Sheryl O. (Everett-Reader) reviewed on + 216 more book reviews
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter. Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, this emotional and physical trespass brings disgrace to Amy's mother, Isabelle, and intensifies the shame she feels about her own past. In a fury, she lashes out at her daughter's beauty and then retreats into outraged silence. Amy withdraws, too, and mother and daughter eat, sleep, and even work side by side but remain at a vast, seemingly unbridgeable distance from each other. This conflict is surrounded by other large and small dramas in the town of Shirley Falls -- a teenage pregnancy, a UFO sighting, a missing child, and the trials of Fat Bev, the community's enormous (and enormously funny and compassionate) peacemaker and amateur medical consultant.
SYNOPSIS
A much talked about first novel that explores the secrets that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter.
FROM THE CRITICS
Mademoiselle
If you read one book all year, let it be this exquisite first novel.
New Yorker
Unflaggingly engaging...What a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book.
Jeff Giles
Lovely, powerful. Newsweek
Time Magazine
Strout's insights into the complex psychology between [mother and daughter] result in a poignant tale about two comings of age.
Vanessa V. Friedman
...[I]n Strout's sure hands[the central revelatory] truth isn't awful butin factrevelatory. Entertainment Weekly
Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter. Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, this emotional and physical trespass brings disgrace to Amy's mother, Isabelle, and intensifies the shame she feels about her own past. In a fury, she lashes out at her daughter's beauty and then retreats into outraged silence. Amy withdraws, too, and mother and daughter eat, sleep, and even work side by side but remain at a vast, seemingly unbridgeable distance from each other. This conflict is surrounded by other large and small dramas in the town of Shirley Falls -- a teenage pregnancy, a UFO sighting, a missing child, and the trials of Fat Bev, the community's enormous (and enormously funny and compassionate) peacemaker and amateur medical consultant.
SYNOPSIS
A much talked about first novel that explores the secrets that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter.
FROM THE CRITICS
Mademoiselle
If you read one book all year, let it be this exquisite first novel.
New Yorker
Unflaggingly engaging...What a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book.
Jeff Giles
Lovely, powerful. Newsweek
Time Magazine
Strout's insights into the complex psychology between [mother and daughter] result in a poignant tale about two comings of age.
Vanessa V. Friedman
...[I]n Strout's sure hands[the central revelatory] truth isn't awful butin factrevelatory. Entertainment Weekly
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