Last Call
A Novel
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- ¥710
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- ¥710
発行者による作品情報
Having descended from a long line of indomitable, good-humored Scots, Hayden MacBride sees no reason to take his own death lying down. In fact, he now spends his days crashing funerals for the free food and insight into the Great Beyond. Then he meets Rosamond, a nun playing hooky from the Holy Orders. Hayden is smitten the instant her heavy silver cross smacks him in the face when she leaps up to do the wave at a ball game. Luckily, Rosamond has picked the right person to teach her how to live . . . and to love–because nobody does both better than Hayden MacBride.
However, Rosamond’s years in the convent have not prepared her for the oddball characters of Hayden’s world. There’s his ever-fretful, vigilant daughter, Diana, the “Dutchess o’ the Sidelong Glance”; his sweet grandson Joey, struggling to break free of his mother’s overprotective embrace; Hayden’s bagpipe-blowing cronies; the Greyfriars Gang; neighbor Bobbie Anne, a “working girl” full of good advice and tender mercies; and Hank, the sexy architect contemplating the priesthood–a big mistake in Hayden’s book. For Hayden thinks that Hank should be married to his daughter and raising Joey. And he has an elaborate plan to make Hank see things his way. . . .
In an uproariously funny novel of love, laughter, and one man’s final call at the riotous watering hole called life, Laura Pedersen proves that miracles are all around us–when we open our eyes and our hearts to embrace them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pedersen's third novel (Beginner's Luck; Going Away Party) takes a darkly comic look at a serious subject. After being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, 55-year-old Hayden MacBride decides to take control of his situation by plotting his final days. An irrepressible Scotsman now living with his daughter, Diana, and her 11-year old son, Joey, in Brooklyn, Hayden crashes funerals and stockpiles suicide pills ("they can fell a rhino in five minutes," his dying friend, who made them, whispers) in preparation. Hayden's approach changes, though, when he meets a kindred spirit who is railing noisily against the injustice of her inoperable lung cancer. Her name is Rosamond Rogers, and she's the exact opposite of Hayden's beloved late wife. But Hayden takes a shine to her, and convinces her to ditch the hospital and join him and Joey at a baseball game, where he discovers that she's a nun. And so begins an unlikely romance. Challenged by her sudden loss of faith ("I've prayed all my life and now this," she wails), Rosamond decides that she can't return to the convent. Hayden invites her to live with him and, implausibly, she accepts. The unlikely piles upon the unconvincing, when Bobbie Ann, the prostitute next door, acts as a relationship counselor to a priest, who, with a little prodding from Hayden, decides to change careers and court Diana. If readers can suspend their disbelief which might be hard they'll find Pederson's latest offers many funny, tender and bittersweet moments.
