Before Everything
Autor Victoria Redelen Limba Engleză Paperback – 3 iul 2018
Descoperim în Before Everything o voce narativă care refuză sentimentalismul facil, alegând în schimb o observație atentă, aproape poetică, asupra felului în care timpul reconfigurează cele mai intime legături umane. Structura romanului nu urmărește doar declinul fizic al Annei, „scânteia” grupului, ci pendulează între prezentul marcat de îngrijirea paliativă și amintirile comune ale celor cinci femei care și-au spus, încă din clasa a șasea, „The Old Friends”. Victoria Redel reușește să surprindă acea dinamică unică a prieteniilor de decenii, unde loialitatea este deopotrivă „de fier și elastică”.
Fiecare personaj — de la Helen, pictorița care se pregătește de o nouă căsătorie, la Caroline, care gestionează criza de sănătate mintală a surorii sale — aduce în casa din Massachusetts un bagaj de dileme cotidiene care contrastează puternic cu iminența sfârșitului. Stilul are ceva din proza lui Catherine Newman în We All Want Impossible Things, fără să fie o imitație — acolo unde Newman mizează pe un umor tăios în fața pierderii, Redel alege o abordare mai contemplativă, o „eleghie a legăturilor de lungă durată” care amintește de temele explorate în lucrările sale anterioare, precum Swoon. Dacă în poeziile sale Redel interoga erosul și viața domestică, aici ea extinde această interogație asupra prieteniei privite ca motorul silențios al existenței. Este un roman despre alegerile pe care le facem atunci când timpul nu mai este o resursă infinită, scris cu o înțelepciune discretă care transformă o situație tragică într-o celebrare a vieții trăite la comun.
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 0735222592
Pagini: 306
Dimensiuni: 129 x 197 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.37 kg
Editura: Penguin Publishing Group
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De ce să citești această carte
Recomandăm Before Everything cititorilor care apreciază proza psihologică fină și romanele despre solidaritatea feminină. Este o lectură profundă pentru cei care au găsit confort în scrierile lui Ann Patchett sau Elizabeth Berg. Câștigul cititorului este o perspectivă onestă și plină de empatie asupra modului în care prietenia ne poate susține în cele mai dificile tranziții, oferind un amestec rar de umor și melancolie.
Despre autor
Victoria Redel este o scriitoare americană polivalentă, cunoscută atât pentru proza sa scurtă, cât și pentru volumele de poezie premiate. A studiat la Dartmouth College și Columbia University, iar în prezent predă scriere creativă la Sarah Lawrence College. Opera sa include romanul Loverboy, adaptat pentru marele ecran, și volumele de poezie Paradise și Swoon, în care explorează teme precum exilul, identitatea și intimitatea. Before Everything reprezintă consolidarea vocii sale în ficțiunea contemporană, fiind prima sa lucrare publicată în Marea Britanie.
Descriere scurtă
--Dani Shapiro, author of Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage Before Everything is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of women who have known each another since they were girls. They've faced everything together, from youthful sprees and scrapes to mid-life turning points. Now, as Anna, the group's trailblazer and brightest spark, enters hospice, they gather to do what they've always done--talk and laugh and help each other make choices and plans, this time in Anna's rural Massachusetts home. Helen, Anna's best friend and a celebrated painter, is about to remarry. The others face their own challenges--Caroline with her sister's mental health crisis; Molly with a teenage daughter's rebellion; Ming with her law practice--dilemmas with kids and work and love. Before Everything is as funny as it is bittersweet, as the friends revel in the hilarious mistakes they've seen one another through, the secrets kept, and adventures shared. But now all sense of time has shifted, and the pattern of their lives together takes on new meaning. The novel offers a brilliant, emotionally charged portrait, deftly conveying the sweep of time over everyday lives, and showing how even in difficult endings, gifts can unfold. Above all it is an ode to friendship, and to how one person shapes the journeys of those around her.
Descriere
A PRIMA BEST READ OF 2017
'At once tough and tender, funny and sad, this beautifully written novel articulates the dynamic realities of those wondrous friendships that last a lifetime.' Siri Hustvedt
Anna, Molly, Ming, Caroline, Helen: the Old Friends.
Since adopting their official name aged eleven, they have seen each other through careers, children, illnesses, marriage, divorce, addiction, fame, fall outs.
But now, Anna - fiercely loved mother and friend, and the Old Friends' glue - is diagnosed with cancer again, and this time, tired of recoveries and relapses, pitying looks and exhausting regimes, she simply says: no more.
As her health declines, the politics of the still lived-in world merge with memories of the past while each Old Friend tries to accept the truth of what is happening: they are losing someone they cannot imagine life without.
Before Everything is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of wonderful women.
End of sixth grade they made it their official name. It was a joke one afternoon but they liked the way it sounded. Permanent. The Old Friends. This way, the five girls agree, it's just a fact. And ours forever.
Recenzii
Terminal illness doesn't always bring out the best in people, nor does it preclude other sorrows. To find an honest and sympathetic reflection of both truths is refreshing.
Bittersweet
An extraordinary, touching and tender story about female friendship.
A riveting celebration of life and death.
Brings to mind Virginia Woolf's The Waves.
Poetic and insightful ... I have been blown away.
An unflinching and affecting look at how one woman's final days change the lives of those around her.
Before Everything turns on the grand themes, love and death. Redel's elegant narration unfolds not in linear time but in the time of memory, moving among the friends to reveal their shifting connections, needs, and circumstances. At once tough and tender, funny and sad, this beautifully written novel articulates the dynamic realities of those wondrous friendships that last a lifetime.
Before Everything is a riveting, timely story that explores the unsettlingly beautiful, emotionally charged landscape that is revealed when old friends embrace what they have never before admitted: the limits of mortality and the boundlessness of friendship.
Gorgeous, a heartbreaker, a non-stop dazzler, a major achievement.
Victoria Redel bears witness to a remarkable group of women, effortlessly weaving back and forth through time, each thread revealing the cracks and secrets of their complex lives, while also drawing them closer. . . . Redel proves that female friendship is the quiet, steady engine that truly runs the world.
I admire Victoria Redel's work for so many reasons-for its fearlessness, its complexity, its beauty-and Before Everything is one of the most brilliant, radiant, and heartbreaking books I've read in years. Redel's characters-fierce and funny, loyal and compassionate-feel as real and beloved as the people we hold dearest in our own lives. An extraordinary novel by one of the best writers we have.
A touching story of friendship and loss . . . richly realized. The result is an unflinching and affecting look at how one woman's final days change the lives of those around her.
Redel has crafted a lyrical ode to female friendship, proving that bonds can somehow be made of iron and elastic, sometimes strong and sometimes frail. She fleshes out the five main characters admirably for such a short book, linking each of their most vulnerable memories to their shared crisis. Fans of Anne Tyler and Jennifer Close will adore this warmhearted and clear-eyed novel.
End of sixth grade they made it their official name. It was a joke one afternoon but they liked the way it sounded. Permanent. The Old Friends. This way, the five girls agree, it's just a fact. And ours forever.
'Redel proves that female friendship is the quiet, steady engine that truly runs the world.'
Hannah Tinti, bestselling author of The Good Thief
'Smart, moving, sweeping, poetic, stinging, just beautiful.'
Dani Shapiro, author of Still Writing