Good Harbor
A Novel
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3.8 • 47 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Anita Diamant, whose rich portrayal of the biblical world of women illuminated her acclaimed international bestseller The Red Tent, now crafts a moving novel of contemporary female friendship.
Good Harbor is the long stretch of Cape Ann beach where two women friends walk and talk, sharing their personal histories and learning life's lessons from each other. Kathleen Levine, a longtime resident of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is maternal and steady, a devoted children's librarian, a convert to Judaism, and mother to two grown sons. When her serene life is thrown into turmoil by a diagnosis of breast cancer at fifty-nine, painful past secrets emerge and she desperately needs a friend. Forty-two-year-old Joyce Tabachnik is a sharp-witted freelance writer who is also at a fragile point in her life. She's come to Gloucester to follow her literary aspirations, but realizes that her husband and young daughter are becoming increasingly distant. Together, Kathleen and Joyce forge a once-in-a-lifetime bond and help each other to confront scars left by old emotional wounds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
There's less to chew on in Diamant's follow-up to her wildly successful first novel, The Red Tent, which offered a reinterpretation of the biblical world of women. She does make a smooth entry into the arena of contemporary women's fiction with this graceful story of a new friendship between Kathleen, a 59-year-old woman who has recently discovered that she has breast cancer, and 42-year-old Joyce, who is facing a midlife crisis with her work and family. Faith and religion are woven matter-of-factly into the narrative: Kathleen, born Catholic, converted to Judaism when she married her husband, and Joyce, a nonobservant Jew, finds that her new summer house comes complete with a shrine to the Virgin. The two women meet by chance at a temple service in their New England coastal town of Gloucester and begin meeting for walks and talks at picturesque Good Harbor beach. As Kathleen undergoes radiation treatment for her cancer, she is plagued by memories of her sister (who died from the disease) and the accident 25 years earlier that killed one of her three sons. Joyce spends her time remodeling and putting off writing she has authored a romance novel under a pseudonym while worrying about her increasingly distant husband and quarrelsome 12-year-old daughter. The male characters are disappointingly one-dimensional (Kathleen's husband and two adult sons are rather boringly devoted, and Joyce's husband gets trotted out for a few obligatory "busy-at-work" conversations), but the women reveal hidden depths as they grow closer. Despite a fairly ordinary plot line and too-convenient resolution, Diamant delivers a satisfying portrayal of a delicate and sustaining friendship formed later in life.
