O My Darling, Amity Gaige
O My Darling, Amity Gaige
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O My Darling
A Novel

Author: Amity Gaige

Narrator: Julia Whelan

Unabridged: 6 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 10/08/2013

Synopsis

The external lives of Clark, a high school guidance counselor, and Charlotte, a bookkeeper, are utterly ordinary, but their interior lives are as bold and complex as abstract paintings colored by imagined possibilities, childhood joys and, more darkly, by deeply buried fears. When Clark rescues a young boy from drowning, a chain of events-some comic, some harrowing-is set in motion, revealing the fault lines of the couple's marriage and individual psyches.

Amity Gaige is a consummate stylist. Her every sentence contains a tiny world-marrying striking images to deep, soulful ideas in perfectly concise fashion.

About Amity Gaige

Amity Gaige is the author of four previous novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. Sea Wife was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice Award. Schroder was also a New York Times Notable Book and a best book of 2013 according to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, among others, and was shortlisted for UK’s Folio Prize in 2014. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages. In 2018, Amity was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her family and teaches creative writing at Yale.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Martina on September 01, 2022

3.5⭐️......more

Goodreads review by Tq on February 19, 2014

I don't know where Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum and Adam Haslett- from the cover blurb- got "bristling with humor" out of this book because there is no real humor to be had, nor any "scalpel-sharp sentences". What you will get is a vague story about a yuppie couple with no personality moving into a town fu......more

Goodreads review by Frannie on October 21, 2022

Case di fantasmi (o forse no). Clark e Charlotte sono due giovani sposi trasferitesi in una casetta gialla nel pressi della cittadina di Clementine. Sono innamorati, ma si portano dietro traumi e segreti: lui ancora destabilizzato dalla morte della madre megalomane, uno psicologo scolastico senza voca......more

Goodreads review by Diana on May 13, 2014

It reads almost like a long poetic meditation or a very long short story. Some of the images and sentences are glowing. The plot wasn't the strongest I've read, but it didn't matter that much because I wanted to keep reading and I appreciated that it was in no way formulaic. The writing is lovely.......more

Goodreads review by Octavia on November 24, 2015

A marginally haunted house nearly breaks up a marriage. The effects are somewhat horrifying, but I don't really class this as horror because it's all so muted, and really if the house acts as a catalyst, it's perfectly plausible that the two main characters could screw it up all by themselves. Clark......more

Quotes

"Utterly devourable...gently, and beautifully unfolds, like a gauzy curtain in an open window."—Los Angeles Times

"A life-enhancing novel and a stunning debut...Gaige's style sings and twists. Each moment or shift in perspective conjures up a strange image, a quirky insight, a sumptuous simile...haunting, riveting, wonderful."—The Providence Journal

"Generous, wry, and bristling with humor, O MY DARLING is a gift to the reader. There are so many pleasures to be found here: indelible images, crystalline prose, and two characters that are rendered with such entertaining insight and tenderness, they will continue to haunt us long after we have, with great reluctance, left them."—Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, finalist for the National Book Award for Madeline is Sleeping

"This fine, intelligent novel should be required reading for anyone who is (a) in love, (b) engaged, (c) wed, or (d) planning on buying real estate, especially as a concrete expression of (a), (b), or (c). With one scalpel-sharp sentence after another, Amity Gaige has cut a beautifully sad pattern into the skin of that rootless, troubled creature--the modern, secular marriage."—Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, and the New York Times best-selling short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here

"Amity Gaige seems to know everything there is to know about us. [The novel's] details are so sharp and unique, every sentence carries the burden (and somethings the joy also) of truth."—Peter Orner, author of Love and Shame and Love

"Gaige's beguilingly offbeat voices and appealing mix of humor and insight offer continual pleasures...With a flavor of Lorrie Moore, graceful, bright, modern writing."—Kirkus Reviews

"Crystalline insights into the nature of love and flashes of narrative brilliance...sparkles and delights."—Publisher's Weekly

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