It opens with what might be a gunshot, although it turns out not to be. Rebecca Winter is lying in the bedroom of the rundown cottage she’s rented for a year. Divorced, almost sixty and with ailing parents, she’s sublet her New York apartment in an attempt to eke out her meagre income from her diminishing royalties. Rebecca’s a photographer, made famous by the eponymous photograph of her kitchen after yet another impromptu dinner sprung on her by her then husband who never felt it was part of the deal to help clear up. The gunshot, she realises, was the springing of a trap set by the local roofer, Jim Bates, to capture whatever was making the skittering noise on her roof the previous night. Urban to the bone, Rebecca find adjusting to small town New York State hard but money is tight and needs must. She gets to know Sarah, an anglophile tea shop owner; Tad, a professional clown with an operatic voice and of course, Jim, the taciturn roofer. She begins to find things to photograph, the most intriguing being a series of white crosses adorned with memorabilia. Then, one winter’s night when the snow is so deep she’s unable to open her door, Jim arrives to dig her out. There are no real surprises in the way things turn out but the way we get there is thoroughly enjoyable.
Quindlen has a nice line in wry observation and a smart turn of phrase: Rebecca’s dilapidated cottage is the ‘real estate version of online dating, built atop lies, leading downhill to disenchantment’. Dry, often very funny, asides and observations on characters and what happens to them are woven through her narrative together with lots of pleasing little trails leading off into side stories often finishing ‘but that was later’. Every character has a story and the loquacious Sarah makes sure that Rebecca knows them all. All of this lifts Quindlen’s novel well above the sentimental while remaining firmly in heart warming territory. It’s a treat, and it’s made me want to pick up her backlist and read the ones I’ve missed.
Great review, I have a copy of this that I wasn’t sure about but I think you have convinced me to give it a go!
It’s just the ticket for this time of the year, I think.
I so enjoyed this book. I read it in one sitting last Christmas and – similar to your comment at the end – got hold of her backlist afterwards. Interesting comparison to Tyler, who I love too.
It’s lovely, isn’t it. I liked the snappy asides and dry wit – and it was something of a relief to read something ultimately cheery for a change.
Okay, I’m hooked. Put this on my Christmas list 😉
Excellent! You won’t regret it.
I had this in my hand the other day in the bookshop! Definitely on the list now for when I go back. I’ve been meaning to read Anna Quindlen for ages and I’m a big fan of Anne Tyler.
Always a dangerous thing to compare a literary star like Ms Tyler to another author, but I’m confident about this one!
Cheery but unsentimental, what I need right now after the (excellent but harrowing) Academy Street.
It’ll be a nice antidote, Anne. I have high hopes for Academy Street at the Costa Awards, such a fine debut.