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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Kallos, S. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Kallos, S. 2015 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | Kallos, S. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The new novel from the best-selling author of Broken for You spins the stories of a dedicated teacher, his enigmatic son, and a wartime survivor into an affecting tale of love, loss, and handwriting.
Charles Marlow teaches his high school English students that language will expand their worlds. But linguistic precision cannot help him connect with his autistic son, or with his ex-wife, who abandoned their shared life years before, or even with his college-bound daughter who has just flown the nest. He's at the end of a road he's traveled on autopilot for years when a series of events forces him to think back on the lifetime of decisions and indecisions that have brought him to this point. With the help of an ambitious art student, an Italian-speaking nun, and the memory of a boy in a white suit who inscribed his childhood with both solace and sorrow, Charles may finally be able to rewrite the script of his life.
Sometimes the most powerful words are the ones you're still searching for.
Author Notes
STEPHANIE KALLOS is the author of Broken for You , which was selected by Sue Monk Kidd for the Today Show Book Club and was a national bestseller, and Sing Them Home , one of Entertainment Weekly 's Ten Best Novels of the year. She lives in Seattle with her family.
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
The impact of an autism diagnosis reverberates down the decades for a Seattle family in a voluminous novel exploring words and expression, parenting and letting go. Charles Marlow has devoted years of his life to teaching students at a private school while dealing with his 20-year-old son Cody's autism, which was diagnosed when the boy was 2. Charles is also burdened by a younger daughter, Emmy; an ex-wife, Alison; and the memory of his own childhood, marked by warring parents and a landmark fourth-grade year that involved another mentally challenged boy. Kallos (Sing Them Home, 2009, etc.) delivers an abundance of ideas, history, and sympathetic observations in her new novel, written in slightly old-fashioned prose that's underpinned at times by gentle wit. But the welter of topicslanguage and storytelling, spiritual belief, artistic expression, guilt, affliction, and much moreis a challenge. Her solution is a splintered narrative that comes at both past and present from multiple angles. Cody's need to move on from state-supported care; Charles' experience during that crucial childhood year, which included startling recognition and also extreme self-recrimination; Charles' meeting, marriage to, divorce from, and subsequent dealings with Alison; Emmy's side of the story; and the addition of some other valuable but not always fully formed characters, including a sweet-scented photographer/pupil and a demented nunall these contribute to the business of Charles' struggle toward redemption. However, hard-to-believe revelations and an overload of sentimentality cloud its eventual impact. Although touchingly humane and impressive in scope, this novel is undermined by some lapses in judgment and its excessive ambition. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* At two, Cody Marlow started talking to God. But just a few months later, he started losing his language, with God the last word to go. With Cody's autism at its core, this story weaves back to his father Charles' formative fourth-grade year, when he excelled in the Palmer handwriting method, entered a pilot language-arts program, won a citywide short story competition, and befriended the strange new boy, autistic Dana McGucken. When it's clear that something is wrong with Cody, his mother, Allison, is relentless in seeking remedies, while Charles, teaching language arts at a private alternative school, finds his son pulling away from him. As Cody turns 21, his parents are divorced, with Charles, living alone in the family house, writing daughter Emmy as she leaves for college, and Allison seeking comfort in Judaism. After startling revelations, comfort comes, thanks to an ambitious art student and a feisty Italian nun with dementia. Kallos' earlier novels, Broken for You (2004) and Sing Them Home (2009), have been widely praised, and her third deserves all of those kudos and more. This novel, masterfully plotted and written, is a wondrously beautiful story of love and loss, offering hope in the face of the harshest reality.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Charles Marlow and his ex-wife need to make decisions concerning the best institutional care for their severely autistic son. Through flashbacks to earlier times, including Charles's upbringing, his learning the Palmer method of penmanship in grade school, and meeting his wife after college and their joint experience of autism in their firstborn, listeners begin to understand how major and minor influences combined to make Charles the lonely, isolated high school language arts teacher he became. -Tavia Gilbert does an excellent job providing characterizations, accents, and personalities for the many characters in the story, and Kallos allows the listener to discover potential parallels between autism, Alzheimer's disease, and dementia and to compare past and present acceptance and treatment of mentally and behaviorally challenged people. VERDICT This thought-provoking novel is recommended for adult audio collections. ["A starkly realistic depiction of parenting a child with autism, as well an exploration of memory, loss, and forgiveness": LJ 2/1/15 review of the Houghton Harcourt hc.]-Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.