Bitter Lake: A Novel - Hardcover

Ann Harleman

3.29

7 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870744046 ISBN 13: 9780870744044

Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ Pr, 1996

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In this novel set in a mill town with the tangled greenery of Pennsylvania's wooded hills as backdrop, Judith Hutchins and her daughters struggle with the latest disappearance of Gort—fisherman, astronomer, and sometime husband and father. Headstrong and severe, fourteen-year-old Lil cannot accept her father's absence or her mother's reaction to it. Judith, devoting herself to a new job to keep the family going, finds herself involved with a lover, while Lil takes matters into her own hands, determined to find her father and bring him to account.

Told in the alternating voices of Judith and Lil, the novel is a story of the resilience of love, of forgiveness in families, of the roundabout ways in which people connect.

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About the Author:

ANN HARLEMAN'S collection, Happiness, won the 1993 University of Iowa Short Fiction Award. She has been a Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellow and received a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award in 1991. She is a Research Associate in the American Civilization Department at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she makes her home.

From Library Journal:

Gort Hutchins has a history of leaving and then returning to his family when he becomes overwhelmed by the responsibilities of life. This time, his disappearance seems more permanent and has a profound effect on his wife, Judith, and daughter, Lil. Stubborn, independent, and full of teenage angst, Lil is determined to prove herself faithful to her father's memory. Judith, however, has long since accepted the fact that the essence of Gort has been lost to her for years. Ironically, as Lil tries to prove her herself different from Judith, she falls into the same pattern from which Gort and Judith need to escape. Harleman (Happiness, LJ 3/1/94) uses the tension between Judith and Lil to explore themes of abandonment, loss, and acceptance. A well-written debut by a writer of promise; recommended.?Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Sudbury, Ont.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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