ins with a former bully), but Scribner mostly handles it with grace and a fine eye for detail around his Connecticut setting; he writes beautifully about the hills and tobacco fields that define the area. The novel's real turf, though, is the bleak emotional territory of abuse, and Scribner writes with brutal intensity about the violence Cole's father rained down on his family and how that anger has been passed down through Cole and Daniel. Scribner's prose can be overgrown, and some plotlines feel untenable; the righteously political Daniel registers only a mild protest at working in the tobacco industry when he comes for a change of scenery. But Scribner wisely avoids clichd father-son teaching moments, instead drilling deeper into ever darker material, arguing that the stories abused children tell themselves about violence are often cover for even worse degradations. The novel ends on a redemptive note, but not before running its leads through an emotional gauntlet.A bracing, knotty exploration of abuse and its impact across decades. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Shade-tobacco farms, crumbling colonial homes, and the incompletely extinguished fires of the past define Scribner's (The Oregon Experiment, 2011) dark rumination on domestic violence. Returning to the northern Connecticut of his childhood to reclaim chestnut timber for his Oregon construction business, Cole discovers his estranged father paroled from prison and squatting in the family home. It's a strained reunion, since the old man strangled Cole's mother in a rage decades ago. Memories come roaring back. But any long-suppressed desire of Cole's to confront his father collides with his father's dementia, new fragility, and the twisted persistence of filial piety. There are many other complications: untrustworthy locals, suspicious fires, indelible pot-haze recollections of a teenage girlfriend, the arrival of Cole's idealistically delinquent teenage son. Such subplots seem designed to crank up the dramatic tension by underscoring the extent to which Cole's present and his future depend on his ability to find peace with his past. But the most affecting scenes may be the quieter moments in which Cole discovers intimacies sharing a meal, helping with a shower with his decaying monster of a father.--Brendan Driscoll Copyright 2018 Booklist


Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A man returns to his long-abandoned childhood home, stirring up memories from a traumatic boyhood in this gripping saga from Scribner (The Oregon Experiment). Set among the sweet-smelling tobacco fields of East Granby, Conn., Cole Callahan remembers his childhood home-where his parents and the Callahan children conducted unceasing restoration efforts, and where Cole's father abused his mother, eventually killing her-as a locus of violence and thrumming fear. Now the owner of a construction business, Cole returns to town after 30 years of absence to gather materials for a project, only to discover his estranged father, whose grasp on reality has eroded, inhabiting the home, where he plays eerie melodies on the old upright piano. Cole stays, ostensibly to care for his father, and flies in his teenage son, Daniel, to work the tobacco fields for the summer. A tenuous peace is briefly forged, but soon tensions with several of East Granby residents (including Liz, an old girlfriend) ignite; when they combust one violent night, Cole is spurred to examine his childhood and come to grips with the truth of his mother's murder. Scribner's narrative draws out themes of masculinity, sublimated trauma, and physical violence-speaking to the ways people fashion narratives out of troubled pasts to survive, resulting in a probing, tightly-plotted novel. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Back