Blue Diary - Softcover

Hoffman, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0701173173 ISBN 13: 9780701173173

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2001

Synopsis

The story starts on a brutally gorgeous June day in the small town of Monroe, Massachusetts. Ethan and Jorie, the perfect, beautiful couple, have been married for 13 years, and they're still very much in love. Ethan is handsome, reliable and a pillar of the community. But 13 years ago, far away in Maryland, he committed a brutal rape and murder. A young girl's phone call exposes him, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them again; as nothing could ever be the same for that other young girl who was raped all those years ago, or for her family. Jorie's best friend Charlotte has breast cancer. Her cancer is cut out and treated, and she looks set to survive. Whereas the cancer that has eaten away invisibly at a marriage, a family and a community may not kill but it destroys just as insidiously. This is a powerful, disturbing novel about the dark shadows in ordinary lives, about the ripples that carry on indefinitely from a violent act. And the blue diary of the title belonged to the dead girl...As in all Hoffman's novels, all the characters come alive, each with their own vibrant personalitites and concerns, in a story which is as powerfully gripping as any by Anita Shreve or Nicci French.

About this title

Review:

Alice Hoffman's Blue Diary is a gripping tale of good and evil, of ordinary families whose lives are wrenched apart by death. It questions whether you can ever really know anyone, even members of your immediate family you have known all your life, and whether you would be able to find it in your heart to forgive someone you love and respect when they are accused of a crime so terrible that it smashes your whole world to pieces.

Jorie and Ethan Ford are a golden couple blessed with an 11-year-old son, Collie, living a decent, quiet life in small-town Massachusetts. Ethan is a pillar of the community--a handsome, good man, whose life revolves around his family, his work as a carpenter and his roles as volunteer fireman and Little League coach. Since he first walked into her home-town, her life and her bed 13 years before, Jorie has never lost the feeling that she is special, singled out by fate to live a charmed life with a man she still desires and a son she adores. And then, on a glorious Monday morning in June, Jorie's fate turns and her life as she knows it is changed. One wonders whether the hand of fate will offer her any kind of salvation and if she can come to terms with the unimaginable.

Kat Williams, Collie's next-door neighbour and best friend is mature beyond her years. In her short life, she has had to cope with the loss of her father, a distant mother and a sister who attracts, and dispenses with, boyfriends as flies to a light, but who has taken to self-mutilation to heal her numbness. Is Kat the only one who can instinctively feel when something, or someone, is wrong? Charlotte, Jorie's best friend since childhood, knows when something is amiss, but her own terrible losses and lack of self-worth cause her to mistrust her feelings and internalise blame.

In the pages of this (relatively) short novel, Ms Hoffman manages to cover the singular emotions involved in so many different relationships--from parental, marital, sibling, friendship and even criminal-victim. The writing demonstrates enormous intelligence and endless compassion, an ability to cut through the sharp edges of humanity and look deep into a person's soul. In spite of its dark, disturbing theme, Blue Diary is an inspiring story of the enduring spirit of human love. Carey Green

Review:

"Hoffman ably sends her theme of loss and deception reverberating across several well-made subplots... fast-moving."--New York Times Book Review

..".[H]er observations of the natural world are conveyed with gorgeous clarity and the supporting characters are roundly drawn."--Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0701173173
• ISBN 13: 9780701173173
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320