In this simultaneously hilarious and poignant companion volume to The Wapshot Chronicle, the members of the Wapshot family of St. Botolphs drift far from their New England village into the demented caprices of the mighty, the bad graces of the IRS, and the humiliating abyss of adulterous passion. A novel of large and tender vision, The Wapshot Scandal is filled with pungent characters and outrageous twists of fate, and, above all, with Cheever's luminous compassion for all his hapless fellow prisoners of human nature.
When The Wapshot Chronicle was published in 1957, John Cheever was already recognized as a writer of superb short stories. But The Wapshot Chronicle, which won the 1958 National Book Award, established him as a major novelist.
The fortunes and foibles of the Wapshots - the patriarch Leander, his wife Sarah and two sons, and Aunt Honora. The story moves from a small New England river town to New York and Europe; from the early 20th century to the 1960s. John Cheever won the 1958 National Book Award for "Chronicle".
