Describe your new book. Oddfellow's Orphanage is a series of stories/vignettes that tell the tale of the newest arrival to a curious orphanage, a...
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— ask me, Annie. Ask me what's the worst thing I've done. Ask, goddammit. Because then you'll know I'll never go beyond last night.
Tonight, Annie is driving alone from North Sea to Montauk and back again, as she has every night since her husband, Mason, challenged what she believed about herself and about their marriage. Eating junk food and listening to talk radio, Annie tries to shut out her rage, her pain, but Mason's voice persists within her, as urgent as the voices of the anonymous callers who confess their misery to the radio psychologists.
Once again, Ursula Hegi writes along that border where bliss and sorrow meet. Sensuous, funny, and mysterious, her new novel takes us into an exuberant and troubled friendship. Since early childhood, Annie, Jake, and Mason have had a special bond. When Annie's parents die on the same night that she and Mason are married, the three friends decide to raise Annie's newborn sister, Opal, together.
Annie struggles to be both a sister and a mother to Opal, a wife to Mason, and a friend to Jake. Not surprisingly, their relationships, already entangled, grow dangerous, too close, on the line. One fateful night the three friends miss the moment when they could still turn back, and they goad each other to step across the line, with shocking, unforeseen consequences.
Set on the East End of Long Island, The Worst Thing I've Done is an incandescent story of love, friendship, and marriage; of joy and betrayal;of an artist's struggle to reconnect with her work; and of how we can choose our mothers, our families. Beautifully written and brilliantly vivid, it explores the resilience in the protagonists' lives, and their courage to move forward despite an uncertain future.
Review:
"'The troubles specific to triangular relationships are explored with depth and substance in Hegi's complex and affecting latest. Annie, Jake and Mason — friends practically from the womb — have developed a fraught dynamic sharply affected by competitiveness, attraction and jealousy. The book's opening trauma — Mason's suicide — serves as a springboard for Hegi to delve into the friends' tangled past: Mason and Annie get married the same night Annie's father and very pregnant mother die in a car wreck. The baby, Opal, survives, and the three friends raise her. But festering attractions — Mason to Jake; Jake to Annie — lead Mason to cross a line, Annie to want out of the marriage and Jake to fail to act at a pivotal moment. Woven into the mix is the post-WWII story of Annie's immigrant mother, Lotte, and her friend Mechthild, who came to America from Germany to work as au pairs and pretended to be Dutch to avoid persecution. Though a bumper crop of tragedy weighs heavily on this controlled and articulate novel, Hegi (Sacred Time) is an accomplished storyteller; she inhabits different characters and blends the past with the present to tell a rich story of love, death, loyalty and survival.' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Ursula Hegi's luminous new novel explores the relationships between mothers and daughters, men and women, past and present. The title reflects a question that permeates the story: What is the worst thing you've done? By the end, the answer given by each of the three main characters is revealed to the reader, though not to the other characters. This theme of secrets — of hidden acts and desires --... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) reverberates. What are the boundaries of love? How far is too far? What cannot be forgiven? These are the dilemmas faced by childhood friends Annie, Mason and Jake. Their friendship is entangled in attraction and jealousy. Ultimately, Mason wins and marries Annie, even though each of them has had a secret relationship with Jake. Then, on Annie and Mason's wedding night, her father and her very pregnant mother are killed in an automobile accident. The baby, a girl named Opal, survives, and the three friends agree to raise her together. Moral lines merge and blur right from the beginning, which opens in the present: 'Tonight, Annie is driving from North Sea to Montauk and back to North Sea as she has every night since Mason killed himself.' In a heartbreaking and powerful scene, we drive with Annie as she listens to talk-radio doctors advise desperate callers and simultaneously 'talks' to her dead husband. 'Listening to people so desperate that they confess their misery to radio psychologists distracts Annie from the rope cutting into Mason's graceful neck,' Hegi writes. The question of what led Mason to suicide provides the tension in the novel. Annie is an artist who makes collages from nature, paint and paper. Hegi, the author of 10 other books, including 'Stones from the River' and 'Sacred Time,' writes in the same manner, layering images, bits of information and points of view to create a narrative collage. Jake, Annie, Opal and even Mason narrate. He tells us what happened on the night leading to his suicide, the night when the three friends went too far. The idea of collage is reflected in Hegi's use of time, which suggests how the past affects the present. The story of Annie's mother, Lotte, and her best friend, who emigrated from Germany after World War II to work as au pairs, unravels beside the present story. (Hegi herself immigrated to the United States from Germany when she was 18 years old.) After Mason's death, Annie and Opal move in with that old friend, whom they call Aunt Stormy. Providing the novel with a wise and insightful voice, she fights for justice, protests the Iraq war, observes and advises Annie and Opal. 'Outside I'm fifty-five,' she says, 'but inside I'm my true age — twelve. The age I yearned for when I was a child in Germany. The age that has settled itself within me.' She gives Annie and Opal their history, describing her and Lotte's early days in America, acquainting them with pieces of their mother's past. Hegi also examines the effects of grief on her characters. Annie's paralysis after Mason's death, her aimless driving at night, her 'conversations' with him and her edgy state all ring true. And this grief has attached to it the added guilt associated with suicide. Annie, Jake and Opal all are left to question themselves and Mason. In a painfully emotional scene, Annie awakens from a dream in which Opal, wearing a purple windbreaker, is drowning. Trembling, she runs to Opal's room to be sure she is safe and then snatches the purple windbreaker from its peg and hides it, as if she can ward off danger and trick fate. 'There,' Annie thinks. 'She is safe now, my daughter.' Annie has an additional burden: Mason committed suicide in her studio, and her workplace is ruined for her by his act, her creativity stifled by grief. This depiction not only gives Annie's character another dimension but also reflects a poignant truth about loss and its aftermath. Although grief can fuel creativity, it also can bury an artist's spirit. Hegi compassionately chronicles Annie's creative journey from her inability to work all the way through to a difficult, exhilarating return. 'I crumple and rip the purple fabric, glue it to a canvas and overlay it with beach glass, driftwood, a circle of dried catbriers ... no longer dodging my panic and sorrow and rage but letting them become the background against which I'm reconstructing our lives.' 'The Worst Thing I've Done' is the work of a mature and masterful writer at her peak. The layering — the collage — of character and point of view, tragedy and healing, creativity and loss, loyalty and fidelity, love and jealousy, all combine with lyrical prose in a story that resonates long after its end. Ann Hood is the author, most recently, of 'The Knitting Circle.'" Reviewed by Ann Hood, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Synopsis:
From one of the most distinguished writers and the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Stones from the River" comes this stunning, sexy novel of friendship and love--and of one horrible choice that changes everything.
Ursula Hegi is the author of The Worst Thing I've Done, Sacred Time, Hotel of the Saints, The Vision of Emma Blau, Tearing the Silence, Salt Dancers, Stones from the River, Floating in My Mother's Palm, Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories, Intrusions, and Trudi & Pia. She teaches writing at Stonybrook's Southhampton Campus and she is the recipient of more than thirty grants and awards.
Laurie Blum, October 8, 2007 (view all comments by Laurie Blum)
If you loved Ursula Hegi's "Stones From the River" as well as her "Sacred Time" ... run to your local library or better yet, order this new novel from Powells! Once again this wonderful author gives us a rich story dealing with issues of love, death, friendship, loyalty & sorrow set into a disturbing "triangular relationship!" I pulled an all nighter!
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (9 of 13 readers found this comment helpful)
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"'The troubles specific to triangular relationships are explored with depth and substance in Hegi's complex and affecting latest. Annie, Jake and Mason — friends practically from the womb — have developed a fraught dynamic sharply affected by competitiveness, attraction and jealousy. The book's opening trauma — Mason's suicide — serves as a springboard for Hegi to delve into the friends' tangled past: Mason and Annie get married the same night Annie's father and very pregnant mother die in a car wreck. The baby, Opal, survives, and the three friends raise her. But festering attractions — Mason to Jake; Jake to Annie — lead Mason to cross a line, Annie to want out of the marriage and Jake to fail to act at a pivotal moment. Woven into the mix is the post-WWII story of Annie's immigrant mother, Lotte, and her friend Mechthild, who came to America from Germany to work as au pairs and pretended to be Dutch to avoid persecution. Though a bumper crop of tragedy weighs heavily on this controlled and articulate novel, Hegi (Sacred Time) is an accomplished storyteller; she inhabits different characters and blends the past with the present to tell a rich story of love, death, loyalty and survival.' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
From one of the most distinguished writers and the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Stones from the River" comes this stunning, sexy novel of friendship and love--and of one horrible choice that changes everything.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
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