Rosie Ferguson is seventeen and ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school. She's intelligent - she aced AP physics; athletic - a former state-ranked tennis doubles champion; and beautiful. She is, in short, everything her mother, Elizabeth, hoped she could be. The family's move to Landsdale, with stepfather James in tow, hadn't been as bumpy as Elizabeth feared.
But as the school year draws to a close, there are disturbing signs that the life Rosie claims to be leading is a sham, and that Elizabeth's hopes for her daughter to remain immune from the pull of the darker impulses of drugs and alcohol are dashed. Slowly and against their will, Elizabeth and James are forced to confront the fact that Rosie has been lying to them - and that her deceptions will have profound consequences.
This is Anne Lamott's most honest and heartrending novel yet, exploring our human quest for connection and salvation as it reveals the traps that can befall all of us.
"Starred Review. Straddling a line between heartwarming and heartbreaking, this novel is Lamott at her most witty, observant, and psychologically astute. " - Publishers Weekly
"As she eschews the cunning one-liners and wry observations that had become her signature stock-in-trade, Lamott produces her most stylistically mature and thematically circumspect novel to date." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Lamott is consistently wonderful with this type of novel, and once again she does not disappoint." - Library Journal
"In the end, the strengths of central characters and believable complications overcome a tendency toward oracular psychobabble." - Kirkus Reviews
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Rated of 5
by
Dan Edelstein Say it again Really disappointing. I've read a few of Anne's books and they've been going downhill since the first. This book is so repetitive and tedious and really pretty trite. We get the picture within the first few pages, and then we get it over and over ad nauseum. If there was something provocative or interesting about the writing, the endless repetition would be forgivable, but unfortunately that isn't the case. This is a book about character in which the characters are types rather than actual human beings. They lack any specificity, as does Ms. Lamott's (or at least the narrator's) observations of the world. I just don't buy any of it. Yes, teenagers sometimes use drugs and sometimes deceive their parents about it. These are things that I knew before reading the book. Unfortunately, I don't know anything more about it after having read the book. Anne seems to be faking her way through this book. She doesn't believe it herself. This is particularly disappointing because, judging by the few times I've heard her interviewed on the radio, she's charming and funny and has a fairly unique perspective on the world, especially regarding faith. None of that comes through in this book. Nothing feels true.
Anne Lamott (b. 1954 in San Francisco) is the author of several novels and works of non-fiction, and a progressive political activist. She is also an acclaimed public speaker and teacher of writing. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, her non-fiction works are largely autobiographical, with strong doses of self-deprecating humor. Marked by their transparency, Lamott's writings covered such subjects as alcoholism, single motherhood, and Christianity.
Lamott has explained: "I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness — and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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Dan Edelstein
