Next to Love
A Novel
by Ellen Feldman
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Pub Date Jul 26 2011 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Random House Publishing Group | Random House
Description
For fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, The Postmistress, and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a story of love, war, loss, and the scars they leave set during the years of World War II and its aftermath.
It’s 1941. Babe throws like a boy, thinks for herself, and never expects to escape the poor section of her quiet Massachusetts town. Then World War II breaks out, and everything changes. Her friend Grace, married to a reporter on the local paper, fears being left alone with her infant daughter when her husband ships out; Millie, the third member of their childhood trio, now weds the boy who always refused to settle down; and Babe wonders if she should marry Claude, who even as a child could never harm a living thing. As the war rages abroad, life on the home front undergoes its own battles and victories; and when the men return, and civilian life resumes, nothing can go back to quite the way it was.
From postwar traumas to women’s rights, racial injustice to anti-Semitism, Babe, Grace, and Millie experience the dislocations, the acute pains, and the exhilaration of a society in flux. Along the way, they will learn what it means to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a fighter, and a survivor. Beautiful, startling, and heartbreaking, Next to Love is a love letter to the brave women who shaped a nation’s destiny.
“Impossible to put down.” —Stacy Schiff
Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.
It’s 1941. Babe throws like a boy, thinks for herself, and never expects to escape the poor section of her quiet Massachusetts town. Then World War II breaks out, and everything changes. Her friend Grace, married to a reporter on the local paper, fears being left alone with her infant daughter when her husband ships out; Millie, the third member of their childhood trio, now weds the boy who always refused to settle down; and Babe wonders if she should marry Claude, who even as a child could never harm a living thing. As the war rages abroad, life on the home front undergoes its own battles and victories; and when the men return, and civilian life resumes, nothing can go back to quite the way it was.
From postwar traumas to women’s rights, racial injustice to anti-Semitism, Babe, Grace, and Millie experience the dislocations, the acute pains, and the exhilaration of a society in flux. Along the way, they will learn what it means to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a fighter, and a survivor. Beautiful, startling, and heartbreaking, Next to Love is a love letter to the brave women who shaped a nation’s destiny.
“Impossible to put down.” —Stacy Schiff
Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.
Advance Praise
"Hauntingand profoundly moving...At turns brave, frustrating, and fragile, Feldman's characters live and love with breathtaking intensity, and her deft juggling of several zigzagging plots makes the pages flow past withthe force of a slow but mighty river."-Booklist (starred review)
"A lustrous evocation of a stormy period in our past; highly recommended for lovers of World War II fiction."-Library Journal (starred review)
"A powerful, haunting, deeply ambitious novel about love and war, impeccably executed, impossible to put down."-Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life
"Next to Love is a remarkable novel driven by the powerful engine of most great literature: the yearning for a self. These three deeply, compassionately evoked women seek their own individual identities as the world and the people they love undergo profound change. But they have each other and they have their capacity to love, and Ellen Feldman brilliantly shows us how thosethings prevail."-Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"Next to Love is a beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking story about love and war and what comes after. Abreakthrough work by a writer who has already established herself as one of our best historical novelists."-Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland
"An honest American experience of the aftermath of World War II renderedin sharp detail and full of pathos, Next to Love tells us what we hate to acknowledge-that personal battles don't end with the armistice. Thereis the touch of Everywoman here."-Susan Vreeland, author of Clara and Mr. Tiffany
"A lustrous evocation of a stormy period in our past; highly recommended for lovers of World War II fiction."-Library Journal (starred review)
"A powerful, haunting, deeply ambitious novel about love and war, impeccably executed, impossible to put down."-Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life
"Next to Love is a remarkable novel driven by the powerful engine of most great literature: the yearning for a self. These three deeply, compassionately evoked women seek their own individual identities as the world and the people they love undergo profound change. But they have each other and they have their capacity to love, and Ellen Feldman brilliantly shows us how thosethings prevail."-Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"Next to Love is a beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking story about love and war and what comes after. Abreakthrough work by a writer who has already established herself as one of our best historical novelists."-Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland
"An honest American experience of the aftermath of World War II renderedin sharp detail and full of pathos, Next to Love tells us what we hate to acknowledge-that personal battles don't end with the armistice. Thereis the touch of Everywoman here."-Susan Vreeland, author of Clara and Mr. Tiffany
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9780679643692 |
| PRICE | $9.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 304 |
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