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Elise Juska's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ploughshares, the Gettysburg Review, the Missouri Review, Good Housekeeping, the Hudson Review, Harvard Review, and many other publications. She is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction from Ploughshares and her work has been cited in The Best American Short Stories. She lives in Philadelphia, where she is the director of the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of the Arts.
The Blessings
by Elise Juska
eBook
$9.99
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ISBN-13:
9781455574018
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
- Publication date: 05/06/2014
- Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 256
- Sales rank: 177,502
- File size: 515 KB
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"Bursting with wise observations."-J. Courtney Sullivan, author of The Engagements and Maine
"Gleams like a jewel."-The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Stunning. . . Unique and unforgettable."-Glamour
Hailed by Stewart O'Nan as "deft and tender" and as one of the best books of 2014 by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Elise Juska's THE BLESSINGS is an extraordinary novel about an ordinary family. The Blessings rally around one another in times of celebration and those of sorrow, coming together for departures and arrivals, while its members harbor private struggles and moments of personal joy. College student Abby ponders homesickness in her first semester away from her Philadelphia home, while her cousin Stephen commits a petty act of violence that takes a surprising turn, and their aunt Lauren faces a crisis in her storybook marriage she could never have foreseen. Through the lens of one unforgettable family, this beautifully moving novel explores how our families define us and how we shape them in return.
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Library Journal
03/15/2014This family saga explores the ups and downs of a close-knit extended Irish American clan in Philadelphia over a couple of decades. Like so many people, the Blessings discover that life often doesn't turn out to be what they had hoped. Among their trials are unhappy marriages, divorce, and teenagers who go badly off the rails. Most poignantly, the novel centers on the death of John Blessing, a young husband and father, and the effect this tragedy has on his widow, children, and entire family. In the wrong hands, a family story such as this could be either too sentimental or too much of a soap opera, but we are in good hands with award-winning short story author Juska. She is a shrewd observer of human nature and has an outstanding ability to bring her characters to life on the page. The author's wise decision to focus on a different relative in each chapter also makes the novel stand out. VERDICT This wonderfully readable work about family life will have you eagerly turning pages to find out what happens to characters about whom you really care. [See Prepub Alert, 11/18/13.]—Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA