Up the Creek Book Club
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© 2000 Kathy Craig |
Amy and Isabelle
by Elizabeth Strout
September 1999
Synopsis
"'Amy and Isabelle' explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter. Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, this emotional and physical trespass brings disgrace to Amy's mother, Isabelle, and intensifies the shame she feels about her own past. In a fury, she lashes out at her daughter's beauty and then retreats into outraged silence. Amy withdraws, too, and mother and daughter eat, sleep, and even work side by side but remain at a vast, seemingly unbridgeable distance from each other. This conflict is surrounded by other large and small dramas in the town of Shirley Falls -- a teenage pregnancy, a UFO sighting, a missing child, and the trials of Fat Bev, the community's enormous (and enormously funny and compassionate) peacemaker and amateur medical consultant." (Publisher)
"quote"
Reviews
- "Evocative...one of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place." (The New York Times Book Review)
- "Unflaggingly engaging...What a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book." (The New Yorker)
- "Strout's insights into the complex psychology between [mother and daughter] result in a poignant tale about two comings of age." (Time Magazine)
Book Club Rating and Comments
If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.
Other Books by Elizabeth Strout
- 'none'