Attachment: A Novel - Softcover

Fonseca, Isabel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554683505 ISBN 13: 9781554683505

Publisher: Harpercollins Canada, 2009

Synopsis

Reaching into the most confounding precincts of the human heart,Attachmentis a bold and thoughtful fiction debut that spans the Indian Ocean, London and New York. Jean Hubbard is a syndicated health columnist; her husband, Mark, a successful advertising executive. After more than 20 years together, they revel in a sabbatical on a remote tropical island. But when Jean opens an erotically charged email intended for Mark, she realizes that she has misdiagnosed some acute pathologies in her own life. The long idyll of the couple's mutual ease is over -- and a more vivid quest has just begun.
Searching for answers, Jean goes undercover, with a surreptitious correspondence that propels her on to alarming, and illuminating, adventures of her own in her adopted home of London and her native New York.

Assured, funny, tender and provocative,Attachmentis a dazzling first novel. Unflinching in its depiction of desire and of the responsibility that comes with age and family,Attachmentexplores the impulses that colour our lives even as they expose the true nature of love.

About this title

About the Author:

Isabel Fonseca was born and raised in New York City. She was educated at Barnard College and Oxford University. Since the early 1980s, she has made her home mostly in England, where she worked in publishing and then as an editor at theTimes Literary Supplement. Her journalism has appeared in a wide range of publications, from The Guardian andThe Wall Street JournaltoThe New YorkerandVogue. She lives in London with her husband, Martin Amis, and their two daughters.

Review:

“A gracefully written novel about aging, parents and children, and the mystery that even married partners can be to each other.” —The New York Times“Fonseca possesses a wonderful eye and vocabulary for the observable world [and] a natural gift for portraiture... She also regularly notices things men might wish women didn't notice, though in other quarters might wish they did. All, though, is perfectly suited to her complex subject - one worth taking seriously: the difficulty of loving someone you already love, and its corollary, the stony impenetrability of others.” —Richard Ford“Fonseca's vivisection of matrimony and desire is cruelly exacting.” —The New Yorker“Fearless. . . . Fonseca shows off a vicious humor and an unsparing prose style in this ink-dark foray into marriage's murkier precincts.” —Vogue"[Attachment is a] savvy, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tender voyage into one woman's midlife crisis [with] a surprisingly refreshing denouement...It's a great read."—Sally Valongo, The Toledo Blade"Just thinking of this novel, I smile. Attachment was so gratifyingly readable. It is plot-rich, which most literary novels are not: an airport novel with an agreeably sophisticated air. This is Isabel Fonseca’s first novel, and she seems born to the fictional trade...When it comes to deciphering our new world and its emotional intricacies, Fonseca is spot on." —Fay Weldon, Financial Times"Fonseca charts Jean's emotional temperature and her thought processes with brisk lucidity. And she excels at the art of description—of car rides through the streets of London and around a poor but lushly flowering island; of shaving a bed-ridden parent; of examining one's husband with a loving but honest eye." —Misha Berson, The Seattle Times“An astute observer of human behavior, both real and imagined, [and] a literary heavyweight...Fonseca ultimately transforms the familiar into the foreign, forcing both her characters and her readers to examine their unquestioned perceptions about who they and their loved ones really are.” —Chelsea Bauch, Time Out New York"Not only smart but smart in a pleasing and all-too-uncommon way: It's insightful about grown-ups in the throes of grown-up emotions...Fonseca is commendably clearheaded and unsentimental about the nature of attachment, particularly in long-standing relationships." —Adelle Waldman, New York Sun“A confident, smart first novel [with] a story that seems personal and deeply felt...Fonseca is especially adept at making middle age look shockingly similar to adolescence [in] all its corporeal and sexual insecurities.” —Helen Schulman, The New York Times Book Review“Fonseca's exploration of middle-aged displacement, both mental and physical, is intelligent, nuanced and immensely satisfying...as fruity and delicious as the cocktails served on the fictional tropical island where it's primarily set.” —Alexandra Jacobs, New York Observer“An acerbic, funny, and maddening coming-of-wisdom novel...Fonseca’s frank takes on sexuality, sexism, age, and how fear undermines love are canny and tonic.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review“Meandering and thoughtful...Intense and realistic, full of sexual imagery and churning emotion.” —Library Journal“A compelling fiction debut...Fonseca’s nonfiction Bury Me Standing drew a vivid portrait of the international Gypsy community, and she shifts locales and emotional registers with evocative ease here, delving deeply into her ensemble’s motivations. She’s as unsparing of their flaws as she is frank about their desires...A dramatic demonstration of the limits of attachment.” —Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins Canada
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1554683505
• ISBN 13: 9781554683505
• Binding: Paperback