A MAP OF THE WORLD - Scarce Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Jane Hamilton - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE

Hamilton, Jane

ISBN 10: 0385473109 / ISBN 13: 9780385473101

Published by New York City, NY: Doubleday, 1994, 1994

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 391 pages. Published in 1994. The author's second novel. One of Jane Hamilton's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the "Oprah Book Club"-stamped edition. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Jane Hamilton's "A Map of The World". A stunning exploration of how one careless moment can cause irrevocable and devastating change. "Alice Goodwin is caring for her best friend's children when two-year-old Lizzy Collins wanders to the pond on the Goodwin farm and drowns. The consequences of this tragedy reverberate through a small Wisconsin community, which never accepted Howard and Alice Goodwin. Jane Hamilton has removed all doubts that she belongs among the major writers of our time" (San Francisco Chronicle). An absolute "must-have" title for Jane Hamilton collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Jane Hamilton. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a late-modern classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award in 1989 for "The Book of Ruth". One of the finest American writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JANE HAMILTON TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0385473109. Seller Inventory # 10066

Bibliographic Details

Title: A MAP OF THE WORLD - Scarce Fine Copy of The...

Publisher: New York City, NY: Doubleday, 1994

Publication Date: 1994

Binding: Hardcover

Illustrator: 1 B/w Photograph (frontispiece)

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

Hamilton, Jane, Map Of The World, A

Review:

Oprah Book Club® Selection, December 1999: In A Map of the World, appearance overwhelms reality and communal hysteria threatens common sense. Howard and Alice Goodheart, the couple at the center of Jane Hamilton's 1994 novel, have labored mightily to create a pastoral paradise in a Wisconsin subdivision. Their 400-acre dairy farm is the last in Prairie Center, and they're working flat out to raise their two young girls in a traditionally bucolic manner. Yet paradoxically, they strike their neighbors as unacceptably modern, and have been treated as interlopers since the day of their arrival. Howard, in love with his vocation, chooses not to believe that they've been frozen out. But Alice, flinty and quick to judge, finds things harder. And her job as school nurse doesn't work wonders for her reputation either. Happily, there's one exception to this epidemic of unfriendliness: their closest neighbors. Theresa and Dan, who also have two young daughters, function as a virtual lifeline for the embattled family.

But in June 1990, whatever idyll the Goodhearts have worked for comes to a permanent end. On a beautiful morning--marred by her 5-year-old's tantrum but still recuperable--Alice looks forward to taking her children and Theresa's youngest for a swim. Distracted for several minutes, she has no idea that the 2-year-old is no longer in the house:

Lizzy had run to the pond and splashed in. It had felt good on her hot feet and she kept running and then she was pedaling and pedaling. She tried to grab hold of the water, pawing for the metal bar, a ladder rung, her mother, but there was nothing. She clutched and flailed.... She sank. The trout that Howard had stocked in the pond swam along through the dark water. They noticed Lizzy out of the corner of their eyes. They had inherited the knowledge of that look, and they knew it by heart.

This is only the first of Alice's body blows. Next, she's questioned about one of her students, a memorably bad seed. On the verge of collapse, she cries out, "I hurt everybody!"--which will later be construed as a confession. Charged with sexual abuse and unable to come up with $100,000 in bail, she is forced to await trial in jail.

Narrated first by Alice, then Howard, and then Alice again, A Map of the World moves from intimate domesticity to courtroom drama with grace and subtlety. Hamilton wrote her book when accusations of abuse in schools and day care were peaking, yet this is not a modish work or an "issue novel" but a lasting creation of several complex lives. At one point, fed up with civil mechanisms, Alice tells her lawyer: "'Let Oprah be the judge.... Let Robbie and me, Mrs. Mackessy, Howard, Theresa, Dan, Mrs. Glevitch--let all of us come before Oprah. Let the studio audience decide. They're nice suburban woman, many of them, dressed for a lark. They have common sense and speak their minds.'" Apparently La Winfrey was listening, since she chose this beautifully observed novel for her book club. --Kerry Fried