Learning to Drive

Zusatztext “I savored every moment I spent with this wise and moving and inspired novel.” –Chris Bohjalian! author of Midwives "Mary Hays has written a brilliant! original! funny novel. What a treat! It is totally satisfying and its characters unforgettable. I loved it." –Judy Blume “This remarkable novel compassionately looks at humans and their foibles as they strive for 'the right way.' . . . Hilarious . . . Hays writes with authority and authenticity.” – Vermont Life "Mesmerizing prose and darkly complex characters draw the reader deep into Charlotte's world! raising fascinating questions about the power of the mind over body and the emotions that bind the most unlikely people together." – Publishers Weekly “[A] quietly affecting debut novel.” –Glamour Informationen zum Autor Mary Hays was educated at Bennington College and the University of Chicago, where she received her M.A. in humanities. She has written short stories and plays and, until recently, taught third and fourth graders at a rural elementary school. She lives in Corinth, Vermont, with her husband, Stephen Long. Learning to Drive is her first novel. Klappentext Raised a Christian Scientist, Charlotte McGuffey has always been taught to solve her problems by denying their existence. But now, suffering from crippling insomnia, living with a husband she no longer cares for, and bewildered by a three-year-old son who still won't talk, Charlotte is starting to wonder whether this strategy is working. When her husband is killed in a sudden accident she packs her two young boys in the family car and takes off for Beede, Vermont-the town where her husband grew up and died. Here in Vermont, away from the watchful eyes of her older sisters, Charlotte begins to search for answers, making new discoveries about her family's past, her late husband's death, and the possibility of new love. Filled with gentle wit and uncommon generosity, Learning to Drive is a funny, poignant lesson in self-discovery. Leseprobe Charlotte lay awake all night listening to the clock in the downstairs hallway. Every quarter hour it squeezed out a chime within a long and predictable sequence of sounds that became more distinct as the night wore on: a wheeze, a cough, a running start, and finally, a pause and a failure of nerve, and then a little song--another quarter hour is coming, another is gone, another is coming, another is gone. She pictured the old, dead quarter hours piling up, then sliding off the pile and disappearing into endless Time where quarter hours didn't count. Quarter hours were mere human constructions, temporary units fabricated by mankind for convenience in daily life, like minutes, though more important than minutes, since clocks didn't chime every minute--and for that she was very grateful. There was an infinite number of units of time, as many as you could think of names for, each one folded inside the other, their inward progression stretching beyond the mind's eye, to the outer edge of knowing, all of them ticking, relentlessly beating, like her own heart. She decided to drown them. She gathered them into Melvin's fishing net and lowered them into a dark pool, watching as the flimsy little units cascaded gently toward the muck at the bottom. Just before they landed, she reversed the net and whipped it out of the water. Success! None had stuck! They were all gone, or nearly all. Just one was left; it clung to the net, its delicate green wings twitching, ticking, relentlessly beating. . . . She was doomed; she would never sleep. Her skin prickled; her long, heavy braid pulled at her scalp. She listened to Melvin breathing peacefully beside her, to the quiet little snort at the bottom of each breath that signaled his blissful oblivion. Across the hall, their two small sons slept on, two soldiers of sleep marching through the n...

Product details

• Authors: Mary Hays
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 12.10.2004
• EAN: 9781400031900
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-3190-0
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 17 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature