State Of The Union
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4.1 • 12 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
A compelling, gripping novel from the No.1 bestselling author of The Moment and The Pursuit of Happiness.
Hannah Buchan thinks herself ordinary. She is not the revolutionary child that her painter mother and famous radical father had hoped for. Raised in thecreative chaos of 1960s America, Hannah vows to reject her parents' liberal lifestyle, andsettles instead for typical family life in a nondescript corner of Maine.
But normality isn't quite what Hannah imagined it would to be, and try as she might to fight it, the urge to rebel against the things that hem her in grows ever stronger. Eventually, a series of encounters puts Hannah in an exhilarating but dangerous position - one in which she never thought she would find herself.
For decades, this one transgression in an otherwise faultless life lies buried deep in the past, all but forgotten - until a turn of fate brings it crashing back into the limelight. As her secret emerges, Hannah's life goes into freefall and she is left struggling against the force of the past.
State of the Union is a stunning and grippingly honest story about life, love and family, set against the backdrop of two different but strikingly similar eras.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Domestic ennui, sociopolitical commentary, and infidelity are at the center of this nicely paced if sometimes overheated family drama from Kennedy (A Special Relationship). In 1969, 18-year-old Hannah Latham's rebellion against her parents famous radical activist father, mentally unwell painter mother is to shoot for the simple life by marrying medical student Dan Buchan, getting pregnant, and moving to rural Maine. Before she knows it, she's carved out an unexciting life as a part-time librarian and part-time housewife until Tobias Judson, an acquaintance of her father with Weather Underground ties, comes knocking on her door. Fast forward to 2003: Hannah is a schoolteacher; her grown daughter flips out and disappears; her college best friend and sole confidante is dying of cancer; and decisions she made 30 years earlier come hurtling forward to again put into question what kind of life she really wants for herself. While the characters are stock and the points of conflict routinely overblown, Kennedy's emotionally charged, reader-friendly tale of a woman on the verge will please his fans.
