UID:
kobvindex_ZLB35167909
ISBN:
9780063299726
Content:
"Kate Christensen's new novel, Welcome Home, Stranger, is a revelation, offering characters as real as your family and friends, a rich, vividly drawn setting, grab-you-by-the-throat drama and always, lurking in the shadows, a fierce authorial intelligence. What more could you ask?8212 Richard Russo, author of Somebody's FoolTo the great literature of going home again we can now add Kate Christensen's superb new novel Welcome Home, Stranger, a triumph of intelligence and wit (which will surprise none of her many fans). The prodigal here is a brilliant journalist grieving the loss of a very difficult mother while attempting peace with those she left behind: a resentful sister and an ex-lover who can be neither trusted nor forgotten. A spellbinding book from one of our best chroniclers of the very American struggle to strive for excellence while still living in community with others.8212 Ann Packer, author of The Children's CrusadeFrom the PEN-Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man comes a novel about grief, love, growing older, and the complications of family that is the story of a fifty-something woman who goes home8212 reluctantly8212 to Maine after the death of her mother. Can you ever truly go home again? An environmental journalist in Washington, DC, Rachel has shunned her New England working-class family for years. Divorced and childless in her middle age, she's a true independent spirit with the pain and experience to prove it. Coping with challenges large and small, she thinks her life is in free fall8211 until she's summoned home to deal with the aftermath of her mother's death. Then things really fall apart. Surrounded by a cast of sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreakingly serious characters8212 an arriviste sister, an alcoholic brother-in-law and, most importantly, the love of her life recently married to the sister's best friend8211 Rachel must come to terms with her past, the sorrow she has long buried, and the ghost of the mother who, for better and worse, made her the woman she is. Lively, witty, and painfully familiar, this sophisticated and emotionally resonant novel from the author of The Great Man holds a mirror up to modern life as it considers the way some of us must carry on now. "
Content:
Biographisches: " KATE CHRISTENSEN is the author of seven novels, most recently The Last Cruise . Her fourth novel, The Great Man , won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose , which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her essays, reviews, and short pieces have appeared in a wide variety of publications and anthologies. She lives with her husband and their two dogs in Taos, New Mexico. " Rezension(2): "〈a href=http://lj.libraryjournal.com/ target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/libraryjournal_logo.png alt=Library Journal border=0 /〉〈/a〉: July 1, 2023 Returning home after her mother's death to the New England working-class family she's long avoided, independent-minded environmental journalist Rachel deals with more than just grief over the person who shaped her. Past troubles resurface, and she must face her errant sister, hard-drinking brother-in-law, and former beloved, now married. From the author of the PEN/Faulkner--winning The Great Man ,with a 40,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library JournalCopyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission. " Rezension(3): "〈a href=http://www.publishersweekly.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/pw_logo.png alt=Publisher's Weekly border=0 /〉〈/a〉: October 2, 2023 In Christensen’s penetrating latest (after The Last Cruise ), a journalist returns to her hometown in Maine after the death of her estranged mother, Lucie. Rachel is a “middle-aged childless recently orphaned menopausal workaholic.” Her sister, Celeste, is a mother of two, married to the scion of a wealthy family. The sisters quarrel (initially over the fact that Rachel was absent while Celeste nursed Lucie through cancer treatments and hospice care), then reconnect, then quarrel again. Lucie struggled with alcoholism and often pitted the sisters against each other. As they attempt to bring an end to their perpetual conflict, various male characters orbit them. There’s Rachel’s longtime lover David, now married and about to be a father,Neil, Celeste’s distant husband,and Jesse, an unhoused man who reminds Rachel of her dead cousin, and whom she hires to fix up Lucie’s house. The plot treads familiar ground, but Christensen skillfully portrays the issues at play in many families: there are deep bonds, but also deep resentments, “volcanic” emotions, and decades-old misunderstandings. The character Lucie, an immature, thwarted tyrant, is particularly well drawn. Readers in search of an engrossing family drama will find much to like." Rezension(4): "〈a href=http://www.kirkusreviews.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/kirkus_logo.png alt=Kirkus border=0 /〉〈/a〉: October 1, 2023 After a decade away, a woman heads home to Maine to grapple with a resentful sister, a naughty ex-boyfriend, midlife hormones, and sundry personal demons. Journalist Rachel Calloway, the narrator of Christensen's eighth novel, is a self-described middle-aged childless recently orphaned menopausal workaholic. Her life, she announces, is hell. By day, Rachel chronicles the ravages of climate change, and by night retreats to the Washington, D.C., condo she shares with her former husband (who has ALS) and his boyfriend. The marriage ended when Rachel found the men in bed together, but while she has forgiven all, the boyfriend wants her out of the condo almost as much as her evil little lickspittle rodent of a newly appointed editor in chief wants her out of her job. That's more than enough drama to juice a plot right there, but in this smart yet unfocused novel, it's just distracting backstory. The real action begins when Rachel's narcissistic mother dies and leaves her a house in Portland, Maine. As Rachel's plane descends over thick pine forests rolling to meet the hard metallic skin of the Atlantic Ocean, glinting in the sunlight, readers will instantly grasp that Christensen is serving up a dreamy new life for her embattled heroine in a postcard-pretty locale. Granted, complications abound. Rachel's sister, Celeste, frequently berates her for not helping nurse their mother through a brutal cancer death. She's also a passive-aggressive troublemaker: The night of Rachel's arrival, she invites Rachel's old flame, David Mansfield, and his new wife to dinner. It turns out that David wants back into Rachel's bed, and she would probably welcome him--except he may or may not have done something unforgivable with her late mother. Aiming to sell her inherited house and get back to Washington, Rachel finds a homeless pillhead to move in and help renovate. (As one does.) A crisis ensues. Throughout this jumpy novel, Rachel has been lost in Dante's figurative dark wood of midlife, but in its long finale she finds herself wandering around a literal dark wood complete with bears, until a path forward reveals itself. Underbaked novel about how you can go home again and, if it's coastal Maine, probably should. COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. " Rezension(5): "〈a href=https://www.booklistonline.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/booklist_logo.png alt=Booklist border=0 /〉〈/a〉: Starred review from October 15, 2023 The narrator in Christensen's (The Last Cruise, 2018) latest high-wire novel feels like she may spontaneously combust as she boards a plane for Maine and a confrontation with her past. A self-described middle-aged childless recently orphaned menopausal workaholic journalist living in Washington, DC, whose beat is the environment, Rachel is happiest on extensive polar expeditions. Now her mother, from whom she's long been estranged, has died. Rachel and her sister, Celeste, barely survived their fatherless childhood with their criminally neglectful mentally ill mother. Rachel was the only one in their enclave to leave Maine and make something of herself in the larger world. Celeste married inherited wealth and lives with her family in a Portland mansion,now Rachel's longtime wild boy lover lives next door with his new wife. Rachel, who hopes fervently for an upside to menopause and who has inherited their mother's townhouse, is wound-tight, hilariously observant, caustically expressive, determined, and enraged as she copes with a firestorm of impossible situations. Christensen is a psychological Geiger-counter, registering every particle of emotion,a wizard at dialogue and redolent settings, and an intrepid choreographer of confoundment. From gasp-inducing absurdities and betrayals to a profound sense of our paralysis in the glare of climate change to a full-on embrace of family, love, home, and decency, Christensen's whirligig tale leaves readers dizzy with fresh and provocative insights. COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. "
Language:
English
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