Joy School

Zusatztext 74648152 Informationen zum Autor Elizabeth Berg is the author of many bestselling novels, including Open House, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Talk Before Sleep , and The Year of Pleasures , as well as the short story collection The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted . Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year. She adapted The Pull of the Moon into a play which enjoyed sold-out performances in Chicago and Indianapolis. Berg’s work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. Three of her novels were turned into television movies. She is the founder of Writing Matters, a four-times-a-year quality reading series dedicated to serving author, audience, and community. She teaches one-day writing workshops, and is a popular speaker at venues around the country. Recently, some of her most popular Facebook postings were collected in Make Someone Happy . She lives outside Chicago. Klappentext In this exquisite new novel by bestselling writer Elizabeth Berg, a young woman falls in love -- and learns how sorrow can lead to an understanding of joy. Katie, 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.The housekeeper is ironing and I am lying on the floor beside her, trying to secretly look up her dress. I can't see anything but her slip. It is white, a skinny line of lace trim on the bottom, which I already knew because it was hanging out when she first got here, snowing down south. I had a thought to tell her, in a nice way. But what would be the point, it's only us two here and I'm not offended. I used to think you had to be rich to have a housekeeper, but it's not true. Sometimes you are rich, but sometimes you only have a need and that is when you get messy housekeepers like this one. Not that I don't like her. Ginger is her name, like the dancer, and her hair is blond like that dancer, too. She wears socks that fall down into the backs of her loafers--thin, white, wrong ones, though she is done with school so it isn't so important. I found out at my new high school, where I am a freshman, about wrong socks and I had to quit wearing them. Of course that is only the tip of the iceberg. Ginger takes the bus here. She carries a bag made out of rough striped material with wooden handles, and in the bag are slippers and her lunch and a paperback book with a curled-up cover which she reads every day at noontime. Once she gave me the candy bar from her lunch. Oh no, I said but she said, Oh sure, go ahead, I don't need it. It was the Hershey's with almonds kind. Usually she has Heath, so I think it was a case of this was a substitute candy bar anyway, so I did take it. I ate it that night while I read in bed with my knees up...

Product details

• Authors: Elizabeth Berg
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.03.1998
• EAN: 9780345423092
• ISBN: 978-0-345-42309-2
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 131 mm x 202 mm x 14 mm
• Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle; Katie Nash; Ballantine Reader's Circle; Katie Nash
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature