Aquamarine

by Carol Anshaw

Overview

Imagine how different your life would be if you had made other choices at a crucial turning point in the past. Aquamarine probes that tantalizing idea through the character of Jesse Austin, a former Olympic swimmer who, at age 17, lost the gold medal in the Mexico City games--a loss that has haunted her ever since.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544309791
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	11/28/1997
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Carol Anshaw is the author of Aquamarine and Seven Moves, both Lambda Award finalists. She has won the Carl Sandburg Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, she reviews books for major newspapers nationwide.

What People are Saying About This

Shirley Hazzard

"This is a swift, tender, highly intelligent book -- an original theme, a strong voice...figures and humane."

Dorothy Allison

"On first read, 'Aquamarine' so captured my imagination that I found myself wishing I could buy a dozen copies and start a discussion group, just so I'd be able to debate all the questions this astonishing novel provokes about the nature of the individual and her power to determine the course of her life."

Rita Mae Brown

"'Aquamarine' is as dazzling as the gemstone, as cool as the water. Kero Ann Shaw has both flash and substance.

Editorial Reviews

When she was 17, Jesse Austin lost an Olympic gold medal in the 1968 100-meter women's freestyle swimming event by a hair to contender Marty Finch. Twenty-two years later, Jesse is still haunted by this loss and by her love affair with Marty. Her present life is shown in three possible versions: as a small-town wife; a New York City cosmopolitan woman involved in a lesbian relationship; and as a divorcee with two children. Anshaw's interesting format works well, providing excellent characterizations and three gripping plot lines. She employs wry humor and a deft style to explore the choices we make and why we make them, with cogent insights into sexuality and parenthood. The portraits of Jesse's independent-minded grandmother and her retarded brother, Willie, are very well done. Highly recommended.-- Harriet Gottfried, NYPL

Library Journal

"Inventive . . . and as all-american as Jell-o" The Washington Post

From the Publisher