The Christmas Wife - Hardcover

Norris, Helen

3.77

13 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596091614 ISBN 13: 9781596091610

Publisher: Chamberlain Bros., 2005

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A lonely widower rents a woman to keep him company over the holidays. The young wife of a considerably older man steps off their train for just a moment and never returns. A woman and her withdrawn grandchild try to bridge the generations and loneliness keeping them apart. In these tales and others in "The Christmas Wife," Helen Norris celebrates the heart's triumph over the tragic losses and nameless longings of our common existence.

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From Library Journal:

These four collections mark the tenth anniversary of the Illinois Short Fiction series. As might be expected, all are good. Gerber's collection is possibly the best, depicting the family lives and personal thoughts of ordinary souls with such a light touch that each story is a personal encounter. Recurring characters tie some of the stories together, as do similar themes on aging and three-generational family relationships. Givner's Tentacles of Unreason is the least successful of the collections. Many of the stories have academic settings and suffer from the overworked quality of workshop writing. Others merely ramble with no plot at all and just a few flashes of humor or insight. However, when her stories do work, as in ``The Lost Sheep,'' they contain a firm kernel of truth and humor. Norris's stories are filled with isolated people struggling to make contact. These are sad stories, often about grandparents who feel forgotten, but they are nevertheless filled with hope for new beginnings. Norris has a distinctive style that is apparent throughout the collection. In Getting To Know the Weather , Painter develops an acute sense of foreboding, as her characters try to deal with the unexpected. ``Sylvia'' is wonderful: Sylvia is a black housekeeper who comes from a very rough black neighborhood to work in Lynne's lovely upper-middle-class home; Lynne appreciates her, but Sylvia's dark background begins to haunt her employers' comfortable life. Painter's stories are dramatically original and uniformly impressive. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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