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Lucky In the Corner

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Nora and Fern are just like any other mother and daughter - their relationship is tumultuous, marked by brooding silences and curt exchanges. For Nora, Fern is an enigma - incomprehensible, unfindable. Fern has never really forgiven her mother for leaving her marriage to live with her lover, Jeanne. Their story is a contemporary one, in which mothering is a mapless journey and children are left to form themselves in the shadows cast by idiosyncratic parenting. Here, too, is the reality that perfectly reasonable people will find some way to throw a wrench into the smooth, well-oiled workings of their lives. Nora’s relationship with Jeanne has settled into domestic stability, triggering in Nora a familiar restlessness that leads to an affair. When Fern intuits her mother’s indiscretion, she looks to the two people she depends on most: her uncle Harold and her best friend, Tracy, who now has the overwhelming task of raising a baby. As Fern begins to take on more of the baby's care herself, she discovers some of the powerful ambiguities of parental love - and starts to find her way back to her own mother.
Carol Anshaw has been praised for her "warmhearted sympathies and lively wit" (Newsday). LUCKY IN THE CORNER, with the author's inimitable humor and insight, shows us the way a family reconfigures itself as unexpected changes come its way - and how, no matter what shape it takes, it remains a family.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 25, 2002
      A zinger of an opening scene, narrated with brio and poetic clarity, inaugurates the emotional tension and sweetly farcical action of this new novel by Anshaw (Aquamarine). Fern, 21, is a senior in college. More than a decade ago, her Chicago college administrator mother, Nora, left Fern's father to come out of the closet and live with her lover, Jeanne. A casualty of Nora's new identity, Fern is still sullen and vulnerable, and not about to make things easier for her mother, especially when she discovers that Nora is cheating on Jeanne, having succumbed to the passion ignited by tough-girl Pam, a construction worker. Fern also worries about her best friend, Tracy, a perennially restless and reckless adventurer who feels tied down by her new baby, born out of wedlock. Then Fern herself falls in love with a guy who has problems. Fortunately, Fern can confide in her Uncle Harold, a gentle cross-dresser who on Thursday afternoons hosts his canasta club as Dolores. The characters may be offbeat, but the novel is mainstream in its appeal, radiating energy and humor, and dispensing wisdom about the frailties of the human heart. Anshaw's prose sparkles with gems of description and solid psychological perceptions. The narrative smoothly integrates the flash points in mother-daughter relations, the bonds and tensions between lovers, the sexual fires that disrupt a trusting relationship, the ties that constitute family and the deep affection between a girl and her dog. The eponymous Lucky has been the one constant in Fern's life; his death is a touching rite of passage, when Fern understands that she has learned to take responsibility and feel compassion for herself and others. Agent, Jean Naggar. (May 22)Forecast:Movie scouts, take note. This could be a real winner on the silver screen.

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  • English

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