Two women are reunited twenty years after the love affair that changed both their worlds. Sylvia Brownrigg's Pages for Her is a novel about love, memory and what it is to be a woman, a wife, and a mother.
'A complex portrait of two women's sexuality . . . an absolute pleasure' - Alice Sebold
Flannery, a writer with one well-known rather racy book to her name, is, by her own admission, in a situation she never thought she'd be: married to a man who overshadows her and defined by her primary relationships as wife and mother. When Flannery is invited to a writers' conference she sees a chance to return to a world she knew well. And then she recognizes the name of the chair of the event: Anne Arden. Suddenly Flannery is thrown back twenty years to her eighteen-year-old self and the most intense love affair of her entire life.
On the other side of the world Anne is travelling for work. Recently out of a decades-long partnership, she feels adrift, unsettled. When a friend asks her to chair an event at a writers' conference she says yes and a couple of months later, on the same campus where they met and fell in love, Anne and Flannery are reunited. Though their lives have taken them in different and unexpected directions, the pull between them proves irresistible.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Sylvia Brownrigg's Pages for Her is a complex portrait of two women's sexuality. In the romantic universe of Brownrigg's novel, there is no either/or, no simple black and white. When characters - read people - are freed from the often blinding forces of personal obligation and private loss, a lust for intimacy takes over. In Pages for Her, Brownrigg gives us two accomplished women who, coming together after decades apart, understand that truth laid bare is best beguiled -- Alice Sebold, author of <i>The Lovely Bones</i> In this intense, compelling novel, Sylvia Brownrigg writes vividly about passion rekindled in mid-life with the force of a tsunami. Pages for Her, the sequel to Pages for You, stands as a beautiful testament to human complexity, reminding us that fierce love comes in many forms, none of them mutually exclusive. A wonderful novel - completely engrossing. -- Claire Messud, author of <i>The Emperor's Children </i>and <i>The Woman Upstairs</i> With Pages for Her, Sylvia Brownrigg has achieved the seemingly impossible, a gorgeous and piercing book that is both a huge gift to the many readers who loved its predecessor Pages for You, and an exquisitely intelligent stand-alone novel about the intertwined arcs of time and love. -- Ann Packer, author of <i>The Children's Crusade</i> Nuanced, assured, and razor-sharp, Pages for Her is both a bittersweet story about rekindled love and a profound meditation on what it means to be alive. -- Christina Baker Kline, author of <i>Orphan Train</i> Pages for Her takes on all the Big Questions in women's lives: what it means to have 'enough' in love, sex, work, motherhood; what we deserve; what we long for; how we get trapped; how we can break free. I found myself reading with pen in hand, compelled to underline both Brownrigg's gorgeous prose and her astute insights. -- Peggy Orenstein, author <i>Girls & Sex</i> With Pages for Her, Brownrigg does open-heart surgery, probing the deep chamber where unfinished love resides, untouchable by time, still beating -- Carol Anshaw, author of <i>Carry the One</i> Elegant, absorbing, beautifully written . . . the many fans of Pages for You will love this brilliant continuation of Flannery and Anne's story -- Kate Christensen, PEN-Faulkner-award winning author of <i>The Great Man</i> I was awed by the depth and quality of this novel . . . what made the novel so wonderful for me was the total focus on what it is to be a woman across the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries * Nudge * Brownrigg approaches her characters with clarity and sensitivity, capturing the nuances in the women's relationships to the people they love-as mother, daughter, sister, friend, wife, or lover-and the power they give those people to define and inspire them . . . Brownrigg considers motherhood, romance, identity, and the changes brought by time in this tender, insightful novel * Kirkus * Pages for Her is tender and sharply observant. This is a book about love, but not the love of Valentine's day cards. This is the lumpy-risky-no-right-answers sort of love with which we all must contend. It will leave you with the memories of hands once held and skin once known -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of <i>Harmless Like You</i> [A] thoughtful, gentle, yet passionate novel...Brownrigg's themes of sexuality, betrayal, marriage, and identity resonate along with this tale's strong sense of yearning as it poses the question, Can you be a soul mate with someone you haven't seen in two decades? * Booklist * Brownrigg did something marvelous in Pages For You . . . Now, 15 years later, there is a sequel: Pages For Her . . . There is nothing of the parable in these two books. They are not allegories or lessons about how to be a queer woman in the world. It is not wrong to have babies, and it isn't wrong to marry men or not marry men. It is not wrong to be too young or too old, to be more or less into girls at whatever particular age or stage one happens to be. For this simple reason, reading Brownrigg's novels feels like entering a fictional world that is less fussy, more real. Mainstream fiction could do with substantially more fiction about romance between teenagers and between middle-aged women . . . For now, we have these pages. * New Republic * Reading Pages For Her is like going on the perfect date; it picks you up, impresses you with its knowledge, seduces you with its wit and soon sweeps you away into a different world. And if you're hungry for more, there's a special reissue of cult classic Pages For You, the story of the first encounter between Flannery and Anne * Diva * Beautiful . . . a soft, pure and very gentle exercise on the nature of love . . . an exhilarating, passionate work that explores marriage, sexuality, and the transformative power of love over time and the way two women face the slow burning truth of their lives, their relationships and the utter delight of honest ownership of powerful experiences and truth * G Scene *
Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several novels (including The Metaphysical Touch, Pages for You, The Delivery Room and Morality Tale), and her work has been included in the New York Times Notable Books and the LA Times Best Books of the Year. She has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, and the TLS, and she has taught at the American University in Paris. Her novel for children, Kepler's Dream (published under the name Juliet Bell), has been made into a film. She lives in Berkeley, California with her family, and continues to spend time in London.
