The Lost Language of Cranes (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: David Leavitt
- First Published: 1986
- Type of Plot: Family
- Time of Work: The mid-1980’s
- Setting: New York City
- Principal Characters: Philip Benjamin, Owen Benjamin, Rose Benjamin, Eliot Abrams, Jerene Parks
- Genres: Long fiction, Family literature
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Parents and children, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, New York City, 1980’s, Lesbianism or lesbians
- Locales: New York, NY
The Novel
The Lost Language of Cranes is a naturalistic, contemporary novel about a small, upper-middle class intellectual family in New York City in which the son’s acknowledgment of his homosexuality transforms his parents’ marriage in unexpected ways.
The novel is divided into four sections: “Voyages,” “Myths of Origin,” “The Crane Child,” and “Father and Son,” with the third significantly shorter and the last significantly longer than the others. The section titles are thematic; chronologically and stylistically, the novel flows as a...
[The entire page is 2736 words long]
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