Anywhere but Here

by Mona Simpson

Paperback, 1992

Status

Available

Series

Mayan (1)

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Vintage (1992), Edition: Reissue, Paperback, 544 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:A national bestseller�??adapted into a movie starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon�??Anywhere But Here is the heart-rending tale of a mother and daughter. A moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer, the novel follows the two women as they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions. A brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation, Anywhere But Here is a story about the things we do for love, and a powerful study of familial

User reviews

LibraryThing member mojomomma

Half the dysfunction STILL would have been too much. This book was such a downer. Adele, the mother, was a complete flake. Ann, her daughter, always overcomes--somehow or other. Author sometimes abruptly changes the course of action. There were several times I thought I had turned ,multiple pages

and lost the plot line, but no. I was reading consecutive pages, just another random plot twist from nowhere.

Show Less

5 more

LibraryThing member bookheaven

None of the characters were sympathetic. Mother is weird and neurotic.

LibraryThing member siubhank

Ann August’ mother refuses to be ordinary...the very thing that her adolescent daughter longs for most. Adele August, mother of Ann, is a high spirited woman who doesn't fit the profile of a mom. "Strangers always love my mother," Ann tells us early on. Ann is sometimes torn between loving and

hating her mother, as are most teen-age girls, but most mothers aren’t grandiose, manipulative, and narcissistic. Ann states,”it’s always people like my mother who start the noise, and bang things, who make you feel the worst; they are the ones who get your love.” ; which by common knowledge is the response pattern of most abused people and animals for that matter.
Adele yearns for a life in California, where life will be beautiful and Ann will become a famous television star. But her lifelong dream and goal turns out, like many things in the Augusts' lives, to be lackluster when it becomes reality.
She pushes Ann towards a direction she thinks will be great for her, wanting to give her daughter a life she didn't have. She forces Ann to become the adult and to be the one to think logically.
Anywhere But Here is dense with misery and amazement all tangled together--a realistic and thus rare portrait of love.

Show Less

LibraryThing member ennie

A mother with big dreams moves with her daughter from Wisconsin to Beverly Hills. It took forever to get through this meandering story told from different characters' viewpoints. Maybe the movie is more compelling.

LibraryThing member briannad84

I've had this book for years and decided to read it cause it was in Nancy Pearl's Book Lust. There were some parts that were okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of this book. The mother, Adele August, drove me nuts! I hated this woman and I've seen women similar to her in real-life! A girl back in high

school did an essay/project on it and she thought it was funny. I didn't find it to be really funny at all, and I was expecting it to be a bit different.

Show Less

LibraryThing member leah152

This was an interesting read! I picked this up on a whim when I saw it in Bonnie's Op Shop, I had no idea the movie that came out in the late 00's was based on a book.
We follow the story of Ann & her single-mother Adele as they make their way across America from Wisconsin to California so Ann can

become a child star before it's too late.
At the beginning of the book, I felt really sorry for Ann as she's subjected to Adele's flighty ways & whims. Actually I felt sorry for her through most of the book because you get the sense that Ann doesn't really get much of a say in the decision making process. She just blindly follows her Mum as kids do because she's her mum. And as the story unfolds I was left wondering what happened to Adele to make her so flighty & hare-brained. I never really figured that out...
Through the first half of the story I felt really displaced as Ann would bounce back & forth between her childhood in Wisconsin & the present in California. Later on things start to fall into place but it wasn't until the last quarter of the story I actually started to feel a bit more comfortable & understand the hows & whys of the story.
Anyway, as stories go, even though it made me extremely uncomfortable it's a good story & really is a good eaxmple of family life if a little over dramatic.

Show Less

Fewer