The Truth About Delilah Blue: A Novel

by Tish Cohen

Overview

“A beautifully written, finely wrought, race-to-the-end novel about finding your family, finding a life and finding yourself. Tish Cohen is the next great thing in women’s fiction.” — Allison Winn Scotch, New York Times bestselling author of The One That I Want and Time of My Life

Just as Delilah’s father falls further and further into Alzeimer’s, she discovers that he’s been harboring a horrible secret for over 15 years, but he no longer remembers the motivations behind his deception… or the consequences. Reminiscent of the books of Jodi Picoult (House Rules, Keeping the Faith) and Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes, Best Friends Forever)—as well as Lisa Genova’s breakout novel about Alzheimer’s, Still Alice—The Truth About Delilah Blue by acclaimed author Tish Cohen (Town House, Inside Out Girl) delivers a touching, poignant novel about one young woman’s attempt to come to terms with loss, betrayal, and forgiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061875977
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/08/2010
Series:	P.S. Series
Pages:	409
Product dimensions:	8.06(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

TISH COHEN is the author of bestselling novels for adults and young readers, many of them in development for film. Her first novel, Town House, was a regional finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Her more recent novel, The Truth About Delilah Blue, was a Globe and Mail Best Book. Cohen recently sold an original TV series to ABC/Corus Entertainment, and her short film, Russet Season, premiered at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in 2017. She lives in Toronto and Creemore, Ontario, where she rides dressage, accompanied by a most inappropriate farm dog, her Standard Poodle, Gracie.

Web: TishCohen.com

What People are Saying About This

Allison Winn Scotch

“A beautifully written, finely wrought, race-to-the-end novel about finding your family, finding a life and finding yourself. Tish Cohen is the next great thing in women’s fiction.”

Randy Susan Meyers

“Cohen, who writes with clarity, wit, and warmth, is brilliant in her penetration of the family layers, presenting all sides of the drama by allowing each character to be the star of their own show. This is a book that won’t be set aside until the last page is turned.”

Editorial Reviews

Motherless would-be art student Lila Mack is the mixed-up heroine of the sluggish and predictable latest from Cohen (Town House). Lila lives with her father in Los Angeles, secretly working as a nude model at the local art school and deeply insecure about the fact that her artist mother abandoned her when she was eight. It’s quite clear there’s more to her mother’s story than what Lila’s dad has told her, so it’s not surprising when Lila’s mother shows up and reveals that Lila—once Delilah Blue Lovett—was actually kidnapped by her father. As it happens, there’s a Web site devoted to her kidnapping that she somehow never stumbled across when Googling her mom’s name. Cohen drops readers into a sticky familial morass—Lila’s father has early onset Alzheimer’s, her mother turns out to be quite flighty, the half-sister she never knew she had is more than a little neurotic—that’s tidily complicated by a burgeoning romance with an art student. Unfortunately, the characters are hollow, the plot has too many unlikely developments, and the happy ending is as forced as it is far-fetched. (June)

Publishers Weekly

A beautifully written, finely wrought, race-to-the-end novel about finding your family, finding a life and finding yourself. Tish Cohen is the next great thing in women’s fiction.

Allison Winn Scotch

Cohen, who writes with clarity, wit, and warmth, is brilliant in her penetration of the family layers, presenting all sides of the drama by allowing each character to be the star of their own show. This is a book that won’t be set aside until the last page is turned.

Randy Susan Meyers

A father abducts his daughter, flees to Los Angeles from their home in Toronto, creates a new identity for the two of them, lives in anonymity for eight years-and then gets diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's just as his wife catches up with him. At the age of 20, Delilah Blue-now Lila Mack-finds herself posing nude for an art class, for she wants to become an artist. She has talent but no money, and she hopes to pick up pointers from crusty art professor Julian Lichtenstein (aka Lichty), far less well known than his famous second cousin, Roy. Until now she's had little confusion about her identity: Her father Victor has persuaded her that her mother, Elisabeth, didn't want her, and Lila readily accepts this explanation. It turns out, however, that flaky mom is now in L.A. (along with Lila's seven-year-old half-sister) because a Canadian psychic had told her she'd find her daughter there. Elisabeth-an artist manque-keeps checking art galleries for evidence of her daughter's existence and eventually finds a nude sketch of her. Mom is rather vindictive because it appears Victor has been feeding Lila a line-although he kidnapped her to get her away from her mom's lax maternal qualities and her spacey artiste, dope-smoking friends, all the time mom had been searching for her daughter. Victor now has problems of his own, however, for even though he's only 53, he's forgetting his appointments-and showing up at odd times-as a salesman for a medical-supplies company. He's also becoming more irrational and impulsive. (A symptom of the problem emerges when he steals a dog left temporarily in his care.) Elisabeth wants to prosecute her husband for kidnapping, but Lila-who ultimately assumes her original and rightful name of Delilah-acts like the only adult in this dysfunctional trio by trying to protect and care for her father and fend off the mother's pent-up aggression. Cohen (Little Black Lies, 2009, etc.) knows how to focus on character in ways that make readers care.

Kirkus Reviews