The White Palazzo - Softcover

Cooney, Ellen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566891345 ISBN 13: 9781566891349

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 2002

Synopsis

Days before her wedding, Tara Barlow ditches her fiancé and her hometown to head west in her prize Mustang after she discovers that her dream wedding venue—the White Cliffs—has burned down.

Tara’s alarmed family sends the town psychic, Guida, to find her. When she tracks Tara to a town full of Fellini-esque characters, the two find themselves surprised but requited in their mutual attraction. They immediately hit the road, attempting to live out the happy ending Thelma and Louise only dreamed about.

Ellen Cooney is the author of three novels. Her stories appear in The New Yorker, The Literary Review, and Story magazines. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About this title

About the Author

Ellen Cooney was born in Clinton, Massachusetts and attended Worcester State College and Clark University. Besides The White Palazzo, she is the author of three novels: Small Town Girl, All the Way Home, and The Old Ballerina. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Literary Review, Glimmer Train, and Fiction. They have also been listed several times in Best American Short Stories. She has taught creative writing at MIT and Harvard, and now lives in mid-coast Maine.

From Publishers Weekly

Quirky characters spend much of their time thinking disjointed thoughts and acting on scattered ideas in Cooney's likable but unfocused fourth novel (after The Old Ballerina). Tara Barlow is a young Massachusetts woman who has every aspect of her life planned down to the slightest detail, including her upcoming wedding. But when her chosen site for the nuptials burns to the ground four months before the big day, Tara calmly hops into her Mustang and takes off for parts unknown (" 'I'll go west,' she decided. 'I'll go west like the setting sun' "), leaving behind no clue to her whereabouts. She doesn't get much farther than the next town over before the book's viewpoint switches to that of Guida Santucci, the local psychic who is hired to track Tara down ("I was Italian, and I was Catholic, and I was fat. And one day, it was raining," begins Guida's narrative about her discovery of her oracular powers). Guida does manage to find Tara, although it is through old-fashioned detective work rather than third-eye divination. To the amazement of both the 53-year-old Guida and the 24-year-old Tara, a strong mutual attraction immediately develops. The novel is marred by Cooney's tendency to wander off the subject as the characters slip into frequent flashbacks. Though not everyone will go for Cooney's stylized cast of eccentrics, the affair between Guida and Tara is sweetly rendered and their dizzy interior lives possess a whimsical charm. (Sept.)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1566891345
• ISBN 13: 9781566891349
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200