And Then We Moved to Rossenarra

And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating is a memoir by the American political novelist Richard Condon, published by Dial Press in 1973. A native of New York City whose early career had mostly been that of a press agent for various Hollywood studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life but then became both profilic and famous; today he is most remembered for his 1960 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate and for his four later novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi. And Then We Moved to Rossenarra is a mostly light-hearted and occasionally humorous account of his family's many moves and residences throughout Europe and Mexico in the decades preceeding the publication of the book. Much of the book is about his purchase and excruciatingly long and expensive restoration of a large Irish country house called Rossenarra, to the point where many of the incidents about incompetent plumbers, electricians, and other tradesmen directed by a fictional capo invented by Condon as a humorous device, become, by the end of a 300-page book increasingly tedious. Throughout the book, however, which is presented in a non-chronological manner, there are interesting asides and anecdotes about some of Condon's books, particularly his first one, The Oldest Confession, and his most famous one, The Manchurian Candidate. In contrast to most of the book, which is distinctly flip in its manner, some of Condon's comments in Chapter 19 about the supposed similarities between the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and The Manchurian Candidate, which had been published three years before the murder, are both heart-felt and surprisingly bitter in their assessment of the American character.

References

And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating, by Richard Condon, Dial Press, New York, 1973