The Blessings
Published on 29. May 2014
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-4555-7403-2 (ISBN)
Description
When John Blessing dies and leaves behind two small children, the loss reverberates across his extended family for years to come. His young widow, Lauren, finds solace in her large clan of in-laws, while his brother's wife Kate pursues motherhood even at the expense of her marriage. John's teenage nephew Stephen finds himself involved in an act of petty theft that takes a surprising turn, and nephew Alex, a gifted student, travels to Spain and considers the world beyond his family's Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood. Through departures and arrivals, weddings and reunions, THE BLESSINGS reveals the interior worlds of the members of a close-knit Irish-Catholic family and the rituals that unite them.
Reviews / Votes
Elise Juska is so good at describing people, places, and moments that you not only picture them, you feel them.Elise Juska, with a sharp and generous eye, charts the duality of family life in her novel-in-stories, The Blessings. Juska's characters, in their all-too-real efforts at self-discovery, remain home or travel the world, dabble with temptation or stay committed, reveal secrets or keep them; the one constant is their shared blood and history. Each exquisitely layered story builds on top of the other, leaving the reader with a lasting portrait of what it means to be a part of a family in today's fractured world.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Little, Brown & Company
Dimensions
Height: 151 mm
Width: 217 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
396 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4555-7403-2 (9781455574032)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Elise Juska's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Good Housekeeping, The Hudson Review, Harvard Review, and many other journals and magazines. Her story "The Way I Saw the World Then" was published in The Missouri Review and cited by The Best American Short Stories 2010. She is currently the director of the undergraduate Creative Writing program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.