So Long at the Fair: A Novel

I did not like the open ending.

Really enjoyed the book but found the ending unsatisfying. Wanted more of the final realization/outcome.

The iconic American story is one of mobility, of lighting out for new frontiers, though more typical, perhaps, is the experience of those who never leave home. Jon and Ginny Kepilkowski, the erstwhile Romeo and Juliet of Winnesha, Wisconsin, have lit out only as far as nearby Madison. They were high school sweethearts, though in a sense their relationship began before they were born, in the...more

The iconic American story is one of mobility, of lighting out for new frontiers, though more typical, perhaps, is the experience of those who never leave home. Jon and Ginny Kepilkowski, the erstwhile Romeo and Juliet of Winnesha, Wisconsin, have lit out only as far as nearby Madison. They were high school sweethearts, though in a sense their relationship began before they were born, in the small-town adolescent dramas of their parents’ generation. On the single summer day over which this novel sprawls, Ginny, distracted lately by her landscape design business, has forgotten Jon's wish to go to a music festival in Winnesha. Miffed, he instead takes Freddi, the lovely colleague with whom he has been carrying on an increasingly reckless affair. Ginny meanwhile also returns to Winnesha, to the derelict country club she has been hired to revive. On their separate journeys into the past, geographically present yet emotionally receding, they will finally decide if there remains anything other than guilt and inertia still holding them together. Despite an overwrought backstory, Christina Schwarz (“Drowning Ruth”) depicts her contemporary setting in perceptive detail. Familiarity can be a cocoon or a prison, and she empathically evokes the dilemma of being stuck with one foot in each. –Amanda Heller   hide

Schwarz is a good storyteller but the story itself seemed superflous.