AMAZON.CO.UK
Best-selling author Anita Shreve has chosen as her latest protagonist a 12-year-old girl, whose life has not just been touched by tragedy, but blown apart by it. Nicky and her father have moved to a remote house on the outskirts of a remote village somewhere in New Hampshire, following a road accident which has wiped out the rest of their family. Nicky¹s father would like to live like a hermit, but recognises, even through his intense grief, that 12-year-olds need many things the world has to offer.
And then, one afternoon, just as the light is beginning to fade, a brief walk in the snow-swept woods surrounding their home and a chance encounter brings father and daughter unexpectedly together. United in their shock at finding a newborn baby wrapped in a bloody sleeping bag, they move heaven and earth to save her life. They manage to get the infant to hospital, yet despite an outpouring of emotion, the pair soon start to fall back into their old ways; tiptoeing carefully around each other, fearing to speak the name of their grief, pretending at normality. Until, that is, a pretty young woman comes knocking on their door and all three are forced to question their motives and look into each other¹s hearts.
Light on Snow is a beautifully sad reflection on life and loss, grief and hope and recognising the time in our lives to forgive others and ourselves and move forward. Anita Shreve has proved once again that she is a gifted exponent of the human psyche and the dual frailty and immense strength of the human spirit.
--Carey Green
--Ce texte fait référence à lédition
Relié
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From Publishers Weekly
An after-school stroll leads to a life-altering event for widower Robert Dillon and his 12-year-old daughter, Nicky, in this delicate new novel by acclaimed author Shreve (
All He Ever Wanted,etc.). In the woods surrounding their secluded home in Shepherd, N.H., Robert and Nicky make a startling discovery—a baby abandoned and left to die in the snow. The infant survives, but the incident leaves its mark. Still recovering from the painful loss of her mother and infant sister two years earlier, and readjusting to the shock of a sudden move from suburban Westchester to rural Shepherd, Nicky struggles to reconcile her innocent notions of adult integrity with the bleak reality of their discovery. The tenuous sense of normalcy Robert manages to sustain is broken with the appearance of Charlotte, the baby's young mother, on his doorstep. Retold 18 years later by an adult Nicky but written in the present tense, the story shifts brilliantly between childlike visions of a simple world and the growing realization of its cruel ambiguities. Aside from a few saccharine moments and a rather pat ending, Shreve does a skilled job of portraying grief, conflict and anger while leaving room for hope, redemption and renewal. Her characters are sympathetic without being pitiable, and her prose remains deceptively simple and eloquent throughout.
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