Object Lessons

"Set in the 1960s, Object Lessons concerns three generations of a rich Irish clan who live in an established inner suburb of New York City. . . . The patriarch, John Scanlan, is a lively figure. . . . One of [his sons], Tom, rebels by marrying a handsome, lower-class Italian girl. It is their daughter Maggie who is trying desperately to master some object lessons. . . . Quindlen is at her best writing about the dislocations of growing up, the blows a child does not see coming."--Time

"Anna Quindlen's first novel is about an experience that is the same for everyone and different for us all: the time when we suddenly see our family with an outsider's eye and begin the separation that marks our growing up. . . . Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family."--The Washington Post Book World

"A delicate, finely cut jewel of a story . . . Anna Quindlen's story of Maggie Scanlan's twelfth year in a Westchester County suburb next to the Bronx is a charming, compassionate little masterpiece--a story so compelling that one wishes at the end that it hadn't stopped and that one could learn more about Maggie, who, although she doesn't realize it, is a magic child on the way to being a magic woman. . . . No man could have possibly spun this strong yet gossamer story of what happens to a child when all the clear boundaries of her existence collapse in a single month. . . . It's a fine novel, a brilliant novel, a story that makes one wait eagerly for Anna Quindlen's next novel."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Warm and wry . . . Accessible, thoughtful . . . The novel has a quaint, old-fashioned feel. Decisions made early in life are irrevocable; unplanned pregnancy seals a couple's fate. It isn't lure of freedom that pulls Maggie Scanlan, the thirteen-year-old protagonist, but the familiar bonds of her life, the lines drawn 'in her house, her neighborhood, her relationships. . . .' During the summer that the novel chronicles, all these lines are blurred, shifted, or destroyed." --San Francisco Chronicle "The characters are quirky and vividly drawn. . . . The writing is lovely, and shows the humor and quiet insight that made Quindlen's column beloved. . . . Quindlen is an intelligent and imaginative writer."--The Boston Globe

"Rich in the precisely observed . . . With a quiet, sure touch, Quindlen carefully fits together the narrative pieces of individual desires, doubts, and development to create a satisfyingly complex mosaic of communal growth and change. There are dramatic events--a death, a fire, a wedding--but the more important activity of this novel takes place within its characters, as they pursue self-knowledge and closer connections with those they love."--Newsday