Shine Shine Shine
A Novel
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3.8 • 115 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book!
"Over the moon with a metaphysical spin. Heart-tugging…it is struggling to understand the physical realities of life and the nature of what makes us human….Nicely unpredictable…Extraordinary." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.
Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be "normal." She's got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they're parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they're at each other's throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?
Sunny wishes Maxon would turn the rocket around and come straight-the-hell home.
When an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blond wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same.…
A debut of singular power and intelligence, Shine Shine Shine is a unique love story, an adventure between worlds, and a stunning novel of love, death, and what it means to be human.
Shine Shine Shine is a New York Times Notable Book of 2012.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From a distance, Netzer's confident debut is the tale of "an astronaut lost in space, and the wife he left behind." At its core, it is the story of the power of love to overcome the great accidents of the universe. Sunny was born totally hairless. Her husband, Maxon, is a rocket scientist, and together they have an autistic son named Bubber. It appears they live a normal suburban life in Virginia Sunny wears a long blond wig and Bubber is medicated to keep him calm. But after Maxon leaves for a space expedition, a car accident reveals Sunny's hairlessness to her friends and neighbors. Being outed causes Sunny to re-examine her life, and she begins to come to terms with herself as different but special. Meanwhile, Maxon's expedition is jeopardized when a tiny rock "that had been hiding behind the moon" slams into his spaceship. As he and his crew struggle to survive, and Sunny embraces her family's peculiarities, Netzer deftly illuminates the bonds that transcend shortcomings and tragedy. Characterized by finely textured emotions and dramatic storytelling, Netzer's world will draw readers happily into its orbit.
Customer Reviews
Confuzled
Although this book is captivating it is also strangely irritating. I hated the ending or lack there of. I loved the characters and their insight but I could not fully embrace them because they were incomplete. I needed closure and this book left everything hanging. Unfinished like death I guess.
Shine Shine Shine
I really had to work at finishing this book, could not care about the characters and the story was disjointed. Did not feel there was any connection between the characters and the ending was unsatisfying.
Debut novel Shines
Women's fiction, family drama, love story, and a little sci-fi is what you will find in the pages of Lydia Netzer's debut novel, Shine Shine Shine.
Sunny, Maxon, Bubber, and the Mother are wonderfully unique, intense, and compelling characters.
When I first picked it up, it took me a little while to identify with the characters, but once the story got going, I did not want to put it down.