Good Harbor - Softcover

Anita Diamant

3.3

8,239 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330491660 ISBN 13: 9780330491662

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, 2003

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From the bestselling author of THE RED TENT come a contemporary novel that explores the burden of secrets, the weight of grief and the healing power of female friendship When Kathleen meets Joyce, each woman has come to a turning point in her life. Kathleen, whose sister died of breast cancer fifteen years earlier, has just been diagnosed herself and finds her world abruptly thrown into terrifying turmoil. While Joyce, increasingly distant from her awkward, adolescent daughter, is taking stock of her marriage and family, and struggling to get to grips with a burgeoning career as a novelist. Neither realizes that their chance meeting will result in a life-altering friendship. A mutual appreciation of books initially brings the women together and they rapidly fall into friendship, taking long walks along Good Harbor beach and talking about their lives. Piece by piece, they begin to share their personal histories and acknowledge how much they can learn from each other. But long-hidden secrets are often difficult to reveal and only after some painful soul-searching do they each come to terms with the fact that sharing those startling secrets can help them confront their emotional scars. Good Harbor is a rich and moving novel about the tragedy of loss, the insidious nature of family secrets and, ultimately, the redemptive power of friendship.

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Review:

Given the breadth of Anita Diamant's bestselling biblical epic, The Red Tent, it seems natural that her second novel has a much closer focus. Set in the small Massachusetts fishing town of Gloucester, Good Harbor is a slow-paced study of female friendship. Here Diamant can luxuriate in the development of just two principal characters: 59-year-old Kathleen Levine, a children's librarian who is undergoing radiation therapy for breast cancer, and a 42-year-old romance novelist, Joyce Tabachnik, who has bought a summer retreat in Gloucester in the hope of finally writing a "serious" book. The two meet at temple after a service presided over by a newly hired female rabbi. (What joy it must have been for Diamant, who chronicled so much oppression of Hebrew women in The Red Tent, to casually include the presence of female clergy.) Kathleen has no real confidante aside from her husband, Buddy; Joyce is facing estrangement from both her business-minded husband, Frank, and her soccer-obsessed daughter, Nina. What the women are lacking, they find in each other. As their intimacy grows, Diamant sometimes tells us what we already know, breaking into a conversation, for example, to announce how well things are going ("They smiled at each other. They were going to be okay."). This is a moving story nonetheless--short on incident, but with carefully drawn characters and fluid, matter-of-fact prose. --Regina Marler

About the Author:

Anita Diamant's first novel, THE RED TENT, was a Sunday Times bestseller for Pan and has been on bestseller lists worldwide - spending over 2 years on the New York Times list. Diamant lives in Massachusetts with her husband and daughter.

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