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Amy and Isabelle: A novel |  | Author: Elizabeth Strout
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $0.01
as of 9/9/2010 12:47 CDT details
You Save: $14.99 (100%)
Seller: oncesoldtales
Rating:  185 reviews
Sales Rank: 19142
Media: Paperback
Pages: 303
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0375705198
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375705199
ASIN: 0375705198
Publication Date: February 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| | ISBN13: 9780375705199 | | | Condition: New | | | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
"It was terribly hot the summer Mr. Robertson left town." For Amy Goodrow and her mother, Isabelle, the heat of that summer is the least of their problems. Other citizens in the New England mill town of Shirley Falls are bothered by the heat and by "other things too: Further up the river crops weren't right--pole beans were small, shriveled on the vine, carrots stopped growing when they were no bigger than the fingers of a child; and two UFOs had apparently been sighted in the north of the state." But Amy and Isabelle have a more private misery: a seemingly unbridgeable chasm has opened between this once-close mother and daughter and nothing will ever be the same again. For Amy has fallen in love with her high-school math teacher, Mr. Robertson, who has gone way beyond the bounds of propriety by encouraging the crush. When Isabelle finds out, she is horrified to realize that her anger at him is dwarfed by her rage at her own daughter for "enjoying the sexual pleasures of a man while she herself had not." Mother-daughter novels can, by virtue of their subject matter, often seem claustrophobic, a little overwrought; Elizabeth Strout masterfully avoids this problem by placing Amy and Isabelle in the larger context of the community they inhabit. Though her main focus is on the Goodrow women, Strout often detours into the lives and thoughts of her many secondary characters: Isabelle's coworkers Dottie Brown and Fat Bev; Amy's best friend, Stacy Burrows; Stacy's ex-boyfriend, Paul Bellows; and women from Isabelle's church such as Peg Dunlap and Barbara Rawley. She also introduces a chilling frisson of menace with the unsolved abduction of a 12-year-old girl and a mysterious obscene phone-caller. Like the best of Alice Hoffman, Amy and Isabelle offers up a moving yet resolutely unsentimental portrait of people coming to terms with their lives, finding unsuspected nobility in themselves and unexpected kindness in others along the way. Elizabeth Strout has written a gem of a novel. --Alix Wilber
Product Description
National Bestseller
In her stunning first novel, Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother--and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's sexual secrets. In most ways, Isabelle and Amy are like any mother and her 16-year-old daughter, a fierce mix of love and loathing exchanged in their every glance. And eating, sleeping, and working side by side in the gossip-ridden mill town of Shirley Falls doesn't help matters. But when Amy is discovered behind the steamed-up windows of a car with her math teacher, the vast and icy distance between mother and daughter becomes unbridgeable.
As news of the scandal reaches every ear, it is Isabelle who suffers from the harsh judgment of Shirley Falls, intensifying her shame about her own secret past. And as Amy seeks comfort elsewhere, she discovers the fragility of human happiness through other dramas, from the horror of a missing child to the trials of Fat Bev, the community peacemaker. Witty and often profound, Amy and Isabelle confirms Elizabeth Strout as a powerful new talent.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 185
 Amy and Isabelle August 27, 2010
Willow
It is easy for me to say I LOVED IT. It was beautifully written and the story of the mother-daughter relationship was tender, sometimes frightening and eventually healing. And I found it to be so true of many our experiences and memories. I will definitely read any other book I can find by this author.
WONDERFUL July 1, 2010
Ky
This book was a great read. Though I thought some of the phrases the author used for teenagers was a little wacky (things a teen would never say) the book it self had a great point to it and great meaning behind it. I would reommended this book!
Beautiful, heartbreaking, redemptive June 25, 2010
GaiaNow
I had to take the time to tell other readers about this wonderful book. The writing is beautiful, the story is captivating, and the characters are real. If you are a mother, if you are a daughter, if you are a person, you will be moved by it. Life breaks us and makes us whole. We are in this together.
 Okay but ultimately forgettable June 9, 2010
silenceiseverything (Manchester, CT)
While reading Amy and Isabelle, I found that my feelings were varied. Sometimes I enjoyed the book, other times I found myself just reading it for the sake of finishing it. I wasn't content, yet not unhappy enough to put a halt to the reading. So, towards the end of the book, I was happy that I kept reading, but not for the book itself, but mostly because another book off my shelf has been read.
Amy and Isabelle starts off a little slowly and really doesn't pick up until the middle. That's when I started enjoying it a little more because that's when I really couldn't put it down and did end up finishing it the same day it picked up. However, the slow start wasn't the kind of slow start where the author was building the scene, so to speak, it was just the sort of slow that just drags on and on and that had me putting the book down from time to time. If a book allows me to put it down and then be a bit ambivalent at picking it up, then I don't think it's necessarily doing its job.
In Amy and Isabelle, the mother and the daughter are disconnected from each other and from the world. Elizabeth Strout did this a little too well because while reading the book, I felt disconnected from the characters. I was reading with a sense of detachment and I didn't really care about the characters. I cared about the overall problem, yes, but them individually, not so much. And then we have a slew of other characters who are taking up space and I really didn't care about them either. They seemed to have absolutely no purpose in this book.
I gave Amy and Isabelle three stars because sometimes, it was extremely compelling and I really couldn't believe some of the things Isabelle did to Amy. However, the bad sort of dampened my enjoyment of the book. If this review sounds mildly confusing, then that's how I basically feel. I enjoyed the book, but not really...
Fabulous read... April 5, 2010
Judith Ann (COMMERCE TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN, US)
I enjoyed "Amy and Isabelle" very much. It is a fabulous read, and I could not put the book down, once I got into it. I highly recommend it. Wonderful story pertaining to the relationship of a mother and daughter.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 185
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