Aquamarine (Audible Audio Edition) Carol Anshaw Holly Cate Audible Studios Books
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Olympic swimmer Jesse Austin is seduced and consequently edged out for a gold medal by her Australian rival. From there, Anshaw intricately traces three possible paths for Jesse, spinning exhilarating variations on the themes of lost love and parallel lives unlived.
Aquamarine (Audible Audio Edition) Carol Anshaw Holly Cate Audible Studios Books
Interesting characters with sort of a different way of telling their (specifically her) story. It's the old, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. . ." but in this case it was three roads.Product details
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Aquamarine (Audible Audio Edition) Carol Anshaw Holly Cate Audible Studios Books Reviews
The "what if" genre of fiction seems popular both in books and in movies today. This book is not just another "Sliding Doors" or "Passion of Mind" work, although being either of those works is not a bad thing to be. Ms. Anshaw wants to illumine character with her plot device--what becomes of an Olympic silver medalist in three alternative scenarios based on different choices the swimmer makes during the next 20 years. The themes of betrayal and its effect on the ability of the betrayed to share intimacy are well spun out here. This is a good book, and the Missouri scenes' atmosphere is very down to earth and real.
Anshaw writes with a believability that makes you think this is autobiographical. I haven't got any information on that, but I suspect she's just *THAT GOOD* as a writer. Structured as a set of three closely tied "what-if" novelettes which all use the same characters and same protagonist to examine a particular woman's midlife, Anshaw hits the nail on the head again and again. You will not read many novels concerning sexual ambiguity that are as good as this one. And yet the book is about so much else that I feel unfair in pigeonholing it to some kind of "bi-girl" subgenre.
Even though the writing feels light in many places, the effect slowly starts to pile up in heavier and heavier subtexts until it will have knocked you flat by the end, trust me.
I read about this book when it first came out. I remembered the reviews were excellent, and when I recently came across a used copy at an AAUW book sale I picked it up. It is now two decades later, and I've finally had an opportunity to read Aquamarine. I regret waiting so long.
It is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. Carol Anshaw is a brilliant, nuanced writer. She can write descriptive passages, and she can also write dead-on dialogue.
The book is achingly true and human. It is humorous. It is haunting. I have no idea why Carol Anshaw is not better known, but now I need to read everything she's ever written.
In 1968 at the Mexico City Olympics, Jesse Autsin wins a silver medal in the Women's 100-Meters Freestyle. She would have won the gold if it hadn't been for her closest competition, the mysterious and seductive Marty Finch.
Flash forward to July 1990. Jesse is about to turn 40, but is she happy with the choice she made immediately after winning the silver? In an unusual novel, author Carol Anshaw gives us a look into three posibile presents for Jesse.
In the first, she has been married for 20 years to Neal Pratt and still lives in her small hometown of New Jerusalem, Missouri. Her mentally retarded brother lives with them and helps with the upkeeep of Pratt's Caverns, the small business left to them by Neal's parents. Her godmother, Hallie, talks of the upcoming retirement party for Jesse's mother, an English teacher at the local high school. Jesse is content but still wonders about her first love, Marty Finch.
In the second, Jesse is an English professor in New York City, something she thought her mother would be proud of, but isn't. She also lives with her lover, Kit, who plays vampy Nurse Rhonda on a soap opera. Jesse is taking her to her mother's retirement party in New Jerusalem, Missouri, unsure of how the family will react to the two of them together. Her godmother Hallie has always known. Jesse thinks that Kit is going to leave her, especially when Jesse's mother asks her to take in her retarded brother Willie. But, in the back of her mind, she still wonders if she was being used by Marty Finch on that day in Mexico City.
In the third, a divorced Jesse lives in Venus Beach, Florida, with her children Anthony and Sharon. Anthony's had a run-in with the law, and now, his father is on his way from New York to "take care of things." Just what Jesse needs. Her godmother Hallie, who moved to Florida a few years after Jesse, is returning from Jesse's mother's retirement party back in Missouri. She feels as though life has passed her by and wonders if anything really happened between her and Marty Finch, or if it were all just a dream.
Each scenario has many of the same characters (Kit, Hallie, Willie, Jesse's mother, Marty Finch) and similar situations, giving the reader a feeling of looking at lives running parallel to one another. This novel does a marvelous job of weaving together these three scenarios of choices made or passed by and how these choices affect the future and the emotional ties between Jesse and the people in her past. A thought-provoking book, definitely worth reading.
Don't buy this book. It's poorly written, not very believable, and really not interesting. I don't recommend it to anyone.
Anshaw's telling of three different paths a single life can take is very refreshing. I liked how the cast of characters remained the same in each scenario, but their relationships with each other varied.
Most readers will probably find this book refreshing as Anshaw is a wonderful story-teller and the ending is quite unique.
Carol Anshaw's Aquamarine is inventive without ever being flashy and moving with out ever sentimentalizing. The same woman, imagined in different permutations--divorced mom, stay at home mom, lesbian professional, comes to life in a literary triptych unlike anything I've read. The author's fascinating premise is that there isn't one "unique" self inside us, struggling to be realized, but many possibilities that can float to the surface depending upon choices that at the time they are made which don't seem life determining.
In each of the stories the main character makes a seemingly innocuous choice--whether to stay rural or go urban; marry out of high school or go to university--that completely and radically not only changes her but set her on that "inevitable" course. For all of our "decision making" "career moves" et al we are amazingly malleable and control is pretty much illusion.
Best of all, none of the lives she becomes are judged better or worse. They are just different--variant and perhaps opposite, and yet all are familiar and all are worthy. Whatever your outlook on life, you almost certainly haven't looked at it through this lens.
Interesting characters with sort of a different way of telling their (specifically her) story. It's the old, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. . ." but in this case it was three roads.
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