As a teenager in Oak Ridge, Illinois, Walter McCloud is desperate for adventure, hoping for love and success as a dancer. "If life for Walter was composed in part of confusion, shame and deception, the ballet was order, dignity and forthright beauty." In 1995, at 38, nothing has turned out as he had expected. Having spent years working in a dollhouse shop in New York and engaging in that city's ready sexual excitement, Walter finally returns to his Midwestern roots, accepting a teaching job in Otten, Wisconsin--a place that might have little to recommend it save its proximity to his family's summer home. ("It had taken Walter several years to admit to himself that he couldn't go on indefinitely selling Lilliputian Coke bottles and microscopic toilet-roll dowels.") In this new community, he will have to keep his head down, a stance that has long suited him, because he prefers to hold one memory of lost intimacy and perfection in high, private relief.

Walter's exile, or new start, allows memory to come to the fore, particularly that painful year in which his brother was dying of Hodgkin's and he and his fellow dancers were dying for experience. Jane Hamilton explores the distance between desire and reality, satisfaction and secrecy, irresistibly alternating between past and present. At first, we can't wait for Walter to break through, and it's tempting to race through her prince's history--one which is, happily, not that short. But to do so would be to miss out on Hamilton's fine major and minor characters and her exploration of competition, complicity, and silence. At one point, Walter fears that his pupils have "no clue that there was pleasure to be found in observing character. They seemed to be afraid to look around themselves and find a world every bit as amusing, ridiculous and unjust as Dickens's London..." Hamilton's readers, however, will find this pleasure in abundance.


Amazon.com Audiobook Review
Robert Sean Leonard (Much Ado About Nothing, Dead Poet's Society) brings a dramatic dimension to the bittersweet story of Walter McCloud, who has high hopes of becoming a ballet dancer. Leonard's flexible voice captures the thoughts and feelings of Walter both as a teenager and as a thirty-something high school teacher. The story begins with the star, an aspiring adolescent ballet dancer, coming to terms with his lack of talent when he is chosen to be the Prince in a third-rate production of the Nutcracker, while his friends dance lead roles in Chicago. The same winter, Walter has his first homosexual experience and his older brother becomes terminally ill. These profound events will haunt Walter for 20 years as he focuses on his coming to terms with his past tragedies and present shortcomings--making for a moving and often funny tale of forgiveness and understanding. Curiously, it is not his love of Balanchine, music and other refined aesthetics that restore a floundering Walter. The anchor he finds is a place, the family summer home on a lake in Wisconsin. It is Hamilton's ability to juxtapose the remarkable against the unremarkable that gives this work its poignancy and grace. --Anne Depue (Running Time: 4 Hours; Four Cassettes)


From Library Journal
Funny, complicated Walter McCloud is at the heart of this quiet interior novel, which gracefully wanders back and forth between two decades?Walter's early 1970s sophomore year in high school and his late 1990s stint as a small-town Midwest high school teacher. As Hamilton has shown in Map of the World (LJ 5/15/94), no one writes better of the abyss that cracks apart family members facing the loss of a child. As Walter's 18-year-old brother, Daniel, lies dying of cancer during much of the 1972-73 school year, Walter comes to grips with his own homosexuality and the inaccessibility of his parents, who are swallowed up in their grief. Walter's pivotal friendships with the beautiful Susan and Mitch, the boy they both love, sustains, shatters, and alters his sense of self as he stumbles toward adulthood. Hamilton's forte?depicting adolescents left not by villainy but by circumstance on the fringes of family life while they figure out ways to raise themselves?is at its most painful clarity in this novel. Highly recommended.-?Beth E. Anderson, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., Mich.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Megan Harlan
With intelligence and empathy--and drawing on rich veins of irony--Hamilton tells the story of Walter's search to define his talents....


From AudioFile
One of the most striking aspects of this production is the masterful performance of Robert Sean Leonard. It's hard to believe he's only in his twenties. Hamilton's poignant and touching story tells of a young man driven by his passion (but no talent) for a career in ballet and for a handsome dancer--both of which he can never have. Leonard's mastery is apparent as the listener becomes absorbed in Walter's story, as well as the lives of each of the other characters, for he reads them with equal emotion and truthfulness. Such a combination of beautiful text and a truly insightful performance is a rare find. R.A.P. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
A meditative, slow-moving, and thoroughly absorbing family drama--about loving, losing, and holding on to all we can--from the author of (the Oprah-chosen) The Book of Ruth (1988) and A Map of the World (1994). The story's protagonist and primary viewpoint character is Walter McCloud, whom we observe (in alternating chapters) as a sensitive, bookish, and--he's quite sure--homosexual teenager growing up in an Illinois suburb in the early '70s among a trio of close friends and fellow ballet students, including beautiful Susan Claridge and her equally beautiful boyfriend (and Walter's sometime sexual partner), Mitch Anderson; and also 25 years later, when Walter, who has long since given up ballet, returns ``home'' to teach high-school English in Otten, Wisconsin, not far from the gorgeous lakeside summer place owned by his mother's family. It's a richly varied narrative, whose emotional high point is the lingering death from Hodgkin's disease (in 1973) of Walter's older brother Daniel (with whom Susan forms a surprisingly emotional intimate relationship, painfully reshuffling the trio's already complicated feelings for one another). Other losses, both threatened and endured, figure prominently: the likelihood that the frosty maiden aunt who had awakened Walter's aesthetic sense will force the sale of the family's beloved summer house; and Walter's burden of guilt over ``his shameful relations with Mitch, his hateful feelings toward Susan, his indifference to his brother.'' Hamilton writes beautiful summary and descriptive sentences; unfortunately, though, Walter (who is, to be sure, presented as unusually intelligent and articulate) speaks in almost precisely the same manner. This tendency toward formality creates a distance from the reader that is, however, vitiated by our genuine empathy with the novel's many vividly drawn characters (the inquisitive and querulous Mrs. Gamble is an especially memorable figure). Hamilton ends it with a beautiful coda that may remind readers of both Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood and James Agee's A Death in the Family. Like them, this is a lyrical, bighearted novel that won't easily be forgotten. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Irresistible...As [Hamilton] evokes the powerful grip of love, both young and mature, cruel and ecstatic, she reaffirms life."
--People

"Subtle, moving, and utterly convincing."
--Newsweek

"Lovely in its appreciation of the resilience of family--Hamilton's plainsong to American endurance still lifts the heart."
--Entertainment Weekly

"With intelligence and empathy--and drawing on rich veins of irony--Hamilton tells the story of Walter's search to define his talents--at once surprising and redemptive."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Hamilton's third novel and arguably her best, for it matches its range of emotion with a technical precision both masterful and haunting--Hamilton has eased time and memory throughout her novel with the expert abandon of a dancer in full pirouette."
--Boston Globe

"[Hamilton] can make real life riveting--There can be no better recommendation for a novelist."
--Denver Post


Review
"Irresistible...As [Hamilton] evokes the powerful grip of love, both young and mature, cruel and ecstatic, she reaffirms life."
--People

"Subtle, moving, and utterly convincing."
--Newsweek

"Lovely in its appreciation of the resilience of family--Hamilton's plainsong to American endurance still lifts the heart."
--Entertainment Weekly

"With intelligence and empathy--and drawing on rich veins of irony--Hamilton tells the story of Walter's search to define his talents--at once surprising and redemptive."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Hamilton's third novel and arguably her best, for it matches its range of emotion with a technical precision both masterful and haunting--Hamilton has eased time and memory throughout her novel with the expert abandon of a dancer in full pirouette."
--Boston Globe

"[Hamilton] can make real life riveting--There can be no better recommendation for a novelist."
--Denver Post


Book Description
Walter McCloud is a boy with dreams unlike most. Introduced as a child to the genius of Balanchine and the lyricism of Tchaikovsky, Walter has always aspired to be a dancer. As he grows older, it becomes clear that despite his desire, he lacks the talent, and he faces the painful knowledge that his more gifted friends have already surpassed him.Soon, however, that pain is overshadowed when his older brother, Daniel, finds a strange lump on his neck and Walter realizes that a happy family can change overnight. The year that follows transforms the McClouds, as they try to hold together in the face of the fearful consequences of Daniel's illness, and Walter makes discoveries about himself and his friendships that will change him forever.Decades later, after Walter has left home and returned, he must come to terms with the memories of that year, and grapple once and for all with the challenge of carving out a place for himself in this all-too-familiar world.A moving story of the torments of sexuality and the redemptive power of family and friendship, The Short History of a Prince confirms Jane Hamilton's place as a preeminent novelist of our time.


From the Publisher
Readers love Hamilton not only for the beauty of her prose and the profundity of her story lines but also for her psychological precision and authorial benevolence. As she did in A Map of the World (1994), Hamilton once again knowingly evokes the timbre of midwestern life and the all but unbreachable insularity of families deeply rooted to the land, then examines the effects on such traditionally solid ground of atypical personalities and deep tragedy. Three sisters jointly own a big old house where everyone gathers for holidays and special events. Jeannie is a bit fey, Joyce quietly elegant, and Sue Rawson (always referred to by her full name) an ogre. Or so everyone believes except for Joyce's younger son, Walter McCloud- the prince of the title and the novel's smart, funny, and altruistic narrator- because it is his recalcitrant aunt, butch as she is who opens the world of ballet to her gay nephew, and he is forever grateful. Using holiday gatherings as touchstones, Hamilton tells Walter's story in two time frames; his high-school days in the early 1970s and the present. As a teenager, Walter falls in unrequited love with a fellow dancer named Mitch; forges a lifelong friendship with Mitch's girlfriend; realizes that he'll never make it as a professional dancer; and loses his older brother to cancer. As an adult nearing 40, Walter returns to Wisconsin after a lively but largely frivolous interlude in New York City, accepts a position teaching literature to artistically challenged high-school students, and seeks to heal old wounds. Such elements of plot are involving and resonant, but it is Hamilton's extraordinary insights into human nature that make this novel shine as she transforms ordinary occurrences- a conversation, a prank, a moment of intimacy- into nothing less than intimations of the divine.
-Booklist Upfront / January 1 & 15, 1998

Hamilton brings to her third novel the same qualities of emotional integrity and compassionate understanding that distinguished The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World....
-Publishers Weekly / December 22, 1997

A meditative, slow-moving and thoroughly absorbing family drama- about loving, losing, and holding on to all we can...this is a lyrical, bighearted novel that won't easily be forgotten.
-Kirkus Reviews / January 15, 1998

...Hamilton's forte- depicting adolesccents left not by villainy but by circumstance on the fringes of family life while they figure out ways to raise themselves- is at its most painful clarity in this novel. Highly recommended.
-Library Journal / February 1, 1998


From the Inside Flap
Walter McCloud is a boy with dreams unlike most. Introduced as a child to the genius of Balanchine and the lyricism of Tchaikovsky, Walter has always aspired to be a dancer. As he grows older, it becomes clear that despite his desire, he lacks the talent, and he faces the painful knowledge that his more gifted friends have already surpassed him.

Soon, however, that pain is overshadowed when his older brother, Daniel, finds a strange lump on his neck and Walter realizes that a happy family can change overnight. The year that follows transforms the McClouds, as they try to hold together in the face of the fearful consequences of Daniel's illness, and Walter makes discoveries about himself and his friendships that will change him forever.

Decades later, after Walter has left home and returned, he must come to terms with the memories of that year, and grapple once and for all with the challenge of carving out a place for himself in this all-too-familiar world.

A moving story of the torments of sexuality and the redemptive power of family and friendship, The Short History of a Prince confirms Jane Hamilton's place as a preeminent novelist of our time.


From the Back Cover
"Irresistible...As [Hamilton] evokes the powerful grip of love, both young and mature, cruel and ecstatic, she reaffirms life."
--People"Subtle, moving, and utterly convincing."
--Newsweek"Lovely in its appreciation of the resilience of family--Hamilton's plainsong to American endurance still lifts the heart."
--Entertainment Weekly"With intelligence and empathy--and drawing on rich veins of irony--Hamilton tells the story of Walter's search to define his talents--at once surprising and redemptive."
--The New York Times Book Review"Hamilton's third novel and arguably her best, for it matches its range of emotion with a technical precision both masterful and haunting--Hamilton has eased time and memory throughout her novel with the expert abandon of a dancer in full pirouette."
--Boston Globe"[Hamilton] can make real life riveting--There can be no better recommendation for a novelist."
--Denver Post


About the Author
Jane Hamilton lives, works, and writes in an orchard farmhouse in Wisconsin. Her short stories have appeared in Harper's magazine. Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel and was a selection of the Oprah Book Club. Her second novel,  A Map of the World, was an international bestseller.


From the Hardcover edition.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
As it turned out there was so much baggage on the trip to Lake Margaret that Walter's friends, Susan and Mitch, sat crushed in one foldout seat in the back of the car, and Walter was left with the middle bench seat. Robert McCloud had arranged the two aquamarine coolers, the suitcases and the grocery bags. It wasn't for nothing, he said, that Joyce had been a Girl Scout: she was fully prepared for an ice age, a drought, a monsoon and the invasion of the termites. Walter was pinned against the door by the coolers, it was awkward to turn around, and he had to shout to be heard. The teenagers gave up talking after a few minutes on the expressway. Susan and Mitch fell asleep against each other. Nothing had gone according to plan, and Walter stared gloomily out the window. Just as well that Daniel was sick, he thought. If he'd come they'd have had to tie him to the roof rack.

Joyce glanced back now and then to make sure there was nothing unseemly going on between the two lovebirds in the kiddie seat. She gave her husband a preview of the day to come, quietly, and with restraint, evoking her hysterical sister. Even marking the gestures, not imitating them full out, was funny, and Robert snorted into his shirt and twice said, "Oh, Joycie."

She had enough sense not to ask Walter if he was all right. She could see that he was troubled about something, and he in his turn knew that she had taken note of his unhappiness. Her general sympathy brought him a guilty little pleasure. His thin skin and tender heart were at once a source of pride and anxiety to her. He had asked to study ballet, she had known better than to try to talk him out of it, and she had clung to the belief that his enthusiasm for the dance would shield him from the predictable taunts. It had been such a stroke of luck that his two dancing-school friends happened to live in Oak Ridge. They had been put together in the First Junior Class at the Kenton School of Ballet in Chicago when they were ten years old and together they'd advanced all the way up to the Second Intermediate Class. But through good and bad fortune Walter would always have his own temperament, and Joyce feared that he would feel the injuries of adolescence more keenly than his peers. Still, she hadn't given up on a straightforward future for him, and she wondered if it was Susan, if the leggy girl squeezing against Mitch, was the source of his present misery.

Her conclusion was not exactly off the mark. Walter was thinking about the night the week before, when he and Susan and Mitch had been in the McClouds' living room, dancing and listening to records. Walter had picked out Tchaikovsky's Serenade, a piece that had been their favorite since the previous summer. George Balanchine, the greatest choreographer in the history of the dance, according to Walter, had made a plotless ballet to the music, and Walter, in a tribute to both virtuosos, had the volume up so high that the Gamble dogs, in their yard, cocked their heads this way and that, hearing noises in a frequency Tchaikovsky never intended. The dancers rushed headlong in and out of the doors, running the length of the room with their arms outstretched, doing the bits of the Balanchine choreography they had absorbed over the years. Between the three of them they had seen eight performances of Serenade. Walter and his aunt Sue Rawson had seen it four times the month before, night after night at Ravinia Park.

Mitch was always the man, intermittently lifting Susan over his head and carrying her around like a barbell. It seemed to Walter that Mitch's strength was inherent, that it was a quality he had not had to work for, no need to lift weights or wrestle or play a lot of catch. It was just there, that strength, a part of him. There were few hard, fast, unstated rules to their dancing game, principles not to be broken or bent. They were meant for Walter. It was curious, he thought, that he understood the protocol instinctively, that no one had ever had to slap his wrist or say, Repeat after me. Funny, that it was the kind of thing he knew with animal sense. He was not allowed to lift Susan, but he could offer his arm if she wanted support for an arabesque. He was not to turn her; the pirouette business was also Mitch's privilege. Susan, however, could turn Walter, with good humor on both sides. He most certainly was not to attempt, even as a joke, to lift Mitch. But he could touch Mitch if, say, they were dancing in a circle, holding hands. Then they were comrades, the three of them. When they spun there was nearly an absence of possession.

Walter, in the first movement of Serenade, threw himself into the wind of the large fan on the dining-room table and struck a pose. He buffeted back and forth, in and out of the steady push of air. If only he had on one of the blue chiffon costumes that Balanchine's dancers wore, a gown that would flutter and billow after him. He was going full tilt--no one could say that he did not have enough feeling for the entire ensemble of twenty-eight girls. "Not having the blue dresses," he panted as he jetéed past Susan, "for this ballet, is probably on a par with riding a motorcycle and"--he called over his shoulder--"finding that it doesn't rev."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set in Jane Hamilton's signature Midwest, The Short History of a Prince is the story of Walter McCloud and his ambition to become a great ballet dancer. With compassion and humor, and alternating between Walter's adolescent and adult voices, the novel tells of Walter's heartbreak as he realizes that his passion cannot make up for the innate talent that he lacks. Introduced as a child to the genius of Balanchine and the lyricism of Tchaikovsky by his stern but cultured aunt Sue Rawson, Walter has dreamed of growing up to shine in the role of the Prince in The Nutcracker. But as Walter struggles with the limits of his own talent and faces the knowledge that Mitch and Susan, his more gifted friends, have already surpassed him, Daniel, his older brother, awakens one morning with a strange lump on his neck that leads to fearful consequences — and to Walter's realization that a happy family, and a son's place in it, can tragically change overnight. The year that follows will in fact transform the lives not only of the McClouds but also of Susan, who becomes deeply involved with the sick Daniel, and Mitch, the handsome and supremely talented dancer with whom Walter is desperately in love. Into this absorbing narrative Hamilton weaves a place of almost mythical healing, the family's summer home at Lake Margaret, Wisconsin, where for generations the clan has gathered on both happy and unhappy occasions.

FROM THE CRITICS

Entertainment Weekly

...[A] lovely testament to the resilience of family.

Newsweek

Subtle, moving, and utterly convincing.

Boston Globe

Hamilton's third novel and arguably her best, for it matches its range of emotion with a technical precision both masterful and haunting.

New York Times Book Review

With intelligence and empathy — and drawing on rich veins of irony — Hamilton tells the story of Walter's search to define his talents...at once surprising and redemptive.

Library Journal