Goodbye and Amen, Beth Gutcheon
Goodbye and Amen, Beth Gutcheon
List: $16.99 | Sale: $11.89
Club: $8.49

Good-bye and Amen
A Novel

Author: Beth Gutcheon

Narrator: Joyce Bean

Unabridged: 6 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/24/2008

Categories: Fiction, Sagas


Synopsis

Beth Gutcheon's critically acclaimed family saga Leeway Cottage was a major achievement: a vivid and moving tale of war and marriage and their consequences that enchanted readers. Good-bye and Amen is the next chapter for the family of Leeway Cottage, the story of what happens when those most powerful people in any family drama, the parents, have left the stage.

The complicated marriage of the gifted Danish pianist Laurus Moss to the provincial American child of privilege Sydney Brant was a mystery to many who knew them, including their three children. Now, Eleanor, Monica, and Jimmy Moss have to decide how to divide or share what Laurus and Sydney have left them without losing one another.

Secure and cheerful Eleanor, the oldest, wants little for herself but much for her children. Monica, the least-loved middle child, brings her youthful scars to the table, as well as the baggage of a difficult marriage to the charismatic Norman, who left a brilliant legal career, though not his ambition, to become an Episcopal priest. Youngest and best-loved Jimmy, who made a train wreck of his young adulthood, has returned after a long period of alienation from the family surprisingly intact but extremely hard for his sisters to read.

Having lived through childhoods both materially blessed and emotionally difficult, with a father who could seem uninvolved and a mother who loved a good family game of "let's you and him fight," the Mosses have formed strong adult bonds that none of them wants to damage. But it's difficult to divide a beloved summer house three ways and keep it too. They all know what's at stake—in a world of atomized families, a house like Leeway Cottage can be the glue that keeps generations of cousins and grandchildren deeply connected to one another. But knowing it's important doesn't make it easy.

About Beth Gutcheon

In addition to her critically acclaimed Leeway Cottage, Beth Gutcheon is the author of the novels More Than You Know, Five Fortunes, Saying Grace, Domestic Pleasures, The New Girls, and Still Missing, which was made into the feature film Without a Trace. She has also written several film scripts, including Academy Award nominee The Children of Theatre Street. Beth lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jackie on July 26, 2008

I would have devoured this book in one setting if I didn't have to do pesky things like sleep and go to work. This is a story, told in wonderfully chaotic 12 or so voices, of a family. It begins with 3 grown children dealing with cleaning out their parents' houses after their surprise dual death (ga......more

Goodreads review by Antoinette on August 11, 2012

I have read several Beth Gutcheon books in a row, and though I enjoyed this one, it wasn't her strongest. I do like the way she wrote it, as a follow-up to Leeway Cottage, with interviews from the various family members from that book. It filled in some blanks from the previous novel and offered a l......more

Goodreads review by Su on August 20, 2008

If I could, I would give this book at least a 3.5 rating. This novel is a sequel to Leeway Cottage which I read several months ago and really did not enjoy all that much. I found this story to be much more interesting and involved. The author chose a very unusual style of writing and she had me hook......more

Goodreads review by Diana on October 14, 2014

Interesting but I didn't like the characters.......more