Category: General Fiction, Humor
Language: EnglishKeywords: Drama
Written by Elizabeth McCracken
Read by George Guidall
Format: M4B
Bitrate: Variable
Unabridged
By turns graceful and knowing, funny and moving, Niagara Falls All Over Again is the latest masterwork by National Book Award finalist and author of The Giantâs House, Elizabeth McCracken.
Spanning the waning years of vaudeville and the golden age of Hollywood, Niagara Falls All Over Again chronicles a flawed, passionate friendship over thirty years, weaving a powerful story of family and love, grief and loss. In it, McCracken introduces her most singular and affecting hero: Mose Sharpâson, brother, husband, father, friend … and straight man to the fat guy in baggy pants who utterly transforms his life.
To the paying public, Mose Sharp was the arch, colorless half of the comedy team Carter and Sharp. To his partner, he was charmed and charming, a confirmed bachelor who never failed at love and romance. To his father and sisters, Mose was a prodigal son. And in his own heart and soul, he would always be a boy who once had a chance to save a girlâs lifeâa girl who would be his first, and greatest, loss.
Born into a Jewish family in small-town Iowa, the only boy among six sisters, Mose Sharp couldnât leave home soon enough. By sixteen Mose had already joined the vaudeville circuit. But he knew one thing from the start: âI needed a partner,â he recalls. âI had always needed a partner.â
Then, an ebullient, self-destructive comedian named Rocky Carter came crashing into his lifeâand a thirty-year partnership was born. But as the comedy team of Carter and Sharp thrived from the vaudeville backwaters to Broadway to Hollywood, a funny thing happened amid the laughter: It was Mose who had all the best lines offstage.
Rocky would go through money, women, and wives in his restless search for love; Mose would settle down to a family life marked by fragile joy and wrenching tragedy. And soon, cracks were appearing in their complex relationship … until one unforgivable act leads to another and a partnership begins to unravel.
In a novel as daring as it is compassionate, Elizabeth McCracken introduces an indelibly drawn cast of charactersâfrom Moseâs Iowa family to the vagabond friends, lovers, and competitors who share his dizzying journeyâas she deftly explores the fragile structures that underlie love affairs and friendships, partnerships and families.
An elegiac and uniquely American novel, Niagara Falls All Over Again is storytelling at its finestâand powerful proof that Elizabeth McCracken is one of the most dynamic and wholly original voices of her generation.
By turns graceful and knowing, funny and moving, Niagara Falls All Over Again is the latest masterwork by National Book Award finalist and author of The Giantâs House, Elizabeth McCracken.
Spanning the waning years of vaudeville and the golden age of Hollywood, Niagara Falls All Over Again chronicles a flawed, passionate friendship over thirty years, weaving a powerful story of family and love, grief and loss. In it, McCracken introduces her most singular and affecting hero: Mose Sharpâson, brother, husband, father, friend … and straight man to the fat guy in baggy pants who utterly transforms his life.
To the paying public, Mose Sharp was the arch, colorless half of the comedy team Carter and Sharp. To his partner, he was charmed and charming, a confirmed bachelor who never failed at love and romance. To his father and sisters, Mose was a prodigal son. And in his own heart and soul, he would always be a boy who once had a chance to save a girlâs lifeâa girl who would be his first, and greatest, loss.
Born into a Jewish family in small-town Iowa, the only boy among six sisters, Mose Sharp couldnât leave home soon enough. By sixteen Mose had already joined the vaudeville circuit. But he knew one thing from the start: âI needed a partner,â he recalls. âI had always needed a partner.â
Then, an ebullient, self-destructive comedian named Rocky Carter came crashing into his lifeâand a thirty-year partnership was born. But as the comedy team of Carter and Sharp thrived from the vaudeville backwaters to Broadway to Hollywood, a funny thing happened amid the laughter: It was Mose who had all the best lines offstage.
Rocky would go through money, women, and wives in his restless search for love; Mose would settle down to a family life marked by fragile joy and wrenching tragedy. And soon, cracks were appearing in their complex relationship … until one unforgivable act leads to another and a partnership begins to unravel.
In a novel as daring as it is compassionate, Elizabeth McCracken introduces an indelibly drawn cast of charactersâfrom Moseâs Iowa family to the vagabond friends, lovers, and competitors who share his dizzying journeyâas she deftly explores the fragile structures that underlie love affairs and friendships, partnerships and families.
An elegiac and uniquely American novel, Niagara Falls All Over Again is storytelling at its finestâand powerful proof that Elizabeth McCracken is one of the most dynamic and wholly original voices of her generation.