Be Safe I Love You - Softcover

Cara Hoffman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349004153 ISBN 13: 9780349004150

Publisher: Virago, 2015

Synopsis

Be Safe I Love You

About this title

About the Author:

Cara Hoffman is the author of the critically acclaimed 2011 novel So Much Pretty. She grew up in northern Appalachia, where she dropped out of high school to work full time. Hoffman spent three years travelling and working as an agricultural labourer in Europe and the Middle East. She returned to the US, had a baby and found a job delivering newspapers which eventually led to work as a reporter covering environmental politics and crime. She has been a visiting writer at St. John's, Columbia and Oxford, where she lectured on Violence and Masculinity for the Rhodes Global Scholars Symposium. Hoffman lives in Manhattan and teaches writing and literature at Bronx Community College.

Review:

Thoughtful, subtle and tense * Sunday Times * Unflinching . . . Hoffman's skill is to embed her sleek sentences with hard-hitting themes . . . a vivid depiction of life for a female warrior -- Anita Sethi * Observer * A finely crafted and intelligent piece of fiction whose characters feel immediately real * Daily Mail * A finely tuned piece of fiction . . . Be Safe I Love You is a painful exploration of the devastation wrought by combat even when the person returns from war without a scratch. The story - written with such lucid detail it's hard to believe the main character is an invention - suggests the damage starts long before the soldier reports for duty . . . In crystalline language that conveys both the desolation of the Iraqi desert and the north country of New York State . . . this book is a reminder that art and love are all that can keep us from despair -- Alissa J. Rubin * New York Times Book Review * A tense and stunning novel . . . exactly what a war novel should be: a tale of refreshing honesty about the harm war does to us all -- Helen Benedict * Guardian * Through Lauren, Cara Hoffman's thoroughly researched and carefully crafted heroine, Be Safe I Love You illuminates the distaff side of military service and the ways that life in uniform are at once different and, at times, uncannily similar for men and women * Washington Post * Beautifully written and heart-wrenching * Marie Clarie * Be Safe I Love You is so much more than a thriller; it's a novel about family and sacrifice, loss and redemption. Hoffman proves that words are often the real tools of survival in this flawed but still often golden world * Miami Herald * It would be a mistake to understand Be Safe, I Love You only as a war novel. This is also a book about broken families and class and the impossible choices the working poor are too often forced to make . . . Deeply moving and gorgeously written - raw in some places, tender in others . . . We see how a woman's life is shaped by experiencing war as a soldier . . . It is refreshing and so necessary to see a writer exploring this shift in fiction, addressing the unique sacrifices women must sometimes make * Buzzfeed * Hoffman's prose is near perfect: intense and imaginative, each sentence heavy with meaning without feeling overwritten. She balances the tightrope of not flinching away from violence, but also not lovingly describing it . . . you'll find Be Safe I Love You to be brave, intelligent and unflinching * The List *

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0349004153
• ISBN 13: 9780349004150
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336