![]() ![]() One day, while working at an orphanage, a paraffin-soaked rat escaped from Joe’s grip before he could throw it into a bonfire with the other rodents. Father Gaunt gives Joe Clear a job as a rat-catcher instead. Father Gaunt later fired him from the job for helping the anti-treaty rebel, John Lavelle, bury his murdered brother, Willie Lavelle. ![]() In her youth, Roseanne trailed along with her father, Joe, when he served as superintendent at Sligo’s Catholic cemetery. John Kane, the custodian at the asylum, also looks after Roseanne. Grene is eager to question Roseanne to learn more about her, but he doesn’t want to offend her because of his fondness for her. The narrative shifts between these two characters, whose seemingly disparate lives converge as the novel progresses. Grene writes his observations of her in his commonplace book. While Roseanne writes her personal history, or “testimony,” Dr. ![]()
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![]() They reveal marriages splintered when shared assumptions diverge parents wearied by their children’s demands but ambivalent when they cease the struggle to give up comforting illusions and face reality-but then again, don’t we all construct our own realities? (That question, unsurprisingly, especially preoccupies her younger students.) As they pour forth the particulars of their lives, the narrator sparingly doles out some of hers while coping with texts and phone calls from her needy sons. It’s the first of many keening conversation she has with her students, Greek friends and fellow writers. “So much is lost…in the shipwreck,” he says mournfully. After learning the narrator is divorced, he tells her about his own marital misadventures. ![]() The nameless narrator is on a plane from London to Athens to teach a summer writing course when an older Greek man begins to confide in her about his unhappy childhood. ![]() ![]() Following an off-key memoir ( Aftermath, 2012), Cusk returns to fiction and top form in a novel about the stories we tell ourselves and others. ![]() ![]() Catherine McCoy, a suffragette, fights for women's freedom and independence, and especially for her sister, Myrtle Wilson, who's trapped in a terrible marriage. Jordan Baker, Daisy's best friend, guards a secret that derailed her promising golf career and threatens to ruin her friendship with Daisy as well. Daisy Buchanan once thought she might marry Gatsby-before her family was torn apart by an unspeakable tragedy that sent her into the arms of the philandering Tom Buchanan. ![]() Each holds a key that can unlock the truth to the mysterious life and death of this enigmatic millionaire. Then a diamond hairpin is discovered in the bushes by the pool, and three women fall under suspicion. ![]() To the police, it appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide when the body of George Wilson, a local mechanic, is found in the woods nearby. ![]() ![]() On a sultry August day in 1922, Jay Gatsby is shot dead in his West Egg swimming pool. USA Today bestselling author Jillian Cantor reimagines and expands on the literary classic The Great Gatsby in this atmospheric historical novel with echoes of Big Little Lies, told in three women's alternating voices. ![]() |