Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony, and tenderness. Larry's Party gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997, which flash back and forward seamlessly. As Larry journeys toward the millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men, Shields's elegant prose makes the trivial into the momentous.

We follow this young floral designer through two marriages and divorces, his interactions with parents, friends, and a son. And all the while, we witness his deepening passion for garden mazes - so like life, with their teasing treachery and promise of reward. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larry survives the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties, and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search for self.