The lovers: a novel

✍ Scribed by Vida, Vendela

• Book ID: 106934310
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 129 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780060828394

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

The overwrought latest from Vida (_Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name_) concerns itself with paradoxes of intimacy: isolation within a closely tied family and the unexpected affection between strangers from different cultures. Twenty-six years after her honeymoon in Dat?a, Turkey, recently widowed Yvonne returns to the Turkish peninsula not to relive the early happy days of her marriage but to remember them. Instead, she finds herself haunted by the many struggles she and her husband faced, above all the wedge driven between them by the antics of their alcoholic daughter, Aurelia. As Yvonne explores the town and its surrounding beaches, she starts to settle into her new identity as a widow and finds herself under a microscope as an American tourist traveling alone. A fast friendship with a young Turkish boy eases Yvonne's loneliness, but it also sparks the disapproval of several locals, leading to a climactic conversation and a quiet epiphany. It's a slow, self-involved story, nearly every page of which is marred by Vida's strained attempts to create high art. (July)
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From The Lovers, about an older, vulnerable woman coming to grips with her husband's death and her strained relationship with her children. Most reviewers cited Yvonne as a compelling, moving protagonist dealing with grief, betrayal, and life's ups and downs and praised Vida's spare, cinematic storytelling. The Onion AV Club provided the only major dissent, claiming that in its attempt at profundity, the novel instead delves into ambiguity and aimlessness. Most readers, however, will find much to enjoy in this subtle and haunting work.