The Best Years of Our Lives

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Sunset Park

A Novel

by Paul Auster
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Nov 9, 2010, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2011, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

The Best Years of Our Lives

This article relates to Sunset Park

Print Review

Alice Bergstrom, one of the characters in Sunset Park, is writing her dissertation on the film The Best Years of Our Lives. Almost everyone in the book has either seen it already or watches it with her so she can add their reactions to her observations. Auster draws many parallels between the story in the film and the story of his contemporary characters.

The film follows the lives of three WWII veterans who meet on their way home from the war. They become friends, and we watch them and their families as they try to return to their regular lives. Each comes home with different wounds - some physical, some emotional - and each has difficulty adjusting. Jobs are lost, marriages dissolve, but there is hope.

In his review of the film, Roger Ebert notes that it "doesn't use verbal or technical pyrotechnics. It trusts entirely in the strength of its story." He believes that the film feels modern, not dated like most films from more than sixty years ago, because it makes no effort to add "superfluous drama" to the story. Instead, the film treats the characters as regular people who have dealt with horrible circumstances, much like those in which we find ourselves in today.

The Best Years of Our Lives was directed by William Wyler, and stars Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Hoagy Carmichael, Harold Russell, Dana Andrews, and Teresa Wright. It swept the Oscars in 1946, taking Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor (March), Supporting Actor (Russell), Film Editing, and Music Scoring as well as an Honorary Oscar for Harold Russell "for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans." Russell was a veteran who lost both hands in an explosion, and he plays a young man who lost both hands in the war. The Best Years of Our Lives was also a great commercial success.

View the trailer here:

Filed under Music and the Arts

Article by Beverly Melven

This "beyond the book article" relates to Sunset Park. It originally ran in November 2010 and has been updated for the October 2011 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)
by Clare Leslie Hall
A love triangle reveals deadly secrets in this thriller for fans of The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant
    by Liza Tully

    A great detective's young assistant yearns for glory, but first they have learn to get along in this delightful feel good mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    Angelica
    by Molly Beer

    A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton's influential sister-in-law.

  • Book Jacket

    The Original
    by Nell Stevens

    In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.

  • Book Jacket

    The Whyte Python World Tour
    by Travis Kennedy

    Rikki Thunder, drummer for '80s metal band Whyte Python, is on the verge of fame, love—and a spy mission he didn’t expect.

Win This Book
Win These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas

"[An] atmospheric tale of unexpected hope." —Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

E H L the B

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.