A Hole in the Heart
A Novel
-
-
2.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Midafternoon on a Tuesday, it occurred to Bean Jessup that she was forgetting her husband's face."
So begins this smart and charmingly written debut novel about a young woman trying to start over amid the grandeur of the Alaskan landscape and the creaky confines of an isolated fishing village and its relentless and pungent salmon cannery.
A Hole in the Heart is the story of what happens when Bean arrives after accepting a last-minute elementary-school-teaching job in a town of 2500 people on Alaska's southern coast. Love and marriage follow in short order, surprising Bean, who feels that her husband is not only the best thing to happen to her, but the only good thing.
Then Mick vanishes leading amateur hikers--or "tuna" as the guides call them--up Mt. McKinley. Suddenly, Bean is thrown back upon herself and into the company of Mick's mother Hanna, an arthritic woman in her seventies who believes that "a little larceny is good for the circulation."
The pair chafe at first, but eventually become partners in a road trip back to California. Mike's disappearance feels like a hole in the heart, they decide, and Hanna tells Bean to prize that hole; it's something no one can take away from her. With gentle humor, pathos, and boundless stores of hope, Marquis writes of Bean's struggle with early widowhood, loss, and moving on.
An avid bird-watcher, Bean takes much of her wisdom from the Pemberton Guide to Alaska Birds. Like the globe-crossing birds she so admires, she has struggled to get aloft, but for a delicious, perhaps fleeting moment in this marvelous novel, we see her glide.
Book Magazine selected Christopher Marquis as one of "Ten To Watch In 2003" for this "Proulxian saga." With its first-rate evocation of landscape and its affectionately drawn characters, A Hole in the Heart marks the publication debut of a prodigiously talented writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pudgy, diffident and insecure, the protagonist of this witty, offbeat first novel struggles to put her life back together after the death of her husband in a climbing accident on Mt. McKinley. Celestine "Bean" Jessup is at loose ends when she graduates from college; she finally moves from San Francisco to teach in Eyad, Alaska, a tiny south coastal village. Bean struggles with the harsh conditions during her initial teaching stint, but life takes a turn for the better when she meets the handsome, athletic Mick, a goofy, relentless optimist whom she quickly recognizes as her soul mate. Despite her initial satisfaction, Bean has a hard time adapting to marital happiness. Then Mick falls to his death after bad weather sets in during a landmark climb with his buddies. Devastated by her loss and her subsequent discovery of Mick's affair with her libidinous best friend, Lois, Bean finds herself living with Mick's mother, Hanna Linder, who moves up the coast from Vancouver and settles in after the funeral. Their strange domestic arrangement becomes a long-term deal, and Hanna eventually accompanies Bean back to San Francisco. Romance enters the picture when Hanna buys some furniture at an auction and the deliveryman, Bob, becomes smitten with Bean, but Bob's tendency to push the dating pace backs Bean into a corner. The twists and turns in the plot are deftly executed, and Marquis's ironic, compassionate humor tempers the pathos of Bean's hangdog existence. Like Anne Tyler, Marquis has a knack for creating hapless characters who radiate humanity.
