Shadow Baby (Today Show Book Club #14) - Softcover

Alison McGhee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312423772 ISBN 13: 9780312423773

Publisher: Picador, 2003

Synopsis

Eleven-year-old Clara is struggling to find the truth about her missing father and grandfather and her dead twin sister, but her mother refuses to talk. When Clara begins interviewing Georg Kominsky--her elderly neighbor--she finds that he is equally reticent about his own concealed history. Precocious and imaginative, Clara invents versions of Mr. Kominsky's past, just as she invents lives for the people missing from her own shadowy history. Her journey of discovery is at the heart of this beautiful story about unlikely friendship and communion, about discovering what matters most in life, and about the search to find the missing pieces of ourselves.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"At last, a heroine to root for! In this charming novel, Alison McGhee has opened a new window on childhood."
-- Hilma Wolitzer

"Bright, funny, and almost spookily imaginative, Clara, by her own admission, is a student of the laws of nature, an expert in the ways of hermits and pioneers, an 'apprentice' to life. That she is also eleven years old is probably the least important fact about her; she's an old soul. With a mother who doesn't talk and a father who never existed, she manages to fashion a version of her own history that she can live with, at the same time that she chronicles a life for her best friend, Georg Kominsky, a retired metalworker who lives in Nine Mile Trailer Park. Clara, the yarn-spinner, lover of words and of happy endings, takes on the secrets of her past with wit and ferocity. Alison McGhee, with her seductive, almost hypnotic prose, has created a heroine that one simply must love."
--Judith Guest

"McGhee writes about childhood and old age with equal skill and grace. Poignant and bittersweet, her novel has life on every page."
--William Gay

From the Inside Flap

spies him through the crack in the stained-glass window of her church, lighting a string of handmade lanterns in the Adirondack woods. A lone old man, Georg Kominsky moves stealthily among the shadow world of his hanging, glittering creations.

In Alison McGhee's stunning novel Shadow Baby, eleven-year-old Clara is struggling to find the truth about her missing father and grandfather and her twin sister, dead at birth, but her mother steadfastly refuses to talk about these people who are lost to her daughter. When Clara begins interviewing Georg Kominsky for a school biography assignment, she finds that he is equally reticent about his own concealed history. Precocious and imaginative, the girl invents version upon version of Mr. Kominsky's past, just as she invents lives for the people missing from her own shadowy past.

The journey of discovery that these two oddly matched people embark upon is at the heart of this beautiful story about friendship and communion,

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312423772
• ISBN 13: 9780312423773
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243