The Good House - Softcover

Leary, Ann

3.7

27,738 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782393455 ISBN 13: 9781782393450

Publisher: Corvus, 2013

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Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman's life - middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn't one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage an 'intervention' and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn't she enjoy a drink now and then?

But we start to see another side to Hildy Good, and to her life's greatest passion. Soon, a cluster of secrets become dangerously entwined, with devastating consequences...

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Review:

Ann Leary's The Good House creates a one-of-a-kind character in Hildy Good, and gives us a raw, first-person glimpse into the mind of a middle-aged, outspoken wry New England realtor so real she might be someone you know...yet who also is hiding her alcoholism from her family, her town, and herself. By the end you'll be flipping pages, trying desperately to piece together what happened as much as the narrator is doing herself. -- Jodi Picoult Leary writes with humor and insight, revealing both the pure pleasure of drinking and the lies and justifications of alcoholism, the warmth Hildy feels toward others when she drinks and the desperation that makes her put alcohol before the people she loves. The result is a layered and complex portrait of a woman struggling with addiction, in a town where no secret stays secret for long. -- J. Courtney Sullivan * New York Times Book Review * Leary's genius is to give us a true original: Hildy, a not-so-recovering alcoholic/realtor who crashlands among a colorful cast of New England neighbors, but Leary also says a great deal about the houses we choose to live in, the people we're compelled to love, and the addictions we don't want to give up. So alive, I swear the pages of this wickedly funny and moving novel are breathing. -- Caroline Leavitt

From the Author:

Ann Leary is the author of the memoir An Innocent, a Broad and the novel Outtakes From a Marriage. She has written fiction and non-fiction for various magazines and literary publications. She and her family share their small farm in Connecticut with four dogs, three horses and an angry cat named Sneakers.

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