Blessings, Anna Quindlen
Blessings, Anna Quindlen
1 Rating(s)
List: $15.00 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.50

Blessings

Author: Anna Quindlen

Narrator: Joan Allen

Unabridged: 7 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/01/2002

Synopsis

Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him. Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present; what makes a person or a life legitimate or illegitimate and who decides; and the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about whom The Washington Post Book World said, “Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family.”

About The Author

Anna Quindlen is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self-help bestseller lists. She is the author of many novels: Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue, Blessings, Rise and Shine, Every Last One, Still Life with Bread Crumbs, and Miller’s Valley. Her memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, published in 2012, was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Her book A Short Guide to a Happy Life has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at The New York Times she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections, Living Out Loud and Thinking Out Loud. Her Newsweek columns were collected in Loud and Clear.Joan Allen is an acclaimed actress who has worked extensively in theatre, television and film during her career, and achieved recognition for her Broadway debut in Burn This, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. She has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress for Nixon and The Crucible, and for Best Actress for The Contender.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jane

This book was a selection for my daughter's book club. Let me say straight off that I loved it! A baby is left by the garage of the local "big house" by a couple of teenagers, and found by the handyman who lives over the garage. A strange complicity develops between him and the house's owner, and tw......more

Goodreads review by Lori

Blessings is the third Anna Quindlen novel that I've read and enjoyed. She is such an eloquent writer with accurate descriptions of the silent suffering and happiness that occurs in the human psyche. I enjoyed this story of Lydia Blessing and Skip Cuddy who through the nuturing and love of an abando......more

Goodreads review by Lydia

Original review posted here Anna Quindlen is one of those authors who holds the power to knock the socks off of me. Every time I go to pick up one of her books I know that, at some point, I’m going to end up in tears – so I have to pace myself accordingly. Blessings was no different. While it didn’t c......more

Quotes

“A polished gem of a novel . . . lovingly crafted, beautifully written.”
—The Miami Herald

“A WELL-TOLD STORY OF LOVE AND REDEMPTION.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“[A] RICHLY IMAGINED NOVEL OF THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF LOVE.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“EARNEST, DETAILED, AND COMFORTING . . . [Quindlen] delivers . . . on the promise of her title.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Anna Quindlen is America’s Resident Sane Person. She has what Joyce called the common touch, the ability to speak to many people about what’s on their minds before they have the vaguest idea what’s on their minds.”
—The New York Times

“A well–told story of love and redemption, one that is not based on the passion of a man for a woman but on the affection and understanding that develops between people of very different backgrounds who are brought together by a baby named Faith and a house called Blessings.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“Quindlen . . . is as concerned with the evolution of her characters as she is with the resolution of their story. . . . Quindlen’s moving and gently humorous depiction of her characters’ transformation is thoroughly persuasive. . . . [Her] immense sympathy for her characters remains intact, but her fidelity to certain truths is paramount.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“[Quindlen] treats her protagonists and their hardships with such tenderness it’s impossible not to grow fond of them.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“IMMENSELY APPEALING . . .
Quindlen’s fine-tuned ear for the class distinctions of speech results in convincing dialogue. Evoking a bygone patrician world, she endows Blessings with an almost magical aura. . . . The narrative is old-fashioned in a positive way, telling a dramatic story through characters who develop and change, and testifying to the triumph of human decency when love is permitted to grow and flourish. . . . [A] feel-good novel, a book that will appeal to the entire family.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Quindlen finds a wealth of material in the juxtaposition of two very different lives, moving between lush descriptions of a faille dress in a Park Avenue club library and the incongruous smell of baby wipes in a dive bar. These satisfying details heighten the reader’s emotional stake in Skip and Lydia’s subtly drawn relationship.”
—Vogue

“Readers . . . will be rewarded by a story they cannot put down.”
—BookPage

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List