Ellen Gilchrist is a wonderful writer, with a winning grace and humaneness . . . Moving and tender and tough and unsentimental at the same time.” —Chicago Tribune“Gilchrist rides the tensionbetween seeing events and motivations clearly and becoming clouded by personal and material concernson a perfect edge.” —The Boston Globe “Aims to show readers that Americans have a resilience that won’t allow us to simply sulk and blame . . . The writing is polished; all her details matter.” —The Seattle Times“Gilchrist can create wonderful female characters, contemporary women who come alive on the page and linger long after the book is over.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution“[Her] fiction never fails to inspire with its feisty spirit and enduring hopefulness.” —The New Orleans Times-Picayune “[Gilchrist] gives this novel a humanity easily embraced by the reader. [Her] trademark supple prose and droll sense of humor are on full display.” —Booklist, starred review“Narrated in the author's characteristically fine prose and populated by . . . sympathetic and believable characters. Recommended.” —Library Journal
“Ellen Gilchrist is a wonderful writer, with a winning grace and humaneness . . . Moving and tender and tough and unsentimental at the same time.” —Chicago Tribune
“Gilchrist rides the tension--between seeing events and motivations clearly and becoming clouded by personal and material concerns--on a perfect edge.” —The Boston Globe “Aims to show readers that Americans have a resilience that won’t allow us to simply sulk and blame . . . The writing is polished; all her details matter.” —The Seattle Times“Gilchrist can create wonderful female characters, contemporary women who come alive on the page and linger long after the book is over.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution“[Her] fiction never fails to inspire with its feisty spirit and enduring hopefulness.” —The New Orleans Times-Picayune “[Gilchrist] gives this novel a humanity easily embraced by the reader. [Her] trademark supple prose and droll sense of humor are on full display.” —Booklist, starred review
“Narrated in the author's characteristically fine prose and populated by . . . sympathetic and believable characters. Recommended.” —Library Journal
Gilchrist "gives this novel a humanity easily embraced by the reader. [Her] trademark supple prose and droll sense of humor are on full display."—Booklist, starred review
In the latest from Gilchrist-who won the National Book Award for the 1984 story collection Victory over Japan-the grand Raleigh, N.C., wedding between Winifred "Winnie" Hand Abadie and Charles Kane is canceled when Charles perishes in the World Trade Center attacks. Winnie becomes despondent, and well-intentioned cousin Louise Hand Healy, a producer of TV documentaries, goads her to move in with her in Washington, D.C. Another cousin, Olivia Hand, is deeply committed to her job as editor of a Tulsa, Okla., newspaper and is torn between two men she loves. Gilchrist shifts uneasily among the three women's perspectives, and between the first and third person. The political commitment underscoring the novel, particularly in Olivia's scathing antiwar editorials, is deeply felt, and a nice twist is introduced when, on September 12, Charles's twin cousins, Carl and Brian, join the Marines. Gilchrist never quite brings the three female leads into narrative harmony, but she makes the age's dangers palpable. (May)
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Gilchrist here returns to the wealthy Hands of North Carolina, introduced in The Anna Papersand I Cannot Get You Close Enough. As they approach middle age, the youngish members of the clan are forced to confront national catastrophe, starting when Winifred Hand's fiancé, Charles, dies in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Heartbreak and grief bring on extreme expressions of patriotism and controversial life changes, as when two Hand women become lovers of Charles's much younger twin cousins, both marines, after one of the men is wounded badly in Iraq. The main emphasis is on the fortunes of half-Cherokee Olivia de Havilland Hand, now a successful (and pregnant) Tulsa, OK, newspaper editor, who struggles with inner conflicts as her new reservist husband, the love of her life, leaves for active duty. Quirky relatives from all sides of the extended family do their best to help in 17 tragicomic chapters narrated in the author's characteristically fine prose and populated by flawed but sympathetic and believable characters. Recommended.
Starr E. Smith
More angst and sex among the intricately interconnected Southern families Gilchrist (Nora Jane, 2005, etc.) has been following in fiction for nearly 30 years. This time the focus is on 30-something cousins Winifred Hand Abadie, Louise Hand Healy and Olivia Hand. Three months before Winifred was to be married, her fiance "perished on September 11, 2001, along with three thousand other perfectly lovely, helpless human beings." (Gilchrist's fondness for superlative-laden prose remains unchanged.) Louise, a TV documentary writer/producer, falls into bed and marriage with the dead fiance's 24-year-old cousin Carl, 12 years her junior. Carl is home visiting twin brother and fellow marine Brian, who got his chin blown off in Afghanistan. The twins enlisted after their cousin was killed; they and most of the other characters unhesitatingly support the notion that the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq are justified responses to the 9/11 attacks. In short order, Louise is pregnant and Winifred has taken up with Brian, then the scene shifts to Oklahoma. Olivia is the editor of the Tulsa World, whose publisher allows her to write cozily first-person editorials. She gets back together with ex-husband Bobby, and pretty soon she's pregnant too. They're married again, and Bobby's reserve unit is called to active duty. Louise and Winifred basically drop out of the picture, except as part of the Greek chorus of extended family that comments on the action in every Gilchrist novel. With all three women married to Marines, the book is understandably concerned with war, and the author seems to intend a political point of some sort. Whatever she's trying to say, however, gets lost in her characters'ludicrously shallow political conversations, and in a narrative so casually developed that readers may wonder whether Gilchrist ever bothers to reread, let alone revise. Trivial treatment of a big subject: The author seems to be coasting on her fans' memories and good wishes.