The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

Overview

A writer’s suicide sends ripples through the world she left behind: “A wonderful book…moving and tender and tough and unsentimental, all at the same time.”—Chicago Tribune

An accomplished author with a string of devoted lovers, Anna Hand savors life in all of its bittersweet, fleeting moments. So when she gets a letter and discovers her brother has a daughter he never knew about, she sees a major part of life that has passed her by: a child to love. Desperate to unite this young girl with her father, Anna moves back to Charlotte, North Carolina, to rediscover her family and convince him to accept her.

Caught between the politics of her upper-crust family and love for a married man, Anna finds her health in serious danger. When her bad days catch up with her good ones, she must finally face the disease that had been hiding just beneath the surface. Not willing to resign herself to months of aggressive treatment, and knowing the outcome will be the same regardless, she takes matters into her own hands, and surrenders her body to the sea.

But it isn't only Anna's death that shocks her family. The papers she left behind may lead her sister Helen to discover more about Anna than she, or any of the Hand family, need to know…
 
"Gilchrist excels in drawing the bonds of love and resentment in sexual and family relationships, and no one who encounters her characters here or in her earlier works will want to miss reading about them again." —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635761511
Publisher:	Diversion Books
Publication date:	04/30/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	283
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Ellen Gilchrist is the award-winning author of more than 20 books, including novels, short story collections, essays and poetry. Her new collection of stories, ACTS OF GOD, will be published in April 2014 by Algonquin, along with the paperback release of her novel A DANGEROUS AGE. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and teaches creative writing and contemporary fiction at the University of Arkansas.

Editorial Reviews

Jackie is a high school student who finds herself in a cement roomperhaps a cellarwith only a thread of light, a jar of oily water and a box of old donuts and pastries. She doesn't know why a man in a van snatched her off the streets, brought her there and hasn't returned. All she has is a typewriter and a ream of paper. And so, to keep herself going until the nightmare of captivity is over, she types stories, letters to her friends and family, notes to herself. The story of the last days before her capture are revealed, but what is never told is why she is thereand by the end, it doesn't matter. In fact, it doesn't even matter whether or not her ``captivity'' is real or imagined, madness or illumination. Her world is so self-contained that the voyage inward brings to Jackie the most essential truths; these she conveys to readers. In that self-absorbed state, without any external interference, Jackie is more purely herself in mind and spirit than most people are ever privileged to beand that gives her the strength to meet her fate (rescue or not) with calm and even hope. The power of Sebestyen's writing lies in the simplicity with which she delineates the intellectual and emotional processes of a girl in a box. The author has put herself in that box; this is a tightly focused writing exercise that is also a brilliant piece of suspense. Readers will come forth deeply stirred by their thought-provoking and devastating stay. Ages 12-up. (October)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 7-12 Kidnapped by an unknown assailant and thrown into a cement cell with no light and no escape, Jackie McGee struggles to understand why this happened to her. What she learns is not the answer to that question but about herselfthe strengths of character that she didn't know she had and insights into why life sometimes turns out the way it does. Left with only one jar of water and very little food, Jackie hopes throughout to be rescued, but her growing self-awareness allows her finally to accept the inevitable. The story is told through Jackie's letters to her friends, a teacher, the police, her parents, and notes to herself, touch-typed in the dark on a typewriter and a ream of paper that she had with her when she was taken. The story-within-a-story is Jackie's retelling of the circumstances that led to her being in the right place to be kidnapped. This story of her long-time friendship with April and Zack, broken up when she finds out that April and Zack are in love with each other, gives a counterpoint of saneness to an otherwise unreal situation. The unreality of the premise produces a book that is not as strong as most of Sebestyen's others, as neither Jackie nor readers can see a reason for the kidnapping. This makes it difficult to develop empathy for Jackie's plight. The mood and the style are excellent and entirely appropriate for so bizarre a situation. The book leaves a sour taste in the mouth, but that is what senseless acts of terror do, and perhaps that's what Sebestyen intended. Kathy Havris, Mesa Public Library, Ariz.

School Library Journal