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Summary
Summary
Celebrated for her irresistibly witty, strikingly intelligent examinations of friendship and marriage, Lauren Fox ("An immensely gifted writer--a writer adept at capturing the sad-funny mess that happens to be one woman's life" --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times ) has written her most powerful novel to date. Days of Awe is the story of a woman who, in the wake of her best friend's sudden death, must face the crisis in her marriage, the fury of her almost-teenage daughter, and the possibility of opening her cantankerous heart to someone new.
Only a year ago Isabel Moore was married, was the object of adoration for her ten-year-old daughter, and thought she knew everything about her wild, extravagant, beloved best friend, Josie. But in that one short year her husband moved out and rented his own apartment; her daughter grew into a moody insomniac; and Josie--impulsive, funny, secretive Josie--was killed behind the wheel in a single-car accident. As the relationships that long defined Isabel--wife, mother, daughter, best friend--change before her eyes, Isabel must try to understand who she really is.
Teeming with longing, grief, and occasional moments of wild, unexpected joy, Days of Awe is a daring, dazzling book--a luminous exploration of marriage, motherhood, and the often surprising shape of new love.
Author Notes
LAUREN FOX is the author of the novels Still Life with Husband and Friends Like Us . She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota, and her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Marie Claire, Parenting, Psychology Today, The Rumpus, and Salon . She lives in Milwaukee with her husband and two daughters.
www.laurenfoxwriter.com
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Following the success of her first two novels (Still Life with Husband and Friends Like Us), Fox lays out a tale about a woman's attempt to piece her life together following the death of her best friend. When Josie dies unexpectedly in a car accident, her closest friend, Isabel, is left with nagging guilt, a broken marriage, a strained relationship with her preteen daughter, and the challenge of grieving and moving forward. Through painful months of doubt, anguish, and depression, Isabel reconciles herself to the truth that her actions bear no responsibility for the fatal outcome. This realization, however mollifying, comes just as Chris, her husband, moves out of their house in the Midwest into his own apartment. And to add to her misery, Isabel discovers him on a date with their marriage counselor shortly after their daughter begs to move in with him full-time. It's not until Josie's mother drags her to a support group for recent divorcées that she begins to see the possibility of love after so much loss. Filled with insecurities and anxieties, Isabel's nuanced character is relatable-her struggles are universal and the reader will root for her to succeed. Raw and darkly humorous at times, Fox's novel is a winner. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
When a middle school teacher's best friend dies in a one-car accident, her world begins to fall apart. Isabel Applebaum Moore and Josie Abrams have been inseparable since Izzy's first day at Rhodes Avenue Middle School, keeping each other sane through the principal's inane speeches and the younger teachers' aggressive perkinessnot to mention the students' hormonal moods. Josie even married Mark, Izzy's friend since kindergarten, where they were seated next to each other, "two little alphabetized Jews, dark haired and slightly lost in a forest of Midwestern consonant clusters, all those strapping, blond Schultzes and Metzgers and Hrubys and Przybylskisstrapping even in kindergarten, if memory serves." What happens following Josie's death isn't all that unusual: Isabel starts spending most of her time in her ratty old sweatpants, "which Josie used to call a blend of cotton and self-loathing"; her overwhelming sadness deals the fatal blow to her already rocky marriage to the good-hearted Chris; her 11-year-old daughter, Hannah, who also loved Josie, struggles with her changing family; her mother, Helene, a Holocaust survivor, coaxes her into attending a support group for "relationships in transition," where she tentatively bonds with a good-looking older man named Cal by cracking jokesjust the way she bonded with Josie at their first staff meeting at Rhodes Avenue. Josie pushes Chris away and tries to pull him closer; she does the same with Cal and even with her old friend Mark. She thinks back on her relationship with Josie and gradually reveals the secrets they shared. What makes the book so special is Isabel's smart, acerbic voice and her way of seeing everything from a sharp angle. Fox (Friends Like Us, 2012, etc.) studs Izzy's narration with surprising metaphors, turning ordinary domestic items into dangerous beasts ("the herd of wild minivans") and Josie's fatal accident into something almost domestic ("Her rusty 11-year-old Toyota skidded off the slick road like a can of soup rolling across a supermarket aisle"). Isabel (and Fox) has such an offbeat way of looking at things that you'll eagerly keep reading just to see what she's going to say next. Read it for the magnetic voice and Fox's ever interesting perspective on work, love, friendship, and parenthoodbecause, really, what else is there? Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Fortyish middle-school teacher Isabel's world crumbles in the year following the sudden death of her best friend, Josie. Her mother, Helene, has had a stroke; her husband, Chris, moves out of the house; her daughter, Hannah, turns into a sullen, moody adolescent. While giving herself up to grief over Josie, Isabel reflects on earlier losses as well; she has had several miscarriages, and part of Helene's family perished in the Holocaust. But despite the weight of sadness, Isabel is a clever, self-deprecating narrator, and humor lights up her descriptions of, for example, three younger teachers, in their slim trousers and their confident low heels, whom she and Josie dubbed the Andes because of similarities in their names, and a support group, Relationships in Transition, that Helene convinces her to join. As Isabel learns to move on, she also learns to accept some truths about her friend Josie's adventurous spirit skirted dangerously close to recklessness at times. Fox is also author of the well-received Friends like Us (2012).--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
BEYOND WORDS: What Animals Think and Feel, by Carl Safina. (Picador, $18.) Humans have been far too anthropocentric when trying to understand the mental experiences of other animals, Safina, a marine conservationist, argues here. His observations on grieving elephants in Kenya, endangered wolves in Yellowstone National Park and a harmonious whale society in the Pacific Northwest build the case that other species are capable of nuanced thought and emotion. KITCHENS OF THE GREAT MIDWEST, by J. Ryan Stradal. (Penguin, $16.) This bighearted novel is partly a culinary biography of Minnesota, tracing how traditions (lutefisk) give way to fads, and partly a sendup of food. The story's central character, Eva, is born into a food-obsessed family and soon displays preternatural gifts of her own, using cooking to overcome a childhood tragedy. THE SEVEN GOOD YEARS: A Memoir, by Etgar Keret. Translated by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger, Jessica Cohen and Anthony Berris. (Riverhead, $16.) The author, an Israeli, has built a fan base devoted to his fantastical short stories. In this, his first nonfiction book, Keret focuses on the stretch of time between his son's birth and his father's death, and considers the absurdities of fatherhood and family life. DAYS OF AWE, by Lauren Fox. (Vintage, $16.) The death of Isabel's close friend in a car crash sets off a period of tragedies; a year later, Isabel and her husband have divorced, her adolescent daughter has grown aloof and a number of her other relationships have become unmoored. Isabel reconsiders her identity throughout this novel as the relationships that once defined her fall away, but her rapport with her mother remains at her emotional core. THE WEATHER EXPERIMENT: The Pioneers Who Sought to See the Future, by Peter Moore. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) If forecasts and precise weather reports are now a ubiquitous part of life, in the 1800s, the premise was improbable - even laughable. Moore, a Briton, tells the story of the 19th-century scientists and sailors who set out to show that data could help predict future meteorological patterns, and he includes the American contributions to the field. THE GAP OF TIME, by Jeanette Winterson. (Hogarth Shakespeare, $15.) In this novel, the inaugural title in a series of books "covering" plays by Shakespeare, Winterson ad apts the story of "The Winter's Tale" to a con temporary, post-financial-crash setting. Leo, a paranoid hedge fund manager in London, sends his newborn daughter to New Bohemia, a facsimile of New Orleans, after a fit of jealous rage. MIDNIGHT'S FURIES: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition, by Nisid Hajari. (Mariner/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15.95.) Hajari's account focuses on the months preceding the 1947 split between India and Pakistan, probing one of the conflict's central questions: How did two countries with so many commonalities end up as bitter rivals?
Library Journal Review
Isabel Applebaum Moore is still grieving the death of her closest friend, Josie Abrams, killed in an auto accident. A fellow teacher in their Wisconsin elementary school, Josie was married to Isabel's longtime friend Mark. Isabel's husband, Chris, doesn't understand his wife lately, so he moves into his own apartment. Their tween daughter, Hannah, is no help, as everything her mother does is wrong. Isabel's mother, Helene, left Europe at the age of four with her parents; most of her family died in the Holocaust. Helene suggests that Isabel attend a support group for Relationships in Transition. How does one cope with a caustic mother, an absent husband, a self-absorbed daughter, and a gaping hole that was once occupied by one's closest ally? The ten-day period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is known as the Days of Awe, a time for reflection and consideration of the sins of the previous year, leading to the Day of Atonement. The months following Josie's death heap change and revelation upon Isabel, who thought she had all the answers. Verdict Fox (Friends Like Us; Still Life with Husband) reveals the dissolution of our certainties with witty and arresting prose. A touching and impressive story for readers who thrive on the unexpected.-Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.