The Sunshine When Shes Gone, Thea Goodman
The Sunshine When Shes Gone, Thea Goodman
List: $14.99 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.49

The Sunshine When She's Gone

Author: Thea Goodman

Narrator: Susan Ericksen, David Colacci

Unabridged: 7 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/05/2013

Categories: Fiction, Family Life


Synopsis

One frigid, January morning in Manhattan, a new father, racked by sleep deprivation, decides to let his wife sleep in—then spontaneously flees lower Manhattan with the baby for a weekend in the Caribbean. It wasn’t a kidnapping, he wasn’t leaving his wife; he just wanted to spend a little time with the baby and give his wife a break. When the wife awakes, truly rested for the first time in nearly a year, she feels great—and embarks on a city adventure as misguided in its own way as her husband’s impulsive escape.Told from the couple’s alternating points of view, the story unfolds across one life-changing long weekend. The wife tries to recapture who she was before the baby. The husband struggles to care for his daughter—far from the special homemade formula and high-end diapers she requires. Parenting had seemed like such a doable idea—until they tried to do it. Lucky, highly educated Americans, this couple barely survives making the first real sacrifice of their lives. But survive it they do, in a hilarious, touching, tour de force debut about passion, ambivalence, and love.“Thea Goodman’s astute debut novel poses the question, What if you were to step out of your embedded life? And her discerning mind answers it with a tale of Manhattanites more inextricably bound together than they might imagine.” —Susan Minot, author of Evening“From its first alarming domestic scene to its far-from-inevitable, unbearably true conclusion, The Sunshine When She’s Gone is a faultless portrait of a marriage in crisis and the precarious paths we all must take to keep our lives in balance. Ever been in love? This book will shake you, jolt you, wake you up to life.” —Patrick Sommerville, author of The Cradle and This Bright River“Thea Goodman has made something I would’ve thought impossible: an edge-of-your-seat narrative about parenting a small child. Her emotional investment in her characters is complete as they confront each other, themselves, and the heavy weight of new love.” —Nell Freudenberger, author of The Newlyweds

About Thea Goodman

Thea Goodman has received the Columbia Fiction Award, a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and fellowships at Yaddo and Ragdale; her short stories have appeared in several journals, notably New England Review, Other Voices and Columbia. Born in New York City, she studied at Sarah Lawrence and earned her MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY. She has taught writing at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, and lives in Chicago with her husband and children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Miriam on April 13, 2013

Read my full review here: [URL not allowed] My daughter called me the other day, "Mom, can you come over? I just need a moment." I empathize with her because she copes daily with a toddler's incessant chatter and an infant clamoring for the breast every hour or so. I trotted o......more

Goodreads review by Mike on June 16, 2017

This novel provides an interesting concept: a married couple has had a baby and there are lingering after-effects: the husband feels useless and confused because his wife has yet to recover from a birth that resulted in a hysterectomy and was Cesarean, both unanticipated. Their daughter, Clara, is a......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on January 27, 2013

I got this advance copy from the early reviewer's program through Library Thing. I don't want to say too much about the plot line, because I hate to give anything away. But anyone who has ever had a baby, and six months later looked at their husband and said "who is THAT guy" --- or looked at themse......more