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Fiction. Literature. HTML:Before there was Olive Kitteridge, there was Amy and Isabelle�?� �??A novel of shining integrity and humor, about the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life.�?��??Alice Munro Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Strout�??s bestselling and award winning debut, Amy and Isabelle�??adapted for television by Oprah Winfrey�?? evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother�??and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's sexual secrets. In most ways, Isabelle and Amy are like any mother and her 16-year-old daughter, a fierce mix of love and loathing exchanged in their every glance. That they eat, sleep, and work side by side in the gossip-ridden mill town of Shirley Falls�??a location fans of Strout will recognize from her critically acclaimed novel, The Burgess Boys�??only increases the tension. And just when it appears things can't get any worse, Amy's sexuality begins to unfold, causing a vast and icy rift between mother and daughter that will remain unbridgeable unless Isabelle examines her own secretive and shameful past. A Reader's Guide is included in the paperback edition of this powerful first novel by the author who brought Olive Kitterid… (more)
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In Amy and Isabelle, a mother (Isabelle) struggles with her 16-year-old daughter Amy's emerging sexuality. Isabelle is a single parent, focused on making ends meet and doing what's right for her daughter. But she is completely unaware of Amy's true
This was an emotionally charged story on many levels. Amy's naiveté, her strong desire for independence, her loathing of parental authority, and her immaturity that led to unhealthy decisions ... these all rang true to me. And Isabelle. Poor Isabelle, trying so hard to forge a healthy relationship with her daughter, but alienating her instead, and unwittingly passing on some of her own life mistakes. As the mother of teenage daughters myself, I could feel her pain. Isabelle's response to Amy's relationship with Mr. Robertson absolutely tore me apart: a single act of uncontrolled anger nearly destroyed her relationship with Amy.
In the wrong hands, this story could be trite and overblown. But Elizabeth Strout has amazing talent. First, she writes beautiful descriptive prose, putting the reader right into the scene:
It rained lightly for two more days and then the sky suddenly cleared just as darkness fell, leaving for a few moments a strip of luminescent afterglow along the horizon from a sunset that had not been seen. ... By early morning a delicate strip of clouds high overhead looked like a thin layer of frosting spread across the side of some blue ceramic bowl. Mourning doves cooed unseen in the fine light; cardinals and hermit thrushes darted from one tree to another, calling out. (p. 246)
Strout also develops rich, complex characters and relationships. Take, for example, the women Isabelle works with in the office at a local mill:
So there were a variety of joys, large and small, taking place throughout the town, including a hearty laugh between Dottie Brown and Fat Bev as they sat at their desks in the office room, the kind of laugh (in this case regarding Dottie Brown's mother-in-law) that comes from two women who have known each other for many years, who take comfort and joy in the small, familiar expressions of one another, and who feel, once the laugh has run its course -- with an occasional small giggle still left, and a tissued patting of the eyes -- a lingering warmth of human connection, the belief that one is not, after all, so very much alone. (p. 125)
But perhaps most powerful is her unique way of foreshadowing. She'll drop a tiny detail into the story, one that seems inconsequential until she adds another tiny detail, and then another, each many pages apart. It's a bit like adding hot sauce to chili: add a drop, taste, add another drop, taste, add another drop, and suddenly your mouth is on fire. I found myself scrutinizing every tiny detail: was this one important? Where was she going with this? She's not going there, is she?! In this way she built up parallel stories of mother and daughter to an intense climax. And at that point I had to set the book aside, breathe deeply, and go hug my own daughters.
Last night I finished [Amy and Isabelle: A Novel]. Here is a mini-review:
Amy and Isabelle was a very interesting read, though the topic might be difficult for some readers who eschew reading about sexuality and human beings. The novel contains
As did her other most recent female "force of nature", [Olive Kitteridge] she came to trust and know herself.
The other characters are so fully realized, I felt as though I knew these people pretty well. Terrific writing about the feelings of a young girl's sexual awakening and the circumstances under which that occurs. Way more than a melodrama, as story that could be from many people's lives.
Excellent book. Five stars.
Isabelle Goodrow was a well-meaning but insecure woman who was raising her teenage daughter, Amy.
Meanwhile, we learn about Amy – a beautiful but shy teenage girl who, like her mother, was unconfident and tried her best to fit in. Amy did not see her mother as an expert on life, mostly because Isabelle was so reserved, and easily fell into the arms of her knowledgeable teacher. Little did Amy know that she was living a life parallel to her mother’s teenage years.
I loved how Isabelle developed from a smug, self-righteous woman to an open-minded, accepting mother and friend. As I first started to read about Isabelle, I kept thinking that she needed to lighten up. However, I realized that her quiet reserve was a front because she was always worried what people thought about her. Amy was another interesting character – Strout offered up pieces about Amy, but I did not feel any resolution to her insecurities.
If you enjoy reading about mother-daughter relationships, then I highly recommend Amy and Isabelle to you. I can’t wait to read Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.
Elizabeth Strout writes so beautifully it makes you wish you had a pen or pencil to underline certain passages. You can smell the fedit, yellow river running through town. You struggle with the impossible humid, scorched summer as it builds to a climax of nerves. Each word is the exact word and correctly placed. It's not offensively dramatic but helps to take the reader into a story he or she never knew was possible. No wonder she won the Pulitzer Prize.
I'd never read a thing by her before, and picked this up by chance. Something about the setting called to mind Joyce Carol Oates, and so too did the promise of sexual tension between a young woman (Amy) and her teacher (Mr. Robertson). It had me expecting
Now, in my opinion, Strout is no Oates. But there were moments in the book that really stood out, and which made it feel worth reading for me. Most reviewers seem to find the mother character, Isabelle, somewhat more compelling than the daughter, Amy, but I found both portraits convincing and engaging. Amy's high school friend, Stacy, is a different story unfortunately (somehow, little about that character rang true for me; her voice never seemed real). And I found the 'Fat Bev' character kind of flat until toward the end... but Strout did flesh her out (pardon) very nicely in the final chapters.
To close, I have to add that I found the taut, tense, detailed descriptions of Amy's near-obsessive teenage infatuation with her math teacher totally believable. Especially in the second part of the story, after their former relationship has undergone a sudden change. Strout evokes, with Amy and nearly every other character too, a sense of being watched: small town people watching one another, everywhere they go, eager either to pass judgment or else to go home and beat themselves up for falling short.
The only major character whose inner world we see NONE of is Mr. Robinson... which is fitting, I guess, but this reader really missed it. If he (or any male character, really) had been given any emotional presence in the story at all, I think I would have given it a slightly higher rating. Maybe their absence was part of Strout's point, and intentional, but I think it would've added an important dimension. As is, I'd have trouble recommending this book to a male reader; their kind don't come out too well in Amy and Isabelle's town, the perhaps aptly-named Shirley Falls.
3.5 stars
The plot sounds so Oprah-esque (indeed, Oprah produced the TV movie), but it is not as melodramatic as it sounds. What makes the book rise above the typical family-problem novel is the naturalism of the writing. Strout's prose is lyrical but not showy, and with her close attention to detail, she evokes the small town of this era perfectly. The office full of women - if you've been there, you know how well she portrays this. Isabelle and Amy are very ordinary people - not great intellects, not tortured souls, just insecure human beings. Strout never overstates her case here, not even the obvious case against the creepy math teacher. We sympathize with both mother and daughter even as we shake our heads sometimes.
The difference between this novel and the insipid Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish is that Strout is concerned with particulars, not principles. She presents a closely-drawn picture of humans in all their emotional complexity, and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.
I finished Amy and Isabelle last night. Not sure how to describe my initial feelings other than that it took me a while to 'get into it.' I didn't really identify with either the mother or the daughter at first. Frankly, the mother annoyed me in the
Not a very cerebral review, but there it is....
Elizabeth Strout depicts
Enter Mr. Robinson, a substitute math teacher. It was clear to me from the start that this guy was a real creep. Besides his pretentious beard and a penchant for striking what are intended to be casual poses, he asks the students "cool" and sometimes personal questions in class. Really, is "What do you really want to do with your life?" an appropriate question for the first day in math class? Early on, he questions, "Amy Goodrow, why do you hide your face behind your hair?" Nothing like calling out a shy student's shyness in front of her peers. Amy admires him, then she hates him. Then he starts lending her books of poetry and giving her compliments. When Amy doesn't respond to the latter, he tells her, "A woman should learn to take compliments gracefully." Apparently this is the first time anyone has called Amy a woman. Pretty soon she is staying after school, and then Mr. Robertson is driving her home every afternoon, and you can guess where things go from here.
What I found disturbing, besides the details of predator grooming his victim, was Isabelle's reaction when she finds out what happened. While she is enraged at Robertson, she doesn't do much about it, preferring that no one know what happened, and instead directs her outrage at her daughter. It's understandable, especially considering what we suspect about how Amy came into being, but there is never any discussion between mother and daughter about what happened and why, on Robertson's part, it was inappropriate. Amy sees the two of them as star-crossed lovers torn apart by her mother, and Isabelle reacts by restricting Amy's freedom (but really not enough) and cutting off her hair, a symbol of her blossoming sexuality. It's obvious that Strout meant this to be an exploration of the mother-daughter relationship and Isabelle's coming to terms with her own past mistakes, but I found it hard to get over the way she reacted to her daughter being manipulated by a predator.
So, in other words, not my favorite Elizabeth Strout novel.
In my review of Prep the other week I said that I kept waiting for Lee to grow up, and I'm itching to say something to the same effect here about adolescent Amy and her (pathetic, blind, aching) love for (creepy, smarmy, hateful) Mr. Robertson. But maybe it's the opposite that we need. Grow down! Footie jimjams and adventures under the stairs for everyone! Be happy! And don't, for the love of all things holy, lose your faith in everyone. And eat a GD cookie.
Isabelle has had a crush on her married boss for more than 10 years and she feels her life is being wasted
Amy has her own things to deal with. Brought up by her reclusive and unreachable mother, she doesn't have a lot of friends, until she meets her new maths teacher, Mr. Robertson, who starts seeing her for what she is. A very attractive young woman with "horny" needs.
While Isabelle continues deliberately to see Amy as a child, her daughter starts a clandestine and passionate affair with her teacher, becoming more and more estranged from her mother in the process. Two strangers, mother and daughter, living a lie together.
When Isabelle discovers what is going on, her made up life crumbles down and she has to face reality, a deep shock but also an opportunity to see the world for what it really is, and finally, to give it a chance to open up and dare to trust again.
Strout masters her storytelling, mixing some touches of humour with and oppressing sense that something terrible is about to happen. You can feel the characters dreads, you understand all their point of views and suffer along with them. A very human story, could be considered a light reading but if you bother to look closely, you'll see a deeply thread psychological thriller which will touch your inner strings and make you sing mutely.
Buying her next novel right now.
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813.54 |