Rosie Colored Glasses
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“What a wonderful, emotional ride! It’s like the Ordinary People of the 21st century...such an achievement!” —Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Summer That Made Us
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH ROSIE COLORED GLASSES
Just as opposites attract, they can also cause friction, and no one feels that friction more than Rex and Rosie’s daughter, Willow. Rex is serious and unsentimental and tapes checklists of chores on Willow’s bedroom door. Rosie is sparkling and enchanting and meets Willow in their treehouse in the middle of the night to feast on candy.
After Rex and Rosie’s divorce, Willow finds herself navigating their two different worlds. She is clearly under the spell of her exciting, fun-loving mother. But as Rosie’s behavior becomes more turbulent, the darker underpinnings of her manic love are revealed.
Rex had removed his Rosie colored glasses long ago, but will Willow do the same?
Whimsical, heartbreaking and uplifting, this is a novel about the many ways love can find you. Rosie Colored Glasses triumphs with the most endearing examples of how mothers and fathers and sons and daughters bend for one another.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Wolfson's moving debut, fifth grader Willow adores her free-spirited mother Rosie, who breaks her out of school for spontaneous outings and treats her and her little brother, Asher, to pizza nights and enthusiastic reenactments of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Their father, Rex, who by comparison is inflexible and strict, can't compete with Rosie's freewheeling personality, and Willow, who is bullied at school for her clumsiness and her kinky, wild hair, craves Rosie's love. But as Rosie's behavior shifts from goofy and fun to increasingly erratic, her addiction to prescription drugs puts her children in danger, and Rex, brokenhearted, insists she get help, setting off a tragic series of events. Wolfson intertwines Willow's story with the tale of Rex and Rosie's unusual courtship 12 years prior and the fierce love between them that eventually, and inevitably, gives way to divorce. Willow's pain amid the push and pull of her parents is palpable, and, following the divorce, Rex realizes that he must change in order to save his family. Wolfson's novel about the devastating effects of mental illness and prescription drug addiction is, at times, overly earnest, but the hopeful message about love's transformative power will resonate with readers.
