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| Plot Summary of The Accidental Tourist |
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"Macon Leary writes guidebooks, but he has never visited the places he writes about. He does phone interviews and writes sterile reviews of hotel rooms, restaurants and scenery he has never seen. This is a metaphor, obviously, for how Macon lives his life. He is an armchair quarterback, so to speak.
The book opens as Macon and his wife Sarah are on the brink of disaster in their marriage. Their young son has been killed in a freakish way (shot in a fast food restaurant during the time when those shootings were happening randomly around the country), and they are both left shaken to the core. The events that happen next are both quirky and bizarre, sometimes even funny, but also life-changing and intense.
Macon and Sarah separate, and Macon is left with the couple's unruly dog. To help him cope with the dog, he hires Muriel Pritchett, a "dog whisperer" of sorts, but also a character of epic proportions. Muriel becomes involved in Macon's life, and her problems and eccentricities draw him out of his shell. She is sometimes tacky and always unsophisticated, and she has a young son who is fatherless and socially stunted. These things keep flowing over into Macon's life, and eventually he and Muriel fall in love. Macon must then decide between Muriel and Sarah, and also between the existence he has had before his son's death or the newfound "real" life he has started to live."
Lori Cossens, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of The Accidental Tourist |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- thoughtful
Time/era of story
- 1980's-1999
Romance/Romance Problems
Yes
Kind of romance:
- love triangle/polygon
Internal struggle/realization?
Yes
Struggle over
- midlife crisis
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Coping with loss of loved one(s)
Yes
Loss of...
- child/children
Main Character
Gender
- Male
Profession/status:
- journalist
Age:
- 40's-50's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Strong but gentle sense of humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- none
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 2 ()
United States
Yes
The US:
- Northeast
Style
Person
- mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death?
- no torture/death
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- vague references
Amount of dialog
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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