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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2004, 320 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2005, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Every so often a novel comes along that is capable of redeeming the losses it so devastatingly conveys. Disturbing, bittersweet, and lyrical, this is a story of people torn apart by tragedy and yet, finally, transformed by love.
A debut novelist interweaves a trio of voices-haunting, dangerous, full of longing--mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past
Many long years have passed since the winter of blinding white when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate drove across the hushed midwestern landscape and left a trail of blood and pain. So why does Lowell, a Manhattan collector of antiquities, still dream of what happened, despite his wife's best attempts to draw him back and offer comfort? And who is Susan, the teenager who appoints herself a detective, piecing together the story of the murders while wondering if she'll ever be loved like Starkweather loved his girl?
And then there's Caril Ann herself, who takes us back to relive the ride she swears she could not control. It began on the day Charlie first saw her, dangling her bare legs off the edge of a tree house. It ended outside Valentine, Nebraska, on that night when she still believed that life could somehow go back to being normal . . .
Every so often a novel comes along that is capable of redeeming the losses it so devastatingly conveys. Disturbing, bittersweet, and lyrical, Liza Ward's Outside Valentine is a story of people torn apart by tragedy and yet, finally, transformed by love.
Chapter Two
1957
When I am half asleep and everything is dark, ghosts rise out of the prairie and swim across my eyes. The girl crawls up from the storm cellar with glass in her knee. She peers at me and her fists are clenched. She cries, "Caril Ann, where is my math book?" There is no sense telling that girl in my mind where those schoolbooks got to, pages blowing, by the side of a road in Bennet, Nebraska. And of course Roe Street is always standing in the door of the outhouse with his belt in his hand and a hole in his head, blaming me for all that Charlie did.
I do not call these dreams because dreams are something you wish to have happened. Everyone knows how I never wished any of it. It was not my fault. From the very beginning it was never my fault, not even the skipping of school. People act a certain way when they are treated wrong, and I had already done the eighth grade. It was wrong of Roe to try and send me back.
The first day I saw Charlie behind our new ...
Outside Valentine is an elegantly written and compelling book in its own right, but the story is given an extra edge by the fact that the author's paternal grandparents were two of the victims, and one of the fictionalized characters in the book is, apparently, based on the author's own father...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Anita Shreve, author of The Pilots Wife and All She Ever Wanted
An intricate and challenging novel that examines the inner lives of men and women swept up in a devastating American crime. Ward's portraits are harrowing, heartfelt and unforgettable. J. Robert Lennon, author of On the Night Plain
Blunt, beautiful, and very scary, Outside Valentine proves that a murder doesn't end with death—it just goes on and on, staining generations, tolling across decades. It's a first novel with the weight of a tenth. Liza Ward has the ears of a wolf, the eyes of an owl, and a tongue as sharp as broken glass. Kevin Canty, author of Honeymoon and other Stories and Into the Great Wide Open
A swift and beautifully written first novel about the lingering effects of violence and the power of love, to heal and to destroy. With extraordinary emotional accuracy, Liza Ward tracks the echoes of a murder across three generations and several lives, bringing them together in an ending both mysterious and musical. Outside Valentine seems to know all the secrets, and to be willing to tell them. Simply an amazing debut. Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies and My Sky Blue Trades, a memoir
Liza Ward runs a tight, thrumming line through her narrative, punching up scenes with a sharp practiced touch and bringing wise compassion to bear on the tragic events that unfold with such dark inevitability. Vendela Vida, author of And Now You Can Go
Written with confidence and grace, Outside Valentine tells an astounding story about how violence can propel us apart, yes, but how it can also bring us together in unexpected ways. Liza Ward has written an utterly gripping book.Outside Valentine
is an elegantly written and compelling first
novel in its own right, but the story is
given an extra edge by the fact that the
author's paternal grandparents were two of
the victims, and one of the fictionalized
characters in the book is, apparently, based
on the author's father.
The
Starweather/Fugate killings were the
inspiration for a number of movies such as
Terrence Malick's Badlands (1974),
Quentin Tarantino and Tony Scott's True
Romance (1993), and ...
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