Secret Harmonies - Hardcover

Barrett, Andrea

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385297718 ISBN 13: 9780385297714

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1989

Synopsis

Fine in very good dust jacket (short closed tears to dj, some rubbing and wear.) Hardcover first edition - New York:: Delacorte,, (1989.). Hardcover first edition -. Fine in very good dust jacket (short closed tears to dj, some rubbing and wear.). First printing. Second novel by this National Book Award winner, and the first published in hardcover. Set in rural Western Massachusetts. 245 pp.

About this title

Reviews

Poignant and atmospheric, this book honors the promise of Lucid Stars , Barrett's well-received first novel. Charismatic Reba Dwyer, flanked and buttressed by brother Hank, a shy, late bloomer, sister Tonia, who has Down's Syndrome, and best friend Luke Wyatt, hangs out in meager Massachusetts hill country until she meets Jessie Thayer, a girl with framed pictures on her walls, matching linens and dotted-swiss bedspreads. Ignoring past alliances, Reba joins Jessie in disreputable escapades and, when the friendship flounders, escapes to urban respectability. But her fellow conservatory students find Reba oddly feral, so, when she is summoned home because her father has left, Reba embraces her heritage, becomes pregnant, marries Luke, and has shallow affairs to distract herself from the fact that, like her father, who absorbs life as sounds, she must come to terms with inner music. Elegant, accessible writing transforms Reba's potentially trite passage from self-denial to self-acceptance into fine reading. First serial to Mademoiselle.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Just sing the melody, Reba had said. I'll pick up the harmony. But he couldn't sing." So there will be neither melody nor harmony in her marriage with Luke, her best friend from childhood. Reba, who hears the wind sing in A-minor chords and the radiator hum in E, cannot hear the devotion or pain in the voice of her husband. Beginning with a marvelous evocation of autumn in New England and an eccentric, musical family, the book segues into just another story about a self-centered, cheating wife. Even her host of whimsical, lovable relatives cannot quite save Reba--or the book. What a disappointment, especially after Barrett's successful debut with Lucid Stars ( LJ 10/1/89).
- Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385297718
• ISBN 13: 9780385297714
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 245