Ruby - Hardcover

Hood, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312195532 ISBN 13: 9780312195533

Publisher: Picador USA, 1998

Synopsis

Following the tragic death of her husband, Olivia, a grieving New York City milliner, desperately struggles to rebuild her life, until she meets Ruby, a young, pregnant delinquent abandoned by her family, who takes up residence in Olivia's Rhode Island beach house. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Ann Hood is the author of six other novels: RUBY (Picador USA), WAITING TO VANISH, THREE LEGGED HORSE, SOMETHING BLUE, PLACES TO STAY THE NIGHT, and THE PROPERTIES OF WATER. She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and two children.

From the Inside Flap

After the tragic death of her husband of barely one year, Olivia, a milliner from New York City, must begin rebuilding her life. Ordinarily a vivacious and strong woman, she finds herself unable to surmount her grief...until she meets Ruby.

Young, pregnant, and delinquent, Ruby trespasses and enters the seemingly uninhabited Rhode Island beach house in which Olivia and her late husband had planned to build their life together. Abandoned by her family, Ruby has no home and seems far too immature to care for the baby Olivia so strongly desires. With her eye on the adoption of the newborn, Olivia offers the rebellious teen a place to stay.

An unlikely friendship is forged as Olivia nurtures Ruby and her unborn child and experiences the daily challenges presented by a wayward teen, who may or may not teach Olivia how to live again.

Reviews

Packed with convincing detail and effortless description, Hood's tale of romance and loss mixes the venerable with the vulgar and brings the adult world into vibrant contact with adolescence. Thirty-seven-year-old Lower East Side milliner Olivia meets and marries the love of her life only to lose him, less than a year later, to a reckless teenager speeding around a blind corner. Weakened by grief and unable to make peace with her husband's killer, Olivia retreats to the couple's summer house, which is soon invaded by another teenager, this time a trespasser: the manipulative, precocious and pregnant title character. The relationship that develops between the two women?first wary, then needy, finally loving?is the substance of this rich and well-imagined story. With equal ease, Hood (The Properties of Water) describes Olivia dancing alone to a Louis Armstrong/Ella Fitzgerald duet in her St. Mark's Place hat shop, and Ruby, a smart, poor kid from Rhode Island who covets the sophistication and luxury she sees around her. Though Ruby sometimes seems older than her age, she is every inch a 15-year-old when she worries that her swelled stomach makes her look like John Candy and claims that she's had a sordid affair with her stylish French teacher. Hood writes with authority and humor, blending the moneyed scenery of great New England fiction with the sweet audacity of a paperback barn burner. Along the way, her observations about widows and divorcees, gestation and childbearing, fashion magazines and overcooked risotto make for disarming and ultimately affecting entertainment. Agent, Gail Hochman; author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Picador plans a simultaneous release of Somewhere off the Coast of Maine in paperback.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

paper 0-312-19555-9 A widow and a teenager form a friendship that helps both move ahead with their lives. Livia meets David when he walks into her East Village hat shop as she's dancing alone to the strains of ``They Can't Take That Away from Me.'' Four months later, the newlyweds marry at City Hall, accompanied by Olivia's cat Arthur dressed in a custom-made top hat. They settle into cozy domesticity, buying a beach house in Rhode Island, painting each other's toenails, reveling in their shared love for Stickley chairs, Leonard Cohen songs, and Disneyland (``but not Disney World''). The extreme preciosity of this version of marital bliss makes it hard to share Olivia's devastation when, a scant year later, David is hit by a car while joggingespecially since Hoods depiction of mourning is as schematic as her characterizations. The story picks up, however, when Olivia discovers 15-year-old Ruby sitting in the kitchen of the beach house. Pregnant and unmarried, Ruby has been thrown out by her working-class mother; her college-student boyfriend seems unlikely to provide much support, either. Olivia decides that adopting Rubys baby will give her a reason to go on living, and Ruby agrees to the plan, though it's clear that this believably flaky teenager can't be relied on to stick to any decision. Hood makes nice use of physical detail to show Olivia slowly regaining her appetite for lifedue less to impending motherhood than to her growing fondness for Ruby, who also gains a new sense of the possibilities open to her from observing Olivia's more privileged existence. The storys unexpectedly touching denouement commendably resists the temptation to provide easy, feel-good resolutions. Not the most profound exploration of grief and loss, but once past the cutesy set-up, veteran Hood (Places to Stay the Night, 1993, etc.) provides a solid tale and several genuinely affecting moments. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In the year since her husband David was hit by a car and killed while jogging at their Rhode Island summer place, Olivia hasn't come to terms with his senseless death. She's the "consumed by grief" poster child, disturbed that he'd gone jogging when she'd turned away from lovemaking that fateful morning. She's about to sell the summer house when Ruby, a pregnant, 15-year-old runaway, arrives on her doorstep. The teen's a hard case: sullen, deceptive, manipulative, pot-smoking, and a thief. But she's carrying what Olivia wants, the baby she and David never got around to making. Hood's deft characterizations and insight into tangled motivations make for brisk, realistic storytelling. She's Barbara Kinsolver without the whimsy. Olivia and Ruby, both troubled souls, aren't easy to like, and the ending's fittingly anticlimactic. The author of five previous, critically acclaimed novels, her Somewhere Off The Coast Of Maine will be re-released simultaneously with Ruby. Recommended for all libraries.? Jo Manning, formerly Reader's Digest Lib., Miami Beach
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312195532
• ISBN 13: 9780312195533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 225