A Little Hope: A Novel

by Ethan Joella Narrated by Shaun Taylor-Corbett

Overview

A Read with Jenna Bonus Selection

An “immersive...illuminating” (Booklist) and life-affirming novel following the residents of an idyllic Connecticut town over the course of a year, A Little Hope explores the intertwining lives of a dozen neighbors as they confront everyday desires and fears: a lost love, a stalled career, an illness, and a betrayal.

Freddie and Greg Tyler seem to have it all: a comfortable home, a beautiful young daughter, a bond that feels unbreakable. But when Greg is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, the sense of certainty they once knew evaporates. Throughout their town, friends and neighbors face the most difficult of life's challenges and are figuring out how to survive thanks to love, grace, and hope.

“A quietly powerful portrait of small-town life...told with wisdom and tenderness” (Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes) A Little Hope is a deeply resonant debut that immerses the reader in a community and celebrates the importance of small moments of connection.

Editorial Reviews

DECEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

Shaun Taylor-Corbett's evocative narration pulls at listeners’ heartstrings as this novel reveals the trials, tribulations, simple pleasures, curious coincidences, and shaky underpinnings of a small Connecticut town held together by husband-and-wife Freddie and Greg Tyler. Everyday troubles like drug addiction, a husband's betrayal, and a devastating diagnosis allow Taylor-Corbett to employ all his dramatic gifts. Author Joella creates characters who love, hate, and mourn with a depth that Taylor-Corbett's performance mirrors. Ultimately life-affirming and uplifting, Taylor-Corbett’s delivery allows a hopeful tone to enter the story's last stages, which are characterized by both heartbreak and affirmation. There are times when A LITTLE HOPE is all we can ask for and—as depicted by Joella and aided by narrator Taylor-Corbett—is all we need. R.O. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

09/06/2021

The residents of a small Connecticut city navigate grief and hope in Joella’s tender debut, a series of vignettes marked by a sense of connection and community. In the opening, Freddie Taylor and her husband, Greg, both nearing 40, grapple with his cancer diagnosis. Freddie had planned to return to writing fiction once their daughter started school, but instead takes a part-time job as a seamstress while Greg, who has worked hard to make v-p at a financial services firm, wishes he were handling the illness better instead of turning prickly toward Freddie and his boss, Alex Lionel. Alex’s own fear and guilt are detailed in a later chapter about a long-ago affair he had after the death of his son at 14. Now Alex is hoping his wife of 50 years, Kay, will meet his lovely grown daughter Iris from that tryst. There’s also Darcy Crowley, the widow who started the dry-cleaning business where Freddie works and wishes to mend things with her son, who has become addicted to pills and alcohol after his dad’s death and a breakup with his girlfriend. The prose can be simplistic, but Joella has a good handle on each of the many characters. Throughout, the overlapping story lines keep readers turning the pages. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

Named a Best Book of the year by TODAY.com!

“A surprising page-turner... Its calm wisdom about bearing the toughest losses—sometimes lightened by unexpected gifts—makes this novel a comforting companion for difficult times.”
—People

“Poignant and quietly powerful...Joella is particularly deft at deconstructing quiet moments in small-town life and amplifying their significance... more than a tad hopeful.”
—New York Times Book Review

“A heartfelt, life-affirming novel.”
—Alexandra Daddario, Book of the Month

"An absorbing, propulsive, and elegantly written debut. I absolutely loved it."
—Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed

"Forgiveness and redemption are the soul of this novel, but it's the love you will remember long after you put it down."
—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Lucia, Lucia and The Shoemaker's Wife

"A quietly powerful portrait of small-town life, about how the private worries and dreams of a set of characters intersect, told with wisdom and tenderness."
—Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes

DECEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

Shaun Taylor-Corbett's evocative narration pulls at listeners’ heartstrings as this novel reveals the trials, tribulations, simple pleasures, curious coincidences, and shaky underpinnings of a small Connecticut town held together by husband-and-wife Freddie and Greg Tyler. Everyday troubles like drug addiction, a husband's betrayal, and a devastating diagnosis allow Taylor-Corbett to employ all his dramatic gifts. Author Joella creates characters who love, hate, and mourn with a depth that Taylor-Corbett's performance mirrors. Ultimately life-affirming and uplifting, Taylor-Corbett’s delivery allows a hopeful tone to enter the story's last stages, which are characterized by both heartbreak and affirmation. There are times when A LITTLE HOPE is all we can ask for and—as depicted by Joella and aided by narrator Taylor-Corbett—is all we need. R.O. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2021-08-18
Life, death, and love in contemporary New England.

Joella’s debut novel chronicles 10 months in the lives of a dozen characters in the small Connecticut city of Wharton, and there’s certainly plenty of suffering beneath the veneer of Yankee stoicism there. In the past, two of the families have suffered the deaths of children—one in a bicycle accident and another from leukemia—while in the course of the novel another will lose a son whose automobile accident ends his struggles with substance abuse. Greg Tyler, a successful businessman, married and with a 7-year-old daughter, is in the midst of a battle against multiple myeloma whose outcome is far from certain. For Greg’s boss, Alex Lionel, the consequences of a long-ago infidelity are revisited with the impending arrival of a grandchild to the young woman whose birth was the result of that adultery. There’s a wedding and the kindling of a new relationship between two of the guests who have struggled to find love themselves. The novel’s modest title hints at its low-key emotional register, and with a change in point of view with every new chapter, it exists somewhere in a limbo between a collection of linked stories and a more traditional narrative structure. Joella captures the rhythms of life in Wharton and is skilled at identifying both shifts in the weather and events that mark the passage of time in moments so subtle as to be almost undetectable. Readers who enjoy fiction that reflects the struggles and joys of their daily lives will find much that will resonate here, but perhaps because of its large ensemble cast, the novel never truly connects with the emotional hearts of any of their stories.

Heartfelt stories of the inhabitants of a small Connecticut city don’t add up to compelling drama.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173246882
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/16/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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