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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Landslide
Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 7 reviews on
From the author of Elsey Come Home, a stunning novel about a mother caring for her two teenage sons while the crumbling fishing industry her New England community relies on threatens to collapse around them. After a fishing accident leaves her husband hospitalized across the border in Canada, Jill is left to look after her teenage boys--the wolves--alone. Nothing comes easy in their remote corner of Maine: money is tight; her son Sam is getting into more trouble by the day; her eldest, Charlie, is preoccupied with a new girlfriend; and Jill begins to suspect her marriage isn't as stable as she once believed. As one disaster gives way to the next, she begins to think that it's not enough to be a caring wife and mother anymore--not enough to show up when needed, to nudge her boys in the right direction, to believe everything will be okay. But how to protect this life she loves, this household, this family? With remarkable poise and startling beauty, Landslide ushers us into a modern household where, for a family at odds, Instagram posts, sex-positivity talks, and old fishing tales mingle to become a kind of love language. It is a beautiful portrait of a family, as compelling as it is moving, and raises the question of how to remain devoted when the eye of the storm closes in.
Book Details
- Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print
- Publish Date: Feb 24th, 2021
- Pages: NA
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.50in - 5.50in - 0.80in - 1.15lb
- EAN: 9781432885502
- Categories: • Family Life - General• Literary• Small Town & Rural
About the Author
SUSAN CONLEY grew up in Maine. She is the author of four previous books including Elsey Come Home. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Harvard Review, the New England Review, and Ploughshares. She has received multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, as well as from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Maine Arts Commission, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. She has won the Maine Literary Award and the Maine Award for Publishing Excellence. She is a founder of the Telling Room, a youth creative writing center in Portland, Maine, where she lives and teaches on the faculty of the Stonecoast Writing Program.
Critics’ reviews
Praise for this book
"I loved Landslide. Susan Conley is such a spare, eloquent writer. Her characters are richly but economically drawn, in this case Jill's two teenaged sons called 'the wolves, ' and at the heart of the story is a marriage that may or may not come apart. You are right there with them in a fishing village in Maine, feeling the wind, the sea, the danger, just as you feel Jill's worries, frustrations, her longings, her love for her family. Smart, honest, and funny, this is a story you won't forget."
--Judy Blume, author of In the Unlikely Event
Susan Conley has knocked it out of the park with Landslide. It is a spectacular tale of hardship and healing told in Conley's gorgeous, luminous prose. Funny, moving, and deeply insightful, the novel takes such a fresh look at marriage, motherhood, and the wondrous inner lives of teenagers. A truly beautiful and unforgettable love story of a family on the brink.
--Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers
Landslide by Susan Conley is a supple examination of the sweet, enduring electricity generated by the ever-present pairings of darkness and light, fear and security, love and loss. If it sounds like a novel for our current predicament, current opportunity, that's because it is. Landslide is wise and vulnerable, while Conley's sweet, dry humor allows us sips of hope for the wonderful characters herein.
--Rick Bass, author of For a Little While
"From its very first page, Landslide gives the complete and deeply satisfying pleasure of a great novel: a fully realized world peopled by characters you feel you know, or used to know, or wished you knew better. Complicated people trying to sort their way through complicated lives, and the complications are the stuff of ordinary human beings: a mother struggling to manage her teenage sons, her "wolves," a fishing village in Maine staring down its end, a man in a hospital room miles from his family, and the sharp knife of accident that cuts through our days. As always, Susan Conley's work allows for the best sort of vanishing. And I went gladly."
--Sarah Blake, author of The Guest Book If D.H. Lawrence had written Sons and Lovers from the maternal perspective, and set his story on the modern coast of Maine, the result would very likely be this novel. Landslide is not only a vicious meditation on the bond between mothers and sons, but a quietly subversive reckoning with the Maine of our literary imagination. So many writers have turned to our coast as a source of innocent beauty; Conley instead reveals how these tidal zones can betray us, and curse us with all of the anger and resentment, sacrifice and pain that can only be redeemed by a searing commitment to love. This is a really powerful book. It cuts right to the bone."
--Jaed Coffin, author of Roughhouse Friday
"Conley is at her best when chronicling the very real forces Jill balances while walking a fine line between empathizing with and laying down boundaries for her children . . . A compelling portrait of a family trying to stay afloat and weather every storm life throws at them."
--Kirkus
--Judy Blume, author of In the Unlikely Event
Susan Conley has knocked it out of the park with Landslide. It is a spectacular tale of hardship and healing told in Conley's gorgeous, luminous prose. Funny, moving, and deeply insightful, the novel takes such a fresh look at marriage, motherhood, and the wondrous inner lives of teenagers. A truly beautiful and unforgettable love story of a family on the brink.
--Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers
Landslide by Susan Conley is a supple examination of the sweet, enduring electricity generated by the ever-present pairings of darkness and light, fear and security, love and loss. If it sounds like a novel for our current predicament, current opportunity, that's because it is. Landslide is wise and vulnerable, while Conley's sweet, dry humor allows us sips of hope for the wonderful characters herein.
--Rick Bass, author of For a Little While
"From its very first page, Landslide gives the complete and deeply satisfying pleasure of a great novel: a fully realized world peopled by characters you feel you know, or used to know, or wished you knew better. Complicated people trying to sort their way through complicated lives, and the complications are the stuff of ordinary human beings: a mother struggling to manage her teenage sons, her "wolves," a fishing village in Maine staring down its end, a man in a hospital room miles from his family, and the sharp knife of accident that cuts through our days. As always, Susan Conley's work allows for the best sort of vanishing. And I went gladly."
--Sarah Blake, author of The Guest Book If D.H. Lawrence had written Sons and Lovers from the maternal perspective, and set his story on the modern coast of Maine, the result would very likely be this novel. Landslide is not only a vicious meditation on the bond between mothers and sons, but a quietly subversive reckoning with the Maine of our literary imagination. So many writers have turned to our coast as a source of innocent beauty; Conley instead reveals how these tidal zones can betray us, and curse us with all of the anger and resentment, sacrifice and pain that can only be redeemed by a searing commitment to love. This is a really powerful book. It cuts right to the bone."
--Jaed Coffin, author of Roughhouse Friday
"Conley is at her best when chronicling the very real forces Jill balances while walking a fine line between empathizing with and laying down boundaries for her children . . . A compelling portrait of a family trying to stay afloat and weather every storm life throws at them."
--Kirkus