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    Rules for Old Men Waiting: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Rules for Old Men Waiting: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Rules for Old Men Waiting: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Rules for Old Men Waiting: A Novel

    Written by Peter Pouncey

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A brief, lyrical novel with a powerful emotional charge, Rules for Old Men Waiting is about three wars of the twentieth century and an ever-deepening marriage. In a house on the Cape "older than the Republic," Robert MacIver, a historian who long ago played rugby for Scotland, creates a list of rules by which to live out his last days. The most important rule, to "tell a story to its end," spurs the old Scot on to invent a strange and gripping tale of men in the trenches of the First World War.

    Drawn from a depth of knowledge and imagination, MacIver conjures the implacable, clear-sighted artist Private Callum; the private's nemesis Sergeant Braddis, with his pincerlike nails; Lieutenant Simon Dodds, who takes on Braddis; and Private Charlie Alston, who is ensnared in this story of inhumanity and betrayal but brings it to a close.

    This invented tale of the Great War prompts MacIver's own memories of his role in World War II and of Vietnam, where his son, David served. Both the stories and the memories alike are lit by the vivid presence of Margaret, his wife. As Hearts and Minds director Peter Davis writes, "Pouncey has wrought an almost inconceivable amount of beauty from pain, loss, and war, and I think he has been able to do this because every page is imbued with the love story at the heart of his astonishing novel."


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 12, 2005
    ISBN9780739321096
    Unavailable
    Rules for Old Men Waiting: A Novel

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    Reviews for Rules for Old Men Waiting

    4/5

    84 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A story within a story that shows how love can define a life, how decency can happen even between men who are not equals, how anger and ego can be tempered by friendship, how loyalty can overcome striving, how the burden and gift of mortality can bring a man to his knees or lift his thoughts beyond himself . . . All that pebbled with scenes that come alive through a nostalgic nod at art, music, humor, sex, travel, domestic life , academic life, and sport makes this a big little book !
    • 4/5
      I read this "Rules for Old Men" on my Kindle for one of my book club selections and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Although these was sadness reading this story, is was very well done.An old man, Robert MacIver, having lost his wife falls into a deep depression when thinking about his future life. He lives in a run down house in the countryside. The house needs much care taking. The front porch needs repairing and numerous daily tasks have to be done for him to successfully live in the house and just survive. He falls into a pattern of poor eating, lack of cleanliness and never shopping or cooking. He needs to lay in fire wood for the winter, shop for food, interact with others, make repairs on the house and yet he finds himself unable to move forward without his wife by his sideMacIver is a retired professor and a specialist in the First World War. As the story progresses, part of his regaining himself is re-telling his history, and that of others, focusing upon the conflict and horror of war. As he decides to move forward with his life, he establishes 10 rules for himself to live by. The journey he takes the reader on is one back and forth is time and place and is full of vivid memories. This story is wonderfully done and is a sad, fateful and yet a gentle story. This is a book I would recommend.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. Fascinating story of an old man in the throes of grief giving up on life and then deciding to live out the short remainder of his life with structure and grace. He develops his list of rules for living while waiting, and then begins the work of remembering and telling the stories of his life through the process of writing of a final book.
    • 3/5
      This book follows an elderly military historian who holes up in his holiday home and pretty much waits to die. His wife and son are both dead, and being alone, he sets himself various rules which govern how he will spend his remaining days, in terms of cooking, doing a bit of writing each day, and so on, in an entirely believable old-military-blokeish short of way.Sombre in tone, the novel takes the form of a series of reminiscences - how he met his wife, his early career as a rugby player, but mostly meditations on war - the First World War which accounted for his father, the Second, in which he was involved himself, and the Vietnam War which accounted for his son.There is also a novel-within-a-novel which he is writing about soldiers in the trenches in WWI, and this was arguably the best part of the book, enjoying the greatest character development and having a discernible beginning, middle and end.I liked the way the narrative moved from one section to another smoothly and quickly, leaving little time for boredom, but it was rather dry and cerebral in tone making it difficult to feel really involved with the characters.
    • 5/5
      This is a little novel with an enormous punch - to the head, to the gut, and especially to the heart. There is a book within a book here, and the characters in that "inner book" are as fully realized as the central character in the "outer book." Does that make sense? I hope so, because there is so much drama, so much history, and so much living packed into these 200 pages. I was simply stunned by it. There are capsule stories of two world wars and the Vietnam war. And there is a love story too. I mean, what the hell else could a reader ask? There is something for nearly everyone in this slight book, for male and female readers alike. It is simply a superb, virtuoso performance of writing. I LOVED it!
    • 4/5
      Beautifully and intelligently written; romantic in its highly charged view of an over accomplished hero; contains something rarer than hen's teeth: a literary account of a rugby match. Non fans need not fret - it's very brief. And as a side benefit you get a mystic gypsy personal trainer providing exotic services in French and Romany. More soberly, you get a perspective of war through brief compelling vignettes of individual experience neatly embedded in the text and stretching from World War I to Vietnam. The old man must die but it' s hard not to be exhilarated.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful first novel. I found myself reading through this book as I go through my life; hurrying through some spots and going slowly through and savoring other moments. There is a lightheartedness and at the same time a darkness about this novel that really got to me. The love story, while brief, is beautiful. The war stories, while beautifully written, are horrific. Altogether an awesome read and one I highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      How can a book about an old man dying be exhilarating? How can a book that seemingly has every character Pouncey's ever thought of crammed into just over 200 pp. be quiet & lovely? How can those few pages cover at least four separate stories and still be subtle? Pouncey distills the essence of every person, event, time, place, and mood, and serves it to the careful reader beautifully.

      If you are going to go under, it shouldn't be from the weight of self-pity alone.""
    • 5/5
      A Scottish history professor, MacIver, living his last months alone in his Cape Cod summerhouse after the death of his wife, writes an entertaining story about 4 soldiers during World War II, and reflects about his marriage to Margaret (an artist), his time in the navy, his experience as a historian, and the death of his son in Vietnam. His descriptions are spare, eloquent and lyric, and the story he writes about the soldiers and his own story diverge and play off each other like music. He calls his story a “fable”. Interesting questions about war, warriors and wrath are posed and partly answered. Maybe the depiction of the marriage is a little too positive for my taste, but then again, what do I know about marriage? Well worth reading.