Joy School, Elizabeth Berg
Joy School, Elizabeth Berg
List: $35.99 | Sale: $25.20
Club: $17.99

Joy School

Author: Elizabeth Berg

Narrator: Natalie Ross

Unabridged: 5 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/03/2013


Synopsis

Winner of the New England Book Award for FictionKatie, the narrator, has relocated to Missouri with her distant, occasionally abusive father, and she feels very much alone: her much-loved mother is dead; her new school is unaccepting of her; and her only friends fall far short of being ideal companions. When she accidentally falls through the ice while skating, she meets Jimmy. He is handsome, far older than she, and married, but she is entranced. As their relationship unfolds, so too does Katie's awareness of the pain and intensity first love can bring.Beautifully written in Berg's irresistible voice, Joy School portrays the soaring happiness of real love, the deep despair one can feel when it goes unrequited, and the stubbornness of hope that will not let us let go. Here also is recognition that love can come in many forms and offer many different things. Joy School illuminates, too, how the things that hurt the most can sometimes teach us the lessons that really matter.About Durable Goods, Elizabeth Berg's first novel, Andre Dubus said, "Elizabeth Berg writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, loneliness, love and hope. And the transcendence that redeems." The same will be said of Joy School, Elizabeth Berg's most luminous novel to date.“[A] painfully accurate tale of first love… Berg can conjure character with a minimum of words and a rainbow of nuance. The reader misses Katie as soon as the book ends.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

About Elizabeth Berg

Elizabeth Berg is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including The Year of Pleasures, The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, Berg is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping Into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kevin on May 17, 2012

Perhaps this was a guilty pleasure but I really liked this wonderful (if not a bit formulaic) dip into the mind of a thirteen-year-old girl as she navigates a cruel new town, unusual new friends, and an older man she falls in love with. There were a lot of funny scenes and I appreciated Berg's quick......more

Goodreads review by Susan's Reviews on September 06, 2024

Memory Lane indeed! I loved spending time with young Katie. Her emotionally volatile father, her dying mother, her rebellious, beautiful sister, Diane: I couldn't get enough of them, so for sure I read the other two books in the Katie Nash series. Katie is an army brat and soon learns that "home" is w......more

Goodreads review by Kate on September 17, 2009

The kind of y/a adults will gobble up as eagerly. Not quite as moving as its prequel, Durable Goods, Joy School is nonetheless wrenching and engaging. Katie, now living in Missouri with her father and their housekeeper/nanny, is about to turn 13. She has trouble making friends at her new school for......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on March 30, 2021

Back to the 50’s and my teenage years, revisiting Katie as she turns 13. A sweet story of a young girls first brush with love and its loss. Times seemed so much more innocent then. Looking back I think they were. Ms Berg is close to my generation, I think that is why I enjoy her look at the way thing......more

Goodreads review by Desiree on September 27, 2023

An amazingly authentic-feeling snippet of the life of a 12-13-year-old girl. She's lost, looking for friends, and learns a lot from the various cast of characters around her. You feel for her, and wonder if she'll find her way, but feel solid by the end that she'll be okay, and stronger for it. Eliz......more