The Cure for Grief
A Novel
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Simon & Schuster
Published:28th Jul '09
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Ruby is the youngest child in the tightly knit Bronstein family, a sensitive, observant girl who looks up to her older brothers and is in awe of her stern but gentle father, a Holocaust survivor whose past and deep sense of morality inform the family's life. But when Ruby is ten, her eldest brother enters the hospital and emerges as someone she barely recognizes. It is only the first in a startling series of tragedies that befall the Bronsteins and leave Ruby reeling from sorrow and disbelief.
This disarmingly intimate and candid novel follows Ruby through a coming-of-age marked by excruciating loss, one in which the thrills, confusion, and longing of adolescence are heightened by the devastating events that accompany them. As Ruby's family fractures, she finds solace in friendships and the beginnings of romance, in the normalcy of summer camp and the prom. But her anger and heartache shadow these experiences, separating her from those she loves, until she chooses to reconcile what she has lost with whom she has become.
Nellie Hermann's insightful debut is a heartbreakingly authentic story of the enduring potential for resilience and the love that binds a family.
"The Cure for Grief is a searingly beautiful, stunning debut, saturated in the lyricism of loss and mourning yet rooted in the everyday. The book's sadness is irradiated by a wild hope as the characters take their places among the living; we are drawn in by the force of their sorrow but elevated by their rich and complex attachments to each other, the past, the future, and their own inner lives." -- Mary Gordon, author of Circling My Mother
"Written in measured, splendid prose, Nellie Hermann's debut novel is a courageous gift to readers. Far more than a coming-of-age story, The Cure for Grief is both vivid in its immediacy and poignant in its timelessness." -- Howard Norman, author of Devotion
"The Cure for Grief is a profound and thrilling achievement -- an exemplar of the reason books should be written and read. Nellie Hermann is wise beyond her years, though to say this is to miss the point -- that all great artists float beyond age and outside of time. The Cure for Grief is a coming-of-age story that reaches far beyond its subject; it shimmers with clarity and grace, fulfilling the deepest of literature's promises -- drawing us into a riveting world, punching us with emotion, revealing the most secret truths of the soul. Her vision is that of the seer, whose illuminating beam might help the reader learn how better to live." -- Shira Nayman, author of Awake in the Dark
"Stunning. A subtle, elegiac coming-of-age novel about catastrophe, grief and the persistence of everyday life. A gorgeously readable meditation on mourning and survival. Hermann is a young author to watch." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
ISBN: 9781416568247
Dimensions: 214mm x 140mm x 18mm
Weight: 305g
288 pages