Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories

The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories
The Best Place to Be A Novel in Stories
Author: Lesley Dormen
"I looked out the window and was filled with contentment. I was on a train. There was no landscape, ugly or beautiful, to demand my attention . . . None of the passengers within my view were badly dressed. I had the right book with me . . . I was happily married but alone, nothing in the immediate past to regret, nothing in the immediate futu...  more »At fifty, Grace Hanford has lived long enough to be a daughter, a stepdaughter, a girlfriend, a sister, a sister-in-law, a wife, a stepmother, and an orphan. She has fallen in and out of love -- with troublesome men, with her glamorous mother, with her wild best friend, and with New York City -- more times than she can count. Still, Grace is more comic than melancholic, and a gifted confessor. She lives life as if every day is a movie in which her role is yet to be determined -- and her audience loves her for it.In The Best Place to Be, we follow Grace from her fatherless childhood through her years at an all-girls college to adulthood in the city and her many dating escapades (and escapes) as an urban sophisticate. Wherever she may be, Grace tries to find her place in the world with humor and the blunt surprise of truth. And always, in the background, there is Grace's mother, brother, and the man she could or might or will call husband, out of reach -- until she reaches.In the tradition of Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, The Best Place to Be is at once funny, moving, and deeply provocative, a love letter to the self-determined woman that shimmers with hilarious insight and graceful wit.
The Market's bargain prices are even better for Paperbackswap club members!
Retail Price: $14.00
Buy New (Paperback): $11.69 (save 16%) or
Become a PBS member and pay $7.79+1 PBS book credit Help icon(save 44%)
ISBN-13: 9781416532620
ISBN-10: 1416532625
Publication Date: 4/22/2008
Pages: 192
Rating:
  • Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
 4

3.3 stars, based on 4 ratings
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review
Read All 1 Book Reviews of "The Best Place to Be A Novel in Stories"

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

reviewed The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories on + 7 more book reviews
An interesting collection of stories about different ages throughout the author's life. Dormen has a very interesting way of interweaving narratives in a stream-of-consciousness prose style. While the prose is very carefully constructed, at times I was lost within the rambling voice and at other times this style kept me at arm's length from connecting emotionally with the material. Overall, worth a read, but for me not all that captivating.


Genres: