Synopses & Reviews
When Oprah Winfrey chose Mary McGarry Morris's
Songs in Ordinary Time for her book club, she brought more than a million new readers under the spell of a novelist praised by the
Boston Sunday Globe as "brilliantly acute...remarkable" and by
USA Today as "extraordinary."
In her stunning new novel, Morris introduces us to Gordon Loomis, who, after twenty-five years in jail for a senseless high school murder, cannot come to terms with the enormity of his crime and its violation of all that is good and right. A giant of a man, he has learned to preserve a polite low profile and meager expectations for his life. Pressed by his family to start over, he stubbornly refuses to leave his old home and neighborhood now devastated by a quarter century of decline. A Hole in the Universe follows Gordon and the three women who care for him as they force him to confront real life.
Review
"Morris is a master at sympathetic portraits of those clinging to the peripheries of society. And nowhere is her talent more evident than in her extraordinary new novel." The Washington Post Book World
Review
"[Morris's] empathy for Gordon and his supporting characters in this novel, her fifth, is palpable, leaving the reader in awe of her uncanny ability to capture and convey each personality's unique essence." Booklist
Review
"Once again, Morris scores with her sympathetic portrayals of hard-to-like heroes and hopelessly floundering outcasts, infusing them with humanity." Publishers Weekly
Review
"What keeps this borderline potboiler simmering is the sense that the characters really are evolving." John Hartl, The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Graced with Morris's signature command of dialogue, her talent for creating vivid, unforgettable characters, and her masterful use of suspense, A Hole in the Universe is an engrossing story from "one of the most skillful authors at work in America today" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).
Synopsis
Readers and critics have been enchanted by Mary McGarry Morris’s unforgettable characters and masterly use of suspense in her four earlier novels, including the bestselling Songs in Ordinary Time. In her latest tour de force, Gordon Loomis returns to a changed world after twenty-five years in prison. His old neighborhood is blighted by drug dealers; his brother is eager to help but is too caught up in his own life; his loyal friend Delores makes him realize that he’s just as afraid of relationships as he is of going back to jail; and his inherent decency draws the attention of a hungry child whose survival threatens the fragile balance that is Gordon’s freedom.
Compelling and taut, suspenseful and compassionate, A Hole in the Universe will continue to resonate long after the last page is turned.
On the web: http://www.marymcgarrymorris.com
About the Author
Mary McGarry Morris is the author of Vanished, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award; A Dangerous Woman, which was chosen by Time as of of the five best novels of 1991; Songs in Ordinary Time, an Oprah's Book Club Selection and national bestseller, and the critically acclaimed Fiona Range and A Hole in the Universe. She lives in Andover, Massachussetts.
On the web: http://www.marymcgarrymorris.com