Finished: The Magnificent Ambersons (Tarkington). Pulitzer Prize winning book about a wealthy family in Indiana in the late 1800's. A really good book! :-) I had seen this book on the "must read" lists of several authors, so I decided to put it on my list. I wasn't disappointed! The Magnificent Ambersons is one of those wonderfully descriptive books that truly puts the scene right in your mind while you're reading....but, it's not so descriptive that the action gets bogged down. And, the characters are all nicely fleshed out. Are all the characters people to root for? Nope...but they are human people who make human mistakes, so it's a book that definitely tugs on your heartstrings. As in most books, and I guess as in life, people are a product of how they are raised. You can't really help that.

This book is about the Amerbsons, an extremely wealthy family who settles in a town that is supposed to be early Indianapolis. They own several acres of land for their opulent mansion, as well as several interests in town, such as the Amberson Hotel. The book flies through the first two generations of Ambersons pretty quickly...as a matter of fact, we don't even meet all of the patriarch's children or wife. They are all mentioned in passing later. However, Major Amberson lives throughout the majority of the book and even builds an almost equally massive mansion for his daughter, Isabel, right next door to his own mansion. As a young woman, Isabel is the envy of all the other women in the town, and heavily pursued by all the eligible young men. And, even though she has that upper crust manner about her, she's a very warm, kind and gracious person, so everyone loves her. Her brother, George, is also very well liked and life-of-the-party fun. Of her many suitors, Isabel has fallen in love with the one who is not rich, not seemingly the most ambitious, but certainly good-looking and of a very kind nature himself, Eugene Morgan. Her second most "viable" suitor is much less attractive, but far more stable and already nicely monied, Wilbur Minafur. Isabel is about to engage herself to the man she truly loves, Eugene, when he arrives on her lawn one night with several other young fellows, including her own brother, and drunkenly serenades her, accidentally stumbling and putting his foot through one of the musical instruments. Though the Major laughs and says, boys will be boys, this mortifies Isabel. She feels like Eugene's state of drunkenness shows little respect for her, and especially for the Amberson name, so she refuses to speak to Eugene again...turning back all his letters of apology. She soon thereafter marries Wilbur Minafur and Eugene leaves town. :-(

Isabel and Wilbur have only one child, George Amberson Minafur. He is to become the main character of the story from here on out. Several chapters quickly outline his childhood and teen years, until we settle down on his post-university years. Georgie, as he is called, is a spoiled, self-centered, haughty, disrespectful, impolite, extremely entitled young man. The entire town can't stand him and is forced to literally move out of his way when he speeds through town in his horse drawn cutter. He has been overindulged by his mother, his grandfather, and his uncle. He leaves college, as a matter of fact, saying the he won't be "doing anything" but just "being someone" for a living. I love everything about the character of Isabel except her blind devotion to Georgie and his behavior. Georgie, or George as he soon becomes, also treats the young ladies of the town with haughtiness and boredom while at all the seasonal balls....until he meets a newcomer to town, Lucy Morgan. He falls instantly in love with her, and she with him, despite his "winning" personality. They spend the entire ball together, not even dancing so much, but also sitting quietly and talking. George is supposed to be very good-looking, like an Adonis, so that's the only reason I can see why Lucy's instantly smitten, because George continues to show what a superior ass he can be as he talks about different people who are dancing by in the room. He mainly focuses on the "odd duck" of an old man who has been talking with his mother and uncle all night, and who has danced with her several times. His mother, who is still quite beautiful, seems to have a glow to her cheeks he's never seen before. (Wilbur Minafur doesn't enjoy the balls, and always retires home early, so Isabel is delightfully, and innocently, dancing around with an old friend.) As George criticizes the "odd duck" several times, Lucy Morgan finally blurts out that the "odd duck" is her own father. Of course...we saw that coming. Her father is none other than Eugene Morgan, the former love of Isabel's life! Eugene is in town and has been inventing his own version of the "horseless carriage" and he thinks it definitely going to be the next big thing. People like Georgie scoff at him, but he persists. Everyone seems to think he's there to ask his old friend big George for money, but he never does. He seems to be quite all right in the money department.

So....anyway....young George and Lucy see quite a bit of each other, and despite his personality, continue to fall in love. She keeps him at arm's length, however, never acquiescing when he says he'd like to say that they're engaged. She has lived alone with her father for several years and feels responsible for being the lady of his house. Besides, she's just not ready to settle down. She does finally seem to be wavering one day, though, when she asks George what he intends to do with his life...what profession he's going to seek. George is taken aback and answers that he doesn't intend to DO anything...he's just going to BE...to be a rich Amberson, as he always has been. He realizes that Lucy expects him to take on a profession, mainly because her father would expect the young man she ends up with to have a profession. He irrationally begins to seethe and hate her father because he knows this is why Lucy turns him down to becoming officially engaged. Meanwhile, George's father, Wilbur, who George has spent most of his life ignoring, dies. We do get a scene where George realizes that this quiet presence in his life is now gone, and he breaks down at seeing his father laid out for the funeral. Eugene and Lucy continue to be in the lives of George and Isabel, and Uncle George, and Wilbur's sister, Aunt Fanny. After nearly a year of mourning for Wilbur, it becomes apparent that Isabel and Eugene are growing closer and closer again....apparent to everyone but young George. When he is made aware that his mother and Eugene are falling for each other and that people in town are "talking", George becomes livid and is horribly rude to Eugene. He insists to his mother that she and Eugene immediately break off their relationship or she will no longer have a son. Of course, she chooses George because she always has bowed down to his every whim. He also insists that they should immediately leave for an open-ended trip around the world. This, of course, finalizes the relationship between George and Lucy, as well as the one between Eugene and Isabel, leaving all four of them heartbroken.

Meanwhile, back in the financial world of the Ambersons, things aren't going so well. The Major has overspent...always lavishly supporting Isabel, big George, and Georgie. Wilbur Minafur's business had gone south before his death, and he'd only left a small life insurance policy which Georgie signed over to his Aunt Fanny Minafur, assuming that he'd always be rich via the Amberson money. As industry moves into town, and the town expands, Major Amberson even resorts to selling off parcels of his own land for other housing. Still...by the time Isabel and young George head for Europe, finances are starting to be shaky. Big George and Fanny decide to invest what little money they have in electric automobile headlights. Eugene's fortunes have taken the opposite turn, as the automobile has boomed in popularity. They ask Eugene's advice about the electric headlight and he discourages them strongly from investing in it. He doesn't think it works properly and they'll lose their money. They don't listen to him. They invest. They lose all their money! The magnificent Ambersons are in dire straights!

After three years of traveling, George and his mother arrive home one day in a bit of urgency...Isabel has been ill with a weak heart for several months and is deteriorating quickly. She begs George to get her home to see her father one last time. As she arrives at home, she does get to see her father and brother again, but is very weak. The doctor thinks she might not survive the night. Young George is distraught. He blames her illness on the fact that they were forced to travel due to Eugene Morgan besmirching his mother's reputation. When Eugene shows up and begs to see Isabel, young George refuses to admit him. When his mother asks if Eugene has come, George tells her yes, but that he sent him away. Isabel's dying words are so sad..."I'd like to have ---seen him." It was just audible, this little regretful murmur. Several minutes passed before there was another. "Just---just once," she whispered, and then was still. 

George is haunted by his mother's dying words and tries to justify to himself that he did the right thing in taking her away. He is finally beginning to see how selfish he was. Major Amberson only lives for a few more months after his own daughter dies, and when he dies, it becomes clear to everyone that there is no money left at all. Big George heads back to Washington where he previously held a political post, and hopes to make some money to send back home. The selling of the estates covers the Amberson debt and young George and Aunt Fanny are left together with very little to live on. George actually grows up for the first time in his life and takes a very dangerous, but high-paying job working at the chemical factory. One of George's few friend's from  years ago approaches Eugene Morgan, now the richest man in town with his own mansion in the country, and tells him of George's plight. The old friend wonders if Eugene couldn't find a job for George at his less dangerous automobile plant. Eugene can only think of the horrible way George has always treated him, and how he refused to let Eugene see Isabel on her deathbed. He thinks to himself...nahh...I'll not offer George work at my automobile plant...he wouldn't accept it anyway! Meanwhile, Lucy has turned down every other suitor over the years. Though she's happy with her father, she's always been in love with George and never married another. One day...while crossing the street, George is accidentally hit by, of all things, an automobile! He's terribly injured and rushed to the hospital. Eugene is compelled by a vision of Isabel, more likely his good conscience, to go see George. When he arrives at the hospital, Lucy is by George's side. George will most likely survive. As Eugene enters the hospital room, George weakly holds out his hand to him and asks for his forgiveness. The end!

A good book! I couldn't stand George, but he was definitely who he was because of how he was raised! I'm glad that in the end, he was finally made to work hard and realize what it took to live. Mostly, it looked as if he was finally accepting responsibility for his actions in regards to his mother and Eugene. An epilogue would have been nice, but oh well. As usual, I have some favorite passages. In the opening of the book, Tarkington describes the mindset of the ancestors of the settlers who went to the Midwest. He's comparing how most of the people of the town would not surround themselves in such opulence as the Ambersons did:

The pioneers were thrifty or they would have perished: they had to store away food for the winter, or goods to trade for food, and they often feared they had not stored enough--they left traces of that fear in their sons and grandsons. In the minds of most of these, indeed, their thrift was next to their religion: to save, even for the sake of saving, was their earliest lesson and discipline. No matter how prosperous they were, they could not spend money either upon "art," or upon mere luxury and entertainment, without a sense of sin."

George can't comprehend the look on his mother's face as she dances with Eugene after so many years:

Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the roles of the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most youthful actors they can find among the competent. Both middle-aged people and young people enjoy a play about young lovers; but only middle-aged people will tolerate a play about middle-aged lovers.

George is home from college one Christmas break:

Mothers echo its happiness---nothing is like a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a son home from college.

There are several more passages I really like, but they are too long to type. Overall...a book really worth reading. :-)