Synopses & Reviews
Chapter One
We were sitting cross-legged in an abandoned shed we'd discovered in the woods, passing back and forth a thermos of rum and Coke. I listened to her with rapt attention, because she often spoke important truths when she stopped taking her medication. Salty's eyes were on fire, and I reached out and felt her pale forehead, but it was cool to the touch.
"That's what's wrong with me, Celeste," she said close to my ear in her small, urgent voice as tears fell from her eyes. I didn't get a soul."
"Oh, Sally," I said, pulling her into my arms and holding her tightly, as if that could keep her demons away.
When I was a sophomore in college, she killed herself.
At twenty-eight, I found myself in a small, dark apartment in New York City, quite alone. Having lost almost every person who had ever meant anything to me, I confronted my own soul-room for the first time. In mirrors, my blank eyes stared back at me. The walls and floor were bare. The windows looked out onto a dirty airshaft, a brick wall.
And then I met Alex, at a Fourth of July party on a chartered yacht, the way people meet inmovies.
During the past six months, I had managed to get to my teaching job at Columbia University; to the public school in Harlem where I taught creative writing to eighth graders; and to the Korean deli: familiar places and preplanned destinations.
When summer finally came and I was relieved of my teaching obligations, I locked myself in my apartment, and began putting together my first collection of short stories.
Sometimes, in the evening, I went down the hall to visit my neighbor Lucia. She was in the throes of a love affair with a rock and roll roadie called Soarin' Sammy. Lucia had met him on the set of one of her music videos.
They had never been outside of her apartment together. It had been going on--off and on, but mostly on--for over three years. I always knew when he was visiting because she would stop answering her phone, and the music would start pounding so that her door would hum with the vibration.
For long stretches there would be no mention of him, then she would begin to expect him again. "Soarin' Sammy should be coming by," she'd say in her heavy voice.
That summer we holed up, waiting for a storm to pass, like two commuters who'd forgotten their umbrellas. We watched old movies on her VCR and drank wine or brandy into the late hours. Around the corner there was a bar I liked, a small, dark place. Sitting in there one night, after we'd both had a number of cognacs, she made me promise I'd accompany her to this upcoming Fourth of July party. The Slimbrand company had rented a private yacht that sailed around lower Manhattan. Lucia who had produced several commercials for them, had received a gilded invitation in the mail. It was a black tie affair. Lastyear, she told me, there had been music and film stars, a Top Forty band, and rivers of champagne.
Synopsis
In this splendid novel, Celeste finds herself engaged to Alex, a wealthy man whose standards are as exacting as her own -- or so she thought. As she begins to question their relationship and herself, Celeste is haunted by painful memories: of her past in well-heeled, blue-blooded Connecticut; of the friends and family who seem to have disappeared from her life; and of Nathan, for whom Celeste still carries a lingering passion. At last coming to terms with the lies and illusions that have propelled her forward for years, Celeste must take responsibility for the choices she has made. She decides to be true to herself -- and so challenges her fiancé, her family, and the very society in which she's steeped.
Synopsis
In this splendid novel, Celeste finds herself engaged to Alex, a wealthy man whose standards are as exacting as her own -- or so she thought. As she begins to question their relationship and herself, Celeste is haunted by painful memories: of her past in well-heeled, blue-blooded Connecticut; of the friends and family who seem to have disappeared from her life; and of Nathan, for whom Celeste still carries a lingering passion. At last coming to terms with the lies and illusions that have propelled her forward for years, Celeste must take responsibility for the choices she has made. She decides to be true to herself -- and so challenges her fiancÉ , her family, and the very society in which she's steeped.
About the Author
Kaylie Jones is the author of A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, which is loosely based on her experiences growing up in an expatriate artistic home as the daughter of famed novelist James Jones. The novel was made into a Merchant Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey. Jones currently teaches poetry and fiction in the New York City public schools, where she is a writer in residence, and fiction at Long Island University's Southampton campus, where she cofounded the MFA program. Jones lives with her husband and daughter in Manhattan.