Adult Onset
-
-
4.5 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed, bestselling author of two beloved classics, Fall On Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies, Adult Onset is a powerful drama that makes vividly real the pressures of life and love, and the undercurrents that run deep through even the most devoted families.
Mary Rose MacKinnon is a successful author of YA fiction doing a tour of duty as stay-at-home mom while her partner, Hilary, takes a turn focusing on her career. She tries valiantly to balance the (mostly) solo parenting of two young children with the relentless needs of her aging parents. But amid the hilarities of full-on domesticity arises a sense of dread. Do other people notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How long will it take Mary Rose to realize that the car alarm that has been going off all morning is hers, and how on earth did the sharpest pair of scissors in the house wind up in her toddler’s hands? As frustrations mount, she experiences a flare-up of forgotten symptoms of a childhood illness that compel her to rethink her own upbringing, her own family history. Over the course of one outwardly ordinary week, Mary Rose’s world threatens to unravel, and the specter of violence raises its head with dangerous implications for her and her children. With humor and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken. Ann-Marie MacDonald has crafted a searing, terrifying, yet ultimately uplifting story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MacDonald's (Fall on Your Knees) riveting drama features 48-year-old Mary Rose MacKinnon as she dutifully cares for her two young children in Toronto, outwardly making all the right choices with organic foods and extreme toddler proofing. Inwardly, however, she frets over potential disaster scenarios while struggling to retain a sense of self. Although Mary Rose writes young adult fiction and has a loyal fan base, she can't make headway on the third novel in her trilogy. "She never imagined she would be a morning person' or drive a station wagon or be capable of following printed instructions for an array of domestic contraptions that come with some assembly required; until now, the only thing she had ever been able to assemble was a story." During a week when her partner, Hilary, is out of town, Mary Rose reflects on her tumultuous childhood, which forced her to shoulder survivor's guilt after the loss of would-be siblings, while coping with her lifelong painful bone condition. Glimmers of escalating anger a family trait begin to creep through her constructed veneer in Hilary's absence. MacDonald's strong narrative is a compelling examination of the loneliness and the often-absurd helplessness of being a parent of young children.
