Diana stands before the mirror, preening with her best friend, Maureen. Suddenly, a classmate enters holding a gun, and seventeen-year-old Diana sees her life dance before her eyes. In a moment, the future she was just imagining is sealed by a horrific decision she is forced to make.
The novel takes us through Diana’s uncertain steps into womanhood—her awkward, heated forays into sex, her fresh, fragile construction of an identity, and her equally tenuous steps as an adult, protecting her beloved daughter and holding onto her successful husband.
Laura Kasischke has crafted a story of consciousness that encompasses the truth of a teenager’s world and the profound transformation of that world at midlife. Resonant and deeply stirring, this novel finds piercing beauty in the midst of a nightmare that echoes like a dirge beneath each new spring.
From Carrington MacDuffie's first words, spoken in the tone of a preppy sorority girl, listeners are located squarely in Middle America. What's more, it's not as boring as one might expect. The combination of writer and narrator sucks us in. The story itself makes quick shifts back and forth over a twenty-year time span in which the protagonist, Diana, grows from an adolescent who sees her best friend murdered in a high school massacre to a grown woman who becomes a mother. MacDuffie handles the transitions with surprising ease. One wishes the novel itself offered the same pleasures, but after what seems endless pursuit of its heavy-handed theme, the last hour of the story strains too hard for the surreal. R.R. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
Chicago Tribune...
Mesmerizing.
About the Author
Laura Kasischke is the author of three novels and three collections of poetry. Her numerous awards include the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Bobst Award for emerging writers. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan.
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