Goldengrove
"With a dazzling mix of directness and metaphor, Prose captures the centrifugal and isolating force of grief. . . . "[Goldengrove is] a moving meditation on how, out of the painful passing of innocence and youth, sexuality and identity can miraculously emerge." -- Los Angeles Times
An emotionally powerful novel about adolescent love and loss from Francine Prose, the New York Times bestselling author of Reading Like a Writer and A Changed Man.
After the sudden death of her beloved older sister, thirteen-year-old Nico finds her life on New England's idyllic Mirror Lake irrevocably altered. Left alone to grope toward understanding, she falls into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's boyfriend. Over one haunted summer, Nico faces that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them as she experiences the mystery of loss and recovery. Still, for all the darkness at its heart, Goldengrove is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of adolescence.
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Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.
"With perfect pitch and no trace of sentimentality, Prose . . . lands on the precise emotional key for this novel . . . allowing humor and compassion to seep through the cracks of an otherwise dark tale." -- San Francisco Chronicle
"Ms. Prose is perceptive. . . . Her modest-sounding book turns out to be beautifully wrought.... and yields an unexpectedly rich, tart, eye-opening sense of Nico's world." -- New York Times
"With a dazzling mix of directness and metaphor, Prose captures the centrifugal and isolating force of grief...Prose exquisitely renders her characters' grief and bafflement." -- Los Angeles Times
"Arguably, "Goldengrove" is her best book yet." -- Seattle Times
"Prose locates the life force that gives her narrator the quirky, irreverent but undeniable sound of a survivor. . . . Prose is tremendously skilled." -- Chicago Tribune
"Francine Prose's new novel is a quiet, clear-eyed, sun-dappled eulogy to lost youth, and a youth lost. . . . [Prose is ] a keen chronicler of human emotion." -- Elle
"A page-turner, thanks to its wholly identifiable, and perfectly flawed, young heroine. A-" -- Entertainment Weekly
"A beautiful narrative that defines resilience as the sometimes heartbreaking act of simply living" -- Redbook Magazine
"A poignant account of growing up amid sorrow...a tender and moving story of adolescent love." -- Hartford Courant
"Prose holds up a mirror to grief and family life we can't look away from, revealing their truths on page after page, in beautifully crafted writing." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Prose's skillful rendering of the human ability to accept hard truths and move on is a poignant lesson for us all." -- Miami Herald
"Insightful, lyrical... "Goldengrove" is beautifully and simply written...a moving portrait of the search for identity through a landscape of pain and loss." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Beautifully crafted...perhaps her most emotionally satisfying novel." -- Christian Science Monitor
"An exploration of the fragility of adolescent identity and the perilous undertow of grief" -- O magazine
"Prose creates characters with real flaws that make the reader both love and hate them. It is easy to put oneself in the position of any of the players..." -- Deseret Morning News
"Deeply touching and absorbing..." -- Publishers Weekly
"...emotionally authentic...a ravishing novel of the mystery of death and life's assertion." -- Booklist (starred review)
