Gone
A Novel
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
For the past fourteen years, Eve Adams has worked part-time while raising her two children and emotionally supporting her sculptor husband, Eric, through his early fame and success. Now, at forty-two, she suddenly finds herself with a growing career of her own—a private nutritionist practice and a book deal—even as Eric’s career sinks deeper into the slump it slipped into a few years ago.
After a dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate Eve’s success, Eric drives the babysitter home and, simply, doesn’t come back. Eve must now shift the family in possibly irreparable ways, forcing her to realize that competence in one area of life doesn’t always keep things from unraveling in another.
Gone is an outstanding novel about change and about redefining, in middle age, everything from one’s marriage to one’s career to one’s role as a best friend, parent, and spouse. It is a novel about passion and forgiveness and knowing when to let something go and when to fight to hold on to it, about learning to say goodbye—but, if you’re lucky, not forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hanauer's latest domestic crisis novel (after Sweet Ruin) examines how issues of control and power affect the delicate balance of family dynamics. Eve Adams's comfortable suburban Massachusetts life gets violently restructured when, after a dinner date to celebrate the publication of her book, her husband drives the babysitter home and doesn't return. Left alone with a pubescent and unstable 14-year-old daughter, a placid 8-year-old son, bills to pay, and her nutritional consulting business to maintain, Eve resentfully assumes responsibility for it all and tries to steel herself against the pain of Eric's sudden absence. Hanauer reveals that Eric was once a successful sculptor, but as his star faded and Eve's nascent career as a nutritionist began to take off, Eric slumped into a deep depression. Tracking back and forth between their stories, readers witness Eve attempting to juggle the needs of her children and those of her dangerously obese clients, while Eric, visiting his mom in Arizona, teaches kung fu part-time and wallows in self-pity. Though he attempts to reestablish a connection with his family back home, the question remains: Once a person is gone, how does he go back to a life that has moved on without him? And can those left behind welcome back their prodigal father? Hanauer's treatment of Eve and Eric's as well as their children's predicaments ring true with emotional clarity, and her eye for detail and ear for conversational patterns lends credibility to this stark family drama.
