OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “charming, compassionate little masterpiece” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Pulitzer–Prize winning author Anna Quindlen traces the coming-of-age of a young girl struggling to find her way within the tangle of her quirky, loving Irish-Catholic family. “A small triumph . . . elaborate and playful . . . honest and deeply felt . . . Here is the Quindlen wit, the sharp eye for details of class and manners, the ardent reading of domestic lives.”—The New York Times (Best Books of the Year) It is the 1960s, in suburban New York City. Maggie Scanlan and her family are in the thrall of her powerful grandfather Jack Scanlan. In the summer of her twelfth year, Maggie is desperately trying to master the object lessons her grandfather fills her head with. But there is too much going on to concentrate. Everything at home is in upheaval, her grandfather is changing, and Maggie is unsure if what she wants is worth having. . . .
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “charming, compassionate little masterpiece” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Pulitzer–Prize winning author Anna Quindlen traces the coming-of-age of a young girl struggling to find her way within the tangle of her quirky, loving Irish-Catholic family. “A small triumph . . . elaborate and playful . . . honest and deeply felt . . . Here is the Quindlen wit, the sharp eye for details of class and manners, the ardent reading of domestic lives.”—The New York Times (Best Books of the Year) It is the 1960s, in suburban New York City. Maggie Scanlan and her family are in the thrall of her powerful grandfather Jack Scanlan. In the summer of her twelfth year, Maggie is desperately trying to master the object lessons her grandfather fills her head with. But there is too much going on to concentrate. Everything at home is in upheaval, her grandfather is changing, and Maggie is unsure if what she wants is worth having. . . .
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book
EVER AFTER, WHENEVER SHE SMELLED the peculiar odor of new construction, of pine planking and plastic plumbing pipes, she would think of that summer, think of it as the time of changes. She would never be an imprecise thinker, Maggie Scanlan; she would always see the trees as well as the forest. It would have been most like her to think of that summer as the summer her grandfather had the stroke, or the summer her mother learned to drive, or the summer Helen moved away, or the summer she and Debbie and Bruce and Richard became so beguiled by danger in the broad fields behind Maggie’s down-at-heel old house, or the summer she and Debbie stopped being friends.
All those things would be in her mind when she remembered that time later on. But they always came together, making her think of that summer as a time apart, a time which could never be forgotten but was terrible to remember: the time when her whole life changed, and when she changed, too. When she thought of herself and of her family, and of the town in which they lived, she thought of them torn in two—as they were before and as they were afterward, as though there had been a great rift in the earth of their existence, separating one piece of ground from the other. Her grandfather Scanlan always referred to life on earth and the life to come as here and hereafter: “You’ve got your here, and you’ve got your hereafter, little girl,” he had said to her more than once. “Take care of the first, and the second will take care of itself.” Sometimes Maggie remembered those words when she remembered that summer. Afterward, all the rest of her life would seem to her a hereafter. Here and hereafter, and in between was that summer, the time of changes.
Perhaps she saw it all whole because of so many years of listening to her grandfather create labels, calling everything from bare legs in church to the Mass performed in English “the Vatican follies,” lumping all the bullets and the bombs and the bloodshed in his native Ireland under the heading of “the Troubles.” Or perhaps it was because Maggie needed to find a common thread in the things that happened, all the things that turned that summer into the moat which separated her childhood from what came after, and which began to turn her into the person she would eventually become. “Change comes slowly,” Sister Anastasia, her history teacher, had written on the blackboard when Maggie was in seventh grade. But after that summer, the summer she turned thirteen, Maggie knew that, like so much else the nuns had taught her, this was untrue.
Sometimes change came all at once, with a sound like a fire taking hold of dry wood and paper, with a roar that rose around you so you couldn’t hear yourself think. And then, when the roar died down, even when the fires were damped, everything was different. People came to realize, when they talked about those years, that they were years which set one sort of America apart from another. Twenty years later they would speak of that time as beginning with the war, or the sexual revolution, or Woodstock. But Maggie knew it right away; she believed it began with the sound of a bulldozer moving dirt in her own backyard.
For that was the summer they began building the development behind the Scanlan house. That was the beginning.
On a June morning, a week after school let out, Maggie came down to breakfast and found her father standing at the window over the sink with a cup of coffee in his hand, watching an earth mover the color of a pumpkin heave great scoops of dirt crowned with reeds and grass into...
About the Author-
Anna Quindlen is the author of many bestselling books, including the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Rise and Shine, the #1 bestselling memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life. Her other novels include Blessings, One True Thing, the Oprah Book Club Selection Black and Blue, and Still Life with Bread Crumbs.
Reviews-
April 1, 1991 Readers of her ``Life in the 30s'' column in the New York Times (collected in Living Out Loud ) know Quindlen as an astute observer of family relationships. Her first novel is solid proof that she is equally discerning and skillful as a writer of fiction. To sensitive Maggie Scanlan, the summer when she turns 13 is ``the time when her whole life changed.'' Aware that her father, Tommy, had outraged the wealthy Scanlan clan by marrying the daughter of an Italian cemetery caretaker, Maggie is a bridge between her ``outcast'' mother and her grandfather, whose favorite she is. Domineering, irascible, intolerant John Scanlan looks down on both Pope John XXII and President Kennedy for deviating from traditional Catholic doctrine. His iron hand crushes his wife and grown children, and when he decides that Maggie's parents and their soon-to-be-five offspring should move from their slightly shabby Irish Catholic Bronx suburb to a large house in Westchester which he has purchased for them, tension between her parents escalates and Maggie's loyalties are tested. But other unexpected events--her grandfather's stroke, her mother's attraction to a man of her own background, her best friend's defection, her first boyfriend--serve both to unsettle Maggie and to propel her across the threshold to adulthood. Quindlen's social antennae are acute: she conveys the fierce ethnic pride that distinguishes Irish and Italian communities, their rivalry and mutual disdain. Her character portrayal is empathetic and beautifully dimensional, not only of Maggie but of her mother, who experiences her own wrenching rite of passage. This absorbing coming-of-age novel will draw comparisons with the works of Mary Gordon, but Quindlen is a writer with her own voice and finely honed perceptions. Literary Guild alternate; author tour.
March 2, 1992 In this absorbing coming-of-age novel, a Literary Guild selection in cloth that spent 10 weeks on PW 's bestseller list, New York Times columnist Quindlen skillfully conveys the fierce ethnic pride of Irish and Italian communities.
Title Information+
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
OverDrive Read
Release date:
EPUB eBook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Device Compatibility Notice
The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
