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The Unfinished Season (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Wils Ravan is nineteen years old and has just graduated from a suburban high school near Chicago. The family lives on the edge of a golf course and his father owns a successful printing business. However, workers at the plant go on strike for higher wages and one evening someone throws a brick through the window of their house. Wils discovers for the first time that his father is not always in control of events. Then his grandfather in Connecticut dies, which opens his eyes to an unresolved rift between his parents about family relatives in the East.

Wils gets a summer job at a newspaper where daily stories of shootings, suicides, and other tragedies are headlined to sell papers. He becomes aware of the world of working class people who have to struggle to make a living. In the evenings, he is invited to debutante parties where his sensational stories from the newsroom provide entertainment for guests. He takes a girl home from a dance and soon finds himself in his first serious romance. She lives in an apartment with her divorced father, a World War II veteran, who abruptly commits suicide one night. Suddenly a story that one just reads about in the newspaper has entered his personal experience.

An Unfinished Season is War Just’s fourteenth published novel. The events that occur are less important than the reaction of the characters to the events. The interaction of people is described in sparse conversations: between father and son, in the newsroom of the newspaper, during the dances, or at the funeral service. A well- written narrative.

Review Sources

Booklist 100, no. 18 (May 15, 2004): 1612.

The Economist 372 (July 17, 2004): 82.

Entertainment Weekly, July 16, 2004, p. 82.

Kirkus Reviews 72, no. 9 (May 1, 2004): 415.

The New York Times Book Review 153 (July 25, 2004): 7.

Publishers Weekly 251, no. 20 (May 17, 2004): 31.