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Summary
Summary
From the author of the beloved novel "Three Junes" comes a rich and commanding story about the accidents, both grand and small, that determine our choices in love and marriage. Greenie Duquette, openhearted yet stubborn, devotes most of her passionate attention to her Greenwich Village bakery and her four- year- old son, George. Her husband, Alan, seems to have fallen into a midlife depression, while Walter, a traditional gay man who has become her closest professional ally, is nursing a broken heart. It is at Walter' s restaurant that the visiting governor of New Mexico tastes Greenie' s coconut cake and decides to woo her away from the city to be his chef. For reasons both ambitious and desperate, she accepts-- and finds herself heading west without her husband. This impulsive decision will change the course of several lives within and beyond Greenie' s orbit. Alan, alone in New York, must face down his demons; Walter, eager for platonic distraction, takes in his teenage nephew. Yet Walter cannot steer clear of love trouble, and despite his enforced solitude, Alan is still surrounded by women: his powerful sister, an old flame, and an animal lover named Saga, who grapples with demons all her own. As for Greenie, living in the shadow of a charismatic politician leads to a series of unforeseen consequences that separate her from her only child. We watch as folly, chance, and determination pull all these lives together and apart over a year that culminates in the fall of the twin towers at the World Trade Center, an event that will affirm or confound the choices each character has made-- or has refused to face. Julia Glass is at her besthere, weaving a glorious tapestry of lives and lifetimes, of places and people, revealing the subtle mechanisms behind our most important, and often most fragile, connections to others. In "The Whole World Over" she has given us another tale that pays tribute to the extraordinary complexities of love.
Author Notes
Julia Glass was born March 23, 1956, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her debut novel, Three Junes, won the National Book Award in 2002. Her latest novel is entitled, The Widower's tale.
She grew up in Lincoln, MA, and graduated from Yale in 1978. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts with her partner, photographer Dennis Cowley. She has two children and works as a freelance journalist and editor.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When an author uses the same characters in more than one novel, the audio performance can be accurately compared. Fenno, a gay man who emigrates from Scotland to New York's Greenwich Village, is for many readers the most endearing character in Julia Glass's first novel, Three Junes, read by John Keating, who captured the cadences and charm of Fenno's native land. O'Hare, in contrast, produces a rather vague accent that could be Irish or Scottish. He also endows the New Mexico governor with a Texas accent, though the heartiness with which O'Hare portrays him is perfect. Despite these flaws, O'Hare has an eloquent, easy-to-listen-to voice that covers the large canvas of Glass's novel handily. He does particularly well with the main couple, Alan and Greenie, and O'Hare's rendition of their four-year-old son, George, is marvelous. It's a shame that the audio is not available unabridged through retail outlets. (Books on Tape, a division of Random House, has a 23-hour unabridged version on audible.com.) While condensation may work well for Campbell's Soup and tomes that are improved by having their windy digressions clipped, Glass's novel was one of the most wonderful reads of the summer and didn't need editing. Simultaneous release with the Pantheon hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 27). (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The cultures of Manhattan and New Mexico, straight and gay relationships, parents and children, are sensitively explored in Glass's replete successor to her NBA-winning debut novel, Three Junes (2002). One of that book's principals, Fenno McLeod, pops in from time to time, but he's effectively upstaged by Glass's effervescent protagonist Charlotte Greenaway ("Greenie") Duquette, an accomplished pastry chef whose creations attract the hungry attention of the abovementioned state's knee-jerk conservative, ebulliently skirt-chasing Governor Ray McCrae. When Greenie accepts an invitation to move southwest and concoct sinful delicacies for Governor Ray, she takes along her lively, formidably articulate four-year-old George, leaving her husband, psychotherapist Alan Glazier, to his increasingly demanding patients and his own depressive thoughts about the hitherto happy marriage from which both he and Greenie seem to be detaching themselves. Meanwhile, Glass adroitly fills in everybody's backstory, including those of Greenie's best pal Walter, a gay restaurateur with his own relationship issues (which he tends to confide to his dyspeptic Scottish terrier, affectionately known as "The Bruce"). Action, reflection and detailed flashbacks thus move smoothly, between geographical polarities, and among the conflicting viewpoints of variously involved other characters. For example, Alan's practice acquaints him with a male pair of prospective parents, one of whom is the lawyer (Gordie) for whom Walter not-so-subtly lusts. Glass stumbles somewhat with the character of Saga, a young woman whose memory loss and poignant rootlessness rather too pointedly underscore this novel's otherwise absorbing analyses of "human emotions and personal histories." Thankfully, there's always Governor Ray, chortling and backslapping, shaking the novel alive whenever it veers toward soppiness. Glass knows what she's doing. Readers who love quirky characters and a gentle wit that breathes affection even as it skewers human foolishness and frailty will follow her anywhere. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The many readers who embraced Glass' National Book Award-winning debut, hree Junes (2002), will be pleased to learn that one of the novel's central characters, New York city bookstore owner Fenno McLeod, plays a role in her follow-up. In the same neighborhood as Fenno's store, Greenie Duquette, a young wife and mother, labors over her rich pastries, which, thanks to her friend Walter, catch the notice of New Mexico governor Ray McCrae. Ray offers Greenie the chance to be his personal chef, so she and her young son, George, head to New Mexico, leaving behind her therapist husband, Alan, with a dwindling practice. Alan befriends Saga, a young woman whose sense of purpose in life was taken away when an accident affected her appearance and memory. Meanwhile, Walter is embroiled in an affair with a man who recently separated from his lover but might not be so ready to move on. As the characters grapple with change and uncertainty in their lives, Glass gracefully builds up to the traumatic event that will affect them all, deftly exploring the sacrifices, compromises, and leaps of faith that accompany love. --Kristine Huntley Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Back after winning the National Book Award for Three Junes in 2002, Glass recounts a complex familial tale featuring Greenwich Village patissiere Greenie Duquette, who heads west with her young son-but not her husband-after New Mexico's governor taps her as his personal chef. Yes, her coconut cake was that good. With a 12-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.