Synopses & Reviews
By turns funny, charming, and tragic, Rosecrans Baldwin's debut novel takes us inside the heart and mind of Dr. Victor Aaron, a leading Alzheimer's researcher at the Soborg Institute on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Victor spends his days alternating between long hours in the sterile lab and running through memories of his late wife, Sara. He has preserved their marriage as a sort of perfect, if tumultuous, duet between two opposite but precisely compatible souls.
But one day, in the midst of organizing his already hyperorganized life, Victor discovers a series of index cards covered in Sara's handwriting. They chronicle the major "changes in direction" of their marriage, written as part of a brief fling with couples counseling. Sara's version of their great love story is markedly different from his own, which, for the eminent memory specialist, is a startling revelation. Victor is forced to reevaluate and relive each moment of their marriage, never knowing if the revisions will hurt or hearten. Meanwhile, as Victor's faith in memory itself unravels, so too does his precisely balanced support network, a group of strong women—from his lab assistant to Aunt Betsy, doddering doyenne of the island—that had, so far, allowed him to avoid grieving.
Baldwin shows himself here to be a young writer bursting with talent and imagination who deftly handles this aching love story with sensitivity and unexpected maturity. You Lost Me There is a treasure of a book filled with beautiful, intelligent prose, a book that wears its smarts lightly and probes its emotions deeply.
Review
"Baldwin's prose is wise and nimble, clever without being self-conscious, true to the myriad voices of his characters." ---Washington Post
Synopsis
A dazzling debut that is at once a lightly erudite novel of ideas and a darkly charming love story set on an island off the coast of Maine—the perfect sophisticated summer book.
About the Author
Rosecrans Baldwin is a founding editor of the popular Web site The Morning News, host of the annual "Tournament of Books." His work has appeared in New York magazine and the Nation, as well as on NPR's All Things Considered. He currently writes "The Digital Ramble" for The Moment, a New York Times blog. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife. Johnny Heller has won two prestigious Audie Awards and has earned numerous Audie nominations. He has been praised for his adult, personal development, history, comedy, and children's book narrations. Named a Best Voice of 2008 and 2009, as well as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine, Johnny has earned almost twenty Golden Earphones Awards. Two of Johnny's audiobooks have been picked by AudioFile as Best Audiobook the Year, and he has won two Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards. Jo Anna Perrin is an accomplished actor, having appeared in film and television, as well as on stage in New York, Los Angeles, and regionally. Her audiobook work includes university and cultural releases in the United States and Europe, including for London and Yale Universities, the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Chicago, and the University of North Carolina. In addition to her work in audiobooks, Jo Anna has done commercial and film voice-overs. Independent of her acting, she is a published author and a professional photographer.