Mr. Ives Christmas, Oscar Hijuelos
Mr. Ives Christmas, Oscar Hijuelos
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

Mr. Ives' Christmas
A Novel

Author: Oscar Hijuelos, Mary Gordon

Narrator: Robert Fass

Unabridged: 9 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/08/2024


Synopsis

Hailed “the deepest and the best” of a Pulitzer-Prize winning author's novels, a business man struggles to restore his faith after his son is killed (New York Times Book Review).

In 1960s New York, Edward Ives is a picture of the American dream. Adopted as a child by a widowed print shop manager who helped him cultivate a love of drawing, he now has a successful career as an illustrator in advertising, a beautiful home with his wife and muse, Annie, and two loving children. But this idyllic life is brutally wrenched away when Ives’s 17-year-old son, Robert is murdered in a crime of opportunity that proves to be as random as it is senseless. 

Consumed by grief, Ives withdraws from the world. Grappling with a loss of faith—a force that has guided him steadfastly since childhood—he starts to question every aspect of human existence, contemplating what it really means to live an emotionally and spiritually fulfilling life. This mourning consumes him—until faces his son's killer.

Mr. Ives' Christmas is a tender, passionate story of a man working to rediscover what it means to love and forgive after unspeakable tragedy. It is another tremendous achievement from one of America’s most talented writers.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

About Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Hijuelos, the son of Cuban immigrants, was in New York City in 1951. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His novels -- Mambo Kings, Our House in the Last World, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, Mr. Ives' Christmas, Empress of the Splendid Season, and A Simple Habana Melody -- have been translated into twenty-five languages.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on December 11, 2015

I wouldn't have found this beautifully sad, heartbreaking yet uplifting story if I hadn't read Elyse's review and I may not have read it if I hadn't read Steve's review. I was quite stunned when I read his review, not just because it is as beautiful, sad, inspiring and uplifting as this novel, but b......more

Goodreads review by Phyllis on January 14, 2016

SPEECHLESS For the second time in my life I am speechless, not merely because of Hijuelos's superb book, which stirs up every possible emotion, but for other reasons, as well. I just read Steve Sckenda's review, and am so stricken by his loss, which resonates with mine, that it is impossible for me t......more


Quotes

"Dickens himself, mentioned frequently in the narrative, haunts it like the Ghost of Christmas Past, but Mr. Hijuelos transcends his model even as he embraces him . . . The shortest of Oscar Hijuelos's recent novels, ''Mr. Ives' Christmas'' is in my judgment both the deepest and the best."—New York Times

"A new classic for a new age, a bracing reminder of the difference between love and romance, from a writer whose gifts I admire and, maybe, envy."—NPR

"It is significant that Mr. Ives's most prized possession is a signed edition of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Hijuelos, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Cuban exile, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, breathes new life into the Victorian Christmas genre. Highly recommended."—Library Journal

"A Dickensian tale of redemption through dignified suffering."—Publishers Weekly

"An honest, moving account of a man, his family, and the changing city they live in . . . Hijuelos shows himself this time to be that vanishing, valuable thing: a writer, even if not uniformly polished, whose passions can make art out of what for others would remain only issues."—Kirkus