Without Her
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The author of Becoming George Sand has crafted a "standout novel of a tested friendship . . . highlighted by fine prose and finely drawn characters" (Publishers Weekly).
When her old friend Hannah doesn't show up at her house in the south of France, everyone assumes that Claudia, who has known Hannah since their shared years at boarding school, will know where she is and what has happened. But as Claudia travels from the United States to France to help her friend's husband and children conduct their search, she is forced to deal with her old jealousy of Hannah, as well as her own relationship in the present with her French lover, Alexandre. As events unfold, Claudia begins to wonder if Hannah and Alexandre may have had an affair and if that has something to do with Hannah's mysterious disappearance.
In this exquisitely written, Ferrante-esque novel the question of whether or not Hannah will come back becomes urgent and bewildering. And if she doesn't return, what will the lives of her friends and family be without her?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This standout novel of a tested friendship from Brackenbury (Becoming George Sand) is highlighted by fine prose and finely drawn characters. Claudia Prescott, a worldly Brit in her 60s, thinks back on her lifelong friendship with the free-spirited Hannah Farrell. Claudia, who has become a professor of filmmaking in Virginia, is scheduled to visit Hannah and her husband, Philip, in France, where the couple has a second home. When Philip contacts Claudia before her departure and tells her Hannah has disappeared, Claudia finishes her semester early to help and console Philip, but she stops briefly in Paris to see an old lover, Alexandre. Claudia and Hannah met Alexandre when they were students in the 1960s, and although it was Claudia who engaged in a decades-long affair with him, she has suspected that Hannah had at least one dalliance with him. Hannah, who had married young, has adult children who join the search with Claudia and Philip, but as Claudia combs her mind for clues as to where and why Hannah might have gone, she continually returns to her friend's youthful unreliability something she doesn't seem to have continued with her husband. Brackenbury reaches into the heart of a long, complicated friendship, and the result is a skilled combination of a missing-person mystery and a sentimental reminiscence.
