From Publishers Weekly
Cunningham (The Hours) takes the reader on a leisurely, idiosyncratic tour of the fabled town at the tip of Cape Cod. He makes the rounds of his favorite haunts, from the beaches, marshes and dunes to businesses like the halfheartedly modernized Adams Pharmacy, which has a soda fountain from the 1940s; the Marine Specialties store, a repository of the overlooked, the lost, the surplus, the irregular, the no-longer-needed, and the outmoded; and the Atlantic House, a bar that is sexy in a damp, well-used way. The fish and whales that live in the ocean around the town have a place in his excursion, as do the dogs, cats, skunks, opossums and occasional coyotes that wander the streets. People interest him most, however the old-timer who sits in his yard, shouting, Hello hello hello, to everyone who passes by; the disheveled man who walks the main street night and day; and the more famous eccentrics, the refugees, rebels, and visionaries who have been coming to the town for nearly 400 years. There is also a large gay population, and Cunningham is especially fascinated by this community's flamboyant individuals, who add color even to the local A&P. His quirky guide, part of the Crown Journeys series, presents a very personal view of Provincetown, but at the same time it manages to convey the peculiar, inscrutable intensity characterizing the love so many people have for the place.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From
Clinging to a sandbar at the very tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown is a haven for the artistic and unconventional.Cunningham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Hours (1998), first came to the small, sandy town with its astonishingly liquid and moody light 20 years ago, and he fell in love with this mercurial "eccentrics' sanctuary," where the bustle of summer gives way dramatically to the brooding silence of winter. In the first of what promises to be a penetrating series in which writers write about place, Cunningham, whose prose has never been more gorgeously poetic, and whose fascination with the peculiarities of our species inspires tender and funny riffs on Provincetown's thriving gay and lesbian communities, presents an enchanting history and walking tour of his beloved home, charting, along the way, its powerful and diverse artistic legacy, which includes the work of Edward Hopper, Eugene O'Neill, Norman Mailer, and Mary Oliver. Donna Seaman
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