Fortunate Lives (39 page)

Sea Glass

by Anita Shreve

“A helluva read…. Shreve simply has the Gift—the ability to hook you from the first page, draw you in and pull you along, and not let go until the final word.”
—Zofia Smardz,
Washington Post Book World

“Shreve’s four-hankie plots are pure silk, and her characters are so real you can feel them sitting next to you on the couch.”
—Michelle Vellucci,
People

These Granite Islands

by Sarah Stonich

“
These Granite Islands
nicely captures the effect that the competing pulls of marriage, friendship, and dreams can have on an individual. Lyrical
writing transports the reader in a fascinating narrative.”
—Robin Vidimos,
Denver Post

“A lovely novel…. Only as Isobel lies dying does she begin to understand that her own placid life had its own drama and daring—its
own hot center.”
—Barbara Fisher,
Boston Globe

All the Finest Girls

by Alexandra Styron

“An impressively, highly charged novel about a virtually taboo subject—nannying—displaying keen insight into the burdens of
inheritance in its many forms: money, love, creative temperament.”
—Benjamin Anastas,
New York Observer

“Extremely moving and powerful.”
—Heller McAlpin,
Washington Post Book World

Also by Robb Forman Dew

The Evidence Against Her

“A gorgeous, important book…. Dew’s characters are fiercely imagined, fiercely alive on the page.”
—Beth Kephart,
Chicago Tribune

“Engrossing… utterly compelling.”
—Leslie Haynsworth,
Denver Post

“At the book’s end… there is that tremendous satisfaction that only this multigenerational kind of story can give. Robb Forman
Dew has a powerful way with prose. Her language is lush and beautiful.”
—Joanna Rose,
Portland Oregonian

The Time of Her Life

“Everything about this novel is right….
The Time of Her Life
is the work of that rarest of people, a
real
writer, and it will knock your socks off.”
—Jonathan Yardley,
Washington Post Book World

“Mrs. Dew can convey, with a skill matched by few writers today, the quick, peculiar shifts in feelings that we experience, moment to moment, day to day.”
—Michiko Kakutani,
New York Times

Dale Loves Sophie to Death

Winner of the National Book Award

“Arrestingly elegant.”
—Anne Tyler,
New Republic

“The rewards of
Dale Loves Sophie to Death
are quiet but rich, and prove once again that in fiction there are no automatically compelling subjects. There are only compelling writers.”
—Katha Pollitt,
New York Times Book Review

Acclaim for Robb Forman Dew’s

Fortunate Lives

“Superb… intriguing, believable, and unpredictable….
Fortunate Lives
is a superior story, luminous with intelligence and wit and affection, written straight from the heart of one of our most
accomplished contemporary novelists…. The insights are so sympathetic, so acute, and so just, I soon came to relish them nearly
as much as the beautifully crafted scenes…. There are fine set pieces you’ll want to read again and again…. As a reviewer,
I admired Robb Forman Dew’s new book immensely…. As a parent of college-age children myself, I found the Howellses as appealingly
recognizable as any characters I’ve encountered in recent years.”

—Howard Frank Mosher,
Washington Post Book World

“Robb Forman Dew is one of our premier chroniclers of the everyday…. She has shown a keen eye for the untidy domestic minutiae
that is the very sinew of American middle-class life, and a generous understanding of the heart that beats within it: that
odd, elastic, irreplaceable organ we call the Family…. Out of the most mundane materials—a thrown-together lunch, a stain
on the carpet, the stifled yawn of a child—she fashions loose, low-key narratives that celebrate the quieter virtues, like
patient endurance and forgiveness….
Fortunate Lives
remains absorbing reading throughout, a tribute to Dew’s powers of observation, the fine, precise light she casts on the
domestic scene. She has a gift for hitting minor notes, unexpected moments of psychological acuity…. Readers will find much
to admire in
Fortunate Lives
…. A novel that heightens our senses, awakens us to the fragility of even the most cozy and familiar lives.”

—Robert Cohen,
Los Angeles Times

“The perilous shoals of domesticity are addressed with consummate delicacy, grace, and skill…. Dew’s gift is to write simply
yet eloquently of the deep-flowing currents of domestic life, the barely acknowledged emotions that color even ordinary encounters
and that glimmer under the surface of routine family activities…. Thoughtful, often provocative, and radiant with understanding.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“
Fortunate Lives
is not the kind of book one hurries through…. The power of Dew’s writing derives from her almost microscopic examination
of domestic operations and emotions…. We marvel at her careful preparation…. She understands that neat conclusions don’t happen
in real life…. Melancholy and graceful,
Fortunate Lives
tells a story at once universal and painfully specific.”

—Charles Dickinson,
Chicago Tribune

“This is the kind of novel one doesn’t find much anymore—featuring a sophisticated, Cheever-like town and people centered
around a college and its subculture, where nothing much happens but the reader has a certain satisfaction in savoring the
prose itself. A nice haven in the midst of the usual.”

—Rosellen Brewer,
Library Journal

“The author’s intuitive understanding of the weightiness of little moments, the unstated significance of a single gesture
or expression, is constantly in play—as is her wry sense of humor.”

—Colleen Kelly Warren,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Dew is a masterful observer of small things and their resonance, finding beauty in domestic routines, while her intense characters
experience great tides of emotions. She has an unerring sense of the volatile chemistry of families and the intricacies of
the soul that both isolate and connect us. A superbly eloquent, perceptive, and haunting novel.”

—Donna Seaman,
Booklist

“Absorbing reading throughout…. Robb Forman Dew
is one of our premier chroniclers of the everyday.”

—
ROBERT COHEN,
LOS ANGELES TIMES

I
t is another summer of transition for the Howells family—Dinah, Martin, and their children, the characters whom Robb Forman
Dew so memorably introduced in her National Book Award—winning first novel,
Dale Loves Sophie to Death
. With the impending departure of eighteen-year-old David for his first year at Harvard, Dinah struggles against a nearly
paralyzing sense of loss. At the same time, the arrival in town of an earnest and naively manipulative young woman begins
to expose the surprisingly fragile construction of the Howellses’ determinedly fortunate lives.

“One of Robb Forman Dew’s strengths as a novelist, besides her musician’s ear for dialogue, is an ability to show the contradictory,
subtle impulses that become magnified in all directions in a domestic setting…. Dew is even better here at tracking the minute
movements of each character toward and away from the others in bravura scenes that are painful as well as deeply funny.

—
REBECCA RADNER,
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“Compelling…. An emotionally precise novel…. An extraordinary tale of how self-identity emerges from the bonds of family.”

—
KIRKUS REVIEWS

“The magic of our complete sympathy with Dinah is a testament to the alchemy of this novelist…. We even embrace Dinah’s daring
to believe that ‘the real mothers—all the mothers in the world—are simply the fools of the earth in the ways they live with
hope, in the ways they must continue to believe that they can save their own children.”

—
JOSEPH OLSHAN,
WALL STREET JOURNAL

ROBB FORMAN DEW
is the author of three other novels—
Dale Loves Sophie to Death
, for which she received the National Book Award;
The Time of Her Life
; and, most recently,
The Evidence Against Her
—as well as a memoir,
The Family Heart
.