Suddenly - Hardcover

Burnard, Bonnie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002254948 ISBN 13: 9780002254946

Publisher: Phyllis Bruce Books, 2009

Synopsis

The long-awaited novel from the Giller Prize winning, #1 bestselling author of A Good House a novel with the power to change the way women, and men, understand one another.

A phone call in the night, an unexpected diagnosis suddenly, life can change forever. sandra, Colleen and Jude have been friends for nearly a lifetime. They share sexual secrets, decorating tips, counsel on marriage, even a hairdresser. Despite their differences and occasional snarls, the friendship only grows stronger over time, and their partners, Jack, Richard and Gus, go along with it, letting this union shape their lives. Now, with sandra’s crisis, everyone must find a way to endure the present and imagine the future. sweeping through and beyond the second half of the 20th century from men in space to 9/11 the novel creates an astonishingly intimate portrait of three women balanced on the knife edge of middle age.

Impossibly, if the men on Mir could look down through their window on the world and see this beach in southern Ontario, in the northern hemisphere of the spinning blue earth, it would be Rachel who caught their attention. Right there, one of them would say, pointing down from the impossible distance. A girl, glowing on that beach. Waving like mad.
From Suddenly

About this title

About the Author:

 

 

Bonnie Burnard is a past winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best First Book Award for her first collection of short stories, Women of Influence. Her second collection, Casino & Other Stories, was nominated for a Giller Prize and was awarded the Saskatchewan Best Book of the Year Award. She was also the recipient of the 1995 Marian Engel Award, given to honor a woman writer in mid-career. Born in southern Ontario, she lived for many years in Regina and now lives in London, Ontario.

Bonnie Burnard’s Casino & Other Stories was shortlisted for the inaugural Giller Prize and won the Saskatchewan Best Book Award. Her first story collection, Women of Influence, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Her first novel, A Good House, won The Giller Prize and the CBA People’s Choice Award and was published around the world in many languages. A recipient of the Marian Engle Award, Burnard lives in London, Ontario.

From Booklist:

Sandra, Colleen, and Jude have been close friends throughout much of their adult lives. Now in their sixties, they and their spouses share many treasured experiences between them and had planned on many more ahead, but Sandra is dying. Now in her final days, she wants desperately to give these best-loved friends something they can hold onto for the rest of their lives. Together they revisit the past, from the painful moments to the joyful ones, rediscovering all the things that brought them together. In the wake of Sandra’s death, though, Colleen and Jude face emotional trials that affect them as individuals as well as their relationships to each other and their spouses. Moving fluidly between the friends’ current viewpoints and flashbacks, Burnard (The Good House, 1999) captures the emotional complexity and confusion of losing a loved one. Instead of focusing solely on the pain of loss, she instills a note of hopefulness. With believable characters and a heartwarming message, this story about families, the ones we’re born with and the ones we choose, is a deeply moving, thought-provoking read. --Cortney Ophoff

About this edition

• Publisher: Phyllis Bruce Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0002254948
• ISBN 13: 9780002254946
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336