One Heart - Softcover

Jane McCafferty

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0732268389 ISBN 13: 9780732268381

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia, 2000

Synopsis

Imprint. From the award-winning author of the acclaimed short story collection "Director of the World" comes this stunning debut novel - a charmingly poignant, razor-sharp tale of two sisters and the depths and consequnces of love that is reminiscent of the works of Anne Tyler, Louis Erdrich and Barbara Kingsolver.

About this title

About the Author

Jane McCafferty is the author of the novel One Heart and two collections of stories, Thank You for the Music and Director of the World and Other Stories, which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. She is the recipient of an NEA award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. She lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

From Kirkus Reviews

Loneliness is the dominant emotion in this sad, sensitive first novel by the author of a previous story collection (Director of the World, 1992). Its not that McCaffertys characters are isolated, alienated individuals; they live in an intricate web of family relations revolving around the tension-riddled bond of Ivy and Gladys, who, when the story opens in 1978, are middle-aged sisters working as cooks in an upstate New York camp/school for troubled rich kids. The author deftly moves her narrative backward to their childhood and forward to the present in chapters related (in nicely distinct voices) by each of the sisters; Gladyss ex-husband, James; and her much younger friend, Raelene. It seems that Jamess arrival shattered the sisters youthful intimacy, which appeared to have withstood their fathers blatant favoring of Gladys, and that the accidental drowning of Ann, James and Gladyss preschool daughter, broke her mothers spirit in a way that would never be put right. Gladys, always disinclined to communicate, becomes even more resistant to Ivys attempt to get close, displaying something like contempt for her sisters efforts to put a good face on a world Gladys sees as cruel and meaningless. Yet Gladys cant entirely resist the neediness of Raelene, daughter of a clinically depressed mother and drug-addicted father who arrives at Camp Timber as a teenaged counselor after years of correspondence initiated when Raelene began wearing a bracelet with the name of Jamess POW son (later revealed to be dead). This is a story about loss and the pain of love that never seems to reach the right person at the right time, but a strain of dark humor and appreciation for natural beauty keeps it from unrelieved grimness. McCafferty makes us care for her troubled characters, each a fully rounded, complex individual. Her themes are evident, yet always grounded particulars. Strong work from a writer to watch. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0732268389
• ISBN 13: 9780732268381
• Binding: Paperback