You Are the Love of My Life: A Novel
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3.7 • 110 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“Spare, elegant and absolutely riveting.” —People
It’s 1973 and the Watergate scandal is on everyone’s lips. Lucy Painter, a children’s book illustrator and single mother of two, leaves New York and the married father of her children to return to Washington, DC, to the neighborhood where she grew up and the house where her father committed suicide. Lucy hopes for a fresh start, but her life is full of secrets: her children know nothing of her father’s death or the identity of their own father. As new neighbors enter their insular lives, her family’s safety and stability become threatened. Beautifully told, You Are the Love of My Life is a story of how shame leads to secrets, secrets to lies, and how lies stand in the way of human connection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shreve explores the damaging ripple effect of secrets in her emotional and psychologically compelling newest (after The Lovely Shoes). Lucy Painter was 12 when she discovered her hanged father in their house in Washington, D.C. His suicide instilled in Lucy an abiding shame, and became the root of her reclusiveness and belief in "necessary" lies. Later, Lucy becomes a successful children's book illustrator and a single mother, but keeps the father's identity hidden from her children, preteen Maggie and young Felix because he is a married man. In 1973, Lucy and her kids move from New York back to Lucy's childhood home, where she struggles with intrusive neighbors, especially the headstrong Zee Mallory. To Lucy's increasing chagrin, Zee begins "appropriating" Maggie, who is hurt by her mother's emotional reticence. Only when Lucy realizes that she may lose her daughter does she summon the courage to reveal her past. Shreve has an authoritative command of narrative, and she portrays the younger characters with insight and pitch-perfect dialogue, crafting a message of transparency and acceptance that resonates beyond the home.
Customer Reviews
Great read!
This book held my attention from beginning to end. It had a good plot and well developed characters. A definite must read!
The Midwife of Hope River
This book held my attention from the very beginning, building characters and a story that I never wanted to end. I felt as though I was there, enduring those times of hardship and hope.
Patricia Harman is a very talented writer and her other books, while a bit different in prose, are equally as good. I look forward to another book! Hope she has another one in the works!
Excellent Read!
This was my first book by this author, but certainly won't be my last. The characters are well-developed and the story twists and turns, but in a logical fashion so that the reader is not required to take the gigantic leaps of faith necessary with many of today's more popular novels. I highly recommend this book!