Full name: Sabbatical: A Romance

Author: John Barth Year: 1982 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Fiction Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Barns&Noble Amazon Google Books LibraryThing ISBNs: 9781564780966 9780399127175 1564780961 0399127178

Subtitled "a romance," Sabbatical is the story of Susan Rachel Allan Seckler, a sharp young associate professor of early American literature--part Jewish, part Gypsy, and possibly descended from Edgar Allan Poe--and her husband Fenwick Scott Key Turner, a 50-year-old ex-CIA officer currently between careers, a direct descendant of the author of "The Star Spangled Banner" and himself the author of a troublemaking book about his former employer. Seven years into their marriage, they decide to take a sabbatical, a sailboat journey on which they sum up their years together and try to make important decisions about the years ahead.True to its subtitle, the novel combines the mysterious and marvelous (unexplained disappearances, a fabled sea monster in Chesapeake Bay) with romantic love and daring adventure.Sabbatical is quintessential Barth: it involves sailing, twinship, the joy of love and literature, the sorrow of death and disaster, and a playfully complex narrative. The author has written a foreword for this new edition. Similar books: The Ambassador by Morris West Heat by William Goldman The Comforters by Muriel Spark The Russian Interpreter by Michael Frayn George Mills by Stanley Elkin Villages by John Updike Never Love a Stranger by Harold Robbins My Son, My Son by Howard Spring Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance by Richard Powers The Hearts and Lives of Men by Fay Weldon Notable American Women by Ben Marcus My Summer with George by Marilyn French The Floating Opera and The End of the Road by John Barth A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy The Clockwork Testament or Enderby's End by Anthony Burgess Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth The Tidewater Tales by John Barth A Thing of Beauty by Archibald J. Cronin Letters by John Barth The End of the Road by John Barth