You Never Get It Back
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
The linked stories in Cara Blue Adams’s precise and observant collection offer elegantly constructed glimpses of the life of Kate, a young woman from rural New England, moving between her childhood in the countryside of Vermont and her twenties and thirties in the northeast, southwest, and South in pursuit of a vocation, first as a research scientist and later as a writer. Place is a palpable presence: Boston in winter, Maine in summer, Virginia’s lush hillsides, the open New Mexico sky. Along the way, we meet Kate’s difficult bohemian mother and younger sister, her privileged college roommate, and the various men Kate dates as she struggles to define what she wants from the world on her own terms.
Wryly funny and shot through with surprising flashes of anger, these smart, dreamy, searching stories show us a young woman grappling with social class, gender, ambition, violence, and the distance between longing and having.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Adams's ornate linked collection comprises snapshots of a woman's life at various points of change. In the title story, Kate Bishop, a year out of Williams College and living with her depressed mother in Vermont, travels to Cambridge, Mass., to meet Esme, her wealthy former roommate, for a New Year's Eve party. There, she is reminded of the gaping financial chasm between them, as Esme is now enrolled at Stanford for graduate work while Kate toils as a lab tech. "Charity" flashes back to Kate during a Christmas break from Williams, when her mother gets the idea to give cards to their relatives, falsely claiming that she's donated $50 to "the poor" ("She doesn't want the relatives to think we're cheap," Kate reasons). "The Foothills of Tucson" picks up with Kate addressing an estranged older lover about finally starting a grad program at 26. In "The Sea Latch," Kate goes on a beach trip with her mother and younger sister, Agnes, and feels left out of their conversations. Throughout, Adams deploys piercing details and keen moments of Kate's self-reflection. It's a dynamic and memorable character study.
