LONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2014
Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman's life - middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn't one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage an 'intervention' and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn't she enjoy a drink now and then?
But we start to see another side to Hildy Good, and to her life's greatest passion. Soon, a cluster of secrets become dangerously entwined, with devastating consequences...
Title: The Good House
Author: Leary, Ann
ISBN: 9781782393221
Binding:
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Publication Date: 2014-07-03
Number of Pages: 304
Weight: 0.3312 kg
Fresh, sharp and masterfully told. Hildy's tale is as intoxicating as it is sobering. * People *
Ann Leary's The Good House creates a one-of-a-kind character in Hildy Good... By the end you'll be flipping pages, trying desperately to piece together what happened as much as the narrator is doing herself. * Jodi Picoult, author of A Spark of Light *
Leary writes with humor and insight, revealing both the pure pleasure of drinking and the lies and justifications of alcoholism, the warmth Hildy feels toward others when she drinks and the desperation that makes her put alcohol before the people she loves. The result is a layered and complex portrait of a woman struggling with addiction, in a town where no secret stays secret for long. * J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times Book Review *
Hildy is an original, irresistibly likable and thoroughly untrustworthy....A genuinely funny novel about alcoholism. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *
Leary's genius is to give us a true original: Hildy, a not-so-recovering alcoholic/realtor who crashlands among a colorful cast of New England neighbors, but Leary also says a great deal about the houses we choose to live in, the people we're compelled to love, and the addictions we don't want to give up. So alive, I swear the pages of this wickedly funny and moving novel are breathing. * Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You *
A good read. * USA Today *
Atmospheric, funny, poignant, gritty, and romantic, and Hildy Good is refreshingly candid and lovably flawed. * Kate Christensen, author of The Last Cruise *
Superstition, drama, and intrigue unspool at a perfect pace in Ann Leary's irresistible new novel, The Good House, a tale steeped in New England character and small-town social tumult. * Redbook *
One of the best works of Massachusetts fiction in recent memory. * Boston Magazine *
