Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Goldengrove: A Novel
    Goldengrove: A Novel
    Goldengrove: A Novel
    Ebook281 pages4 hours

    Goldengrove: A Novel

    By Francine Prose

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “With a dazzling mix of directness and metaphor, Prose captures the centrifugal and isolating force of grief. . . . “[Goldengrove is] a moving meditation on how, out of the painful passing of innocence and youth, sexuality and identity can miraculously emerge.”  — Los Angeles Times

    An emotionally powerful novel about adolescent love and loss from Francine Prose, the New York Times bestselling author of Reading Like a Writer and A Changed Man.

    After the sudden death of her beloved older sister, thirteen-year-old Nico finds her life on New England's idyllic Mirror Lake irrevocably altered. Left alone to grope toward understanding, she falls into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's boyfriend. Over one haunted summer, Nico faces that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them as she experiences the mystery of loss and recovery. Still, for all the darkness at its heart, Goldengrove is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of adolescence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 29, 2013
    ISBN9780062329035
    Author

    Francine Prose

    Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

    Read more from Francine Prose

    Related to Goldengrove

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jenkins

      Feb 4, 2021

      Jenkins
      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Letters from Switzerland

      Aug 15, 2019

      Three Letters from Switzerland
      4 min read

    • Article

      About Ed

      Jun 14, 2022

      I walk into the orchid show with Ed. As soon as I see the tumultuous hall I know he won’t last long. Ed walks like an old man though he is forty. After ten minutes on his feet, he vomits on some purple phalaenopsis. I get him outside through a fire e

      18 min read

    • Article

      A Melancholy Tightrope Act: The Beautiful Spectacle of Sabrina Orah Mark’s ‘Wild Milk’

      Oct 15, 2018

      The stories in Sabrina Orah Mark’s newest collection, Wild Milk, are as careful, diamond-sharp, and surprising as the narrative poems of Elizabeth Bishop. Dorothy, a publishing project, which is committed to “works of fiction or near fiction or about

      3 min read

    • Article

      Still Dancing

      Feb 13, 2019

      Still Dancing
      12 min read

    • Article

      Cooking with Shirley Jackson

      Oct 31, 2019

      Cooking with Shirley Jackson
      10 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Horrocks, Russo, Lenz, Zink, and More

      Jul 30, 2019

      New Richard Russo and Nell Zink, a darkly humorous coming-of-age novel, and a powerful debut on the faith and politics of Middle America. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Horrocks, Russo, Lenz, Zink, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Puppet Theater

      Dec 1, 2020

      Olgi says she’s going to take me somewhere and show me something I’ve never seen before. We walk through a door into an inner courtyard, then from there into another one, then into a third one, where there is a wire fence. Olgi knows where the fence

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels

      Apr 22, 2022

      I think of this as a new literary form, a type of novelistic prose poem, a hybrid, a chimera, whose main currency is delight, wonder, and mystery. The post Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    • Article

      Step Back

      Jun 10, 2021

      Beth never liked doctors’ offices—the white sterile surfaces, the antiseptic smell, the degrees pretentiously hung on the wall. Bob’s gently putting his hand on hers was comforting, but still she hated the waiting. Finally, Dr. Wilkins strode in, all

      20 min read

    • Article

      Black Turtlenecks, Hoop Earrings

      Jun 1, 2021

      Black Turtlenecks, Hoop Earrings
      18 min read

    • Article

      'Killing Commendatore' Is The Latest Evasive, Magical, Utterly Unique Novel By Murakami

      Oct 9, 2018

      Haruki Murakami weaves an intriguing, time-challenging story around the life of a portrait painter who is changed forever by a work of art.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 18, 2020

      Rattling around the house in the County Sligo hills, swinging from bouts of paranoia to moments of strange, demented hilarity, a 900-page doorstopper was just what I needed to stay grounded. The post A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry appeared first on T

      2 min read

    • Article

      Balancing Act: In 'Mrs. Everything,' Jennifer Weiner Explores Her Mom's Sexuality, Evolving Gender Roles And Donald Trump's America. Is It A Beach Read? Maybe!

      Jun 17, 2019

      Jennifer Weiner, New York Times bestselling author of 16 juicy, layered, courageous books, always knew she wanted to write a novel that followed her characters from birth to death. She knew she wanted that book to be loosely based on her own life and

      4 min read

    • Article

      By Design

      Mar 3, 2020

      Her son and his future wife took Suzanne out to lunch and asked her to do the wedding invitations. Not so long ago, she had been a successful graphic designer. Her own boss. They were anxious to make her feel useful. When the food arrived, it was veg

      14 min read

    • Article

      Farewell To The Flesh

      Nov 2, 2022

      Farewell To The Flesh
      4 min read

    • Article

      Christopher Pike

      Jan 29, 2020

      Christopher Pike
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Moment That Made Me Slim

      Jan 11, 2022

      As I reached for a carton of milk, I caught sight of a little girl looking at me. ‘Mummy, look how fat that lady is,’ she said loudly, pointing in my direction. I saw the girl’s mother gasp, her cheeks red with embarrassment as she hurriedly shuffled

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Goldengrove

    3.5/5

    198 ratings28 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      The story is compelling. Good job writer! If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top
    • 5/5
      A beautiful story one rarely told, that gave me shivers over and over again... I was lost in the ripples of Mirror Lake...
    • 3/5
      Starts well and has good moments but then softens
    • 4/5
      A beautifully sad novel about a girl who loses her older sister in an accident. I especially enjoyed the audiobook, performed by Mamie Gummer, who really made me believe I was listening to the inner mind of a 13-year-old girl.
    • 3/5
      I really wish I could give this 3 and a half stars. Maybe it's because I just finished The Fortress of Solitude, which is a pretty meaty read, but this feels just a little bit thin to me. I don't mean just length-wise, though it's pretty short. I didn't feel the weight of the subject matter the way I might have if the book had been executed a little differently. Having said that, it's not a bad little read, and there's a lot to like about it. Even if some of the "modern" references to things like email and MTV feel conspicuous, there are lots of other references that work for me--things that remind me of my own experiences with my own sister and during my own adolescence. At times, the dialogue feels forced, but when I remind myself of the main character's age--thirteen years--the awkwardness of certain passages of dialogue seems maybe a little appropriate. The first few and last few chapters are what make the book worthy of an extra 1/2 star. The writing in those chapters is more elegant and more gripping than it is in the middle of the book. For as little time as it takes to read this, I think it's worth it.
    • 3/5
      Pretty heavy and sad but I enjoyed the psychology behind the grief and confusion Nico experiences when her big sister dies and her sister's secret boyfriend starts paying attention to her.
    • 4/5
      The story begins with the drowning death of Margaret, sister to Nico and girlfriend of Aaron. Everyone deals with death in his own way, but Nico and Aaron have a particularly bizarre way of working through their feelings. What was interesting about this was the psychology of the situation. Was Nico really trying to step into Margaret's shoes? How about Aaron? Was he really trying to turn Nico into Margaret? This was a believable story and a good introduction for me into the writing of Francine Prose. It grabbed me enough to want to seek more of her novels.
    • 2/5
      I forced myself to finish this book, probably because I kept thinking it would have to get better, that something important was going to happen. Nope. It was just a long, excruciatingly sad slow buildup to nothing. And all that mawkish, sappy teenage angst stuff, along with the grief psychobabble. Where was the rising action, climax and denouement? And sorry, but all that final tidying up of loose ends in the final chapters just didn't work for me. This book should have been clearly labeled YA, and maybe 'chick lit' YA at that. Only my opinion, I know, and as a friend of mine used to say, "Opinions are like a**holes. Everybody's got one." I'm still thinking about the book, which I just finished reading this morning, breathing a sigh of relief - and disappointment. Like the rapture stuff in the book, maybe she should have titled it, "The Great Disappointment." I'm afraid I can't give it more than two stars. Again, my opinion. But I'm glad I only paid a few bucks for this book off a remainder table. If you wanna read a really good Francine Prose book, then try BLUE ANGEL. That one really grabbed me and kept me going. A rather frighteningly good book, actually. Maybe that's why this one so surprised and disappointed me. Or if you wanna read a really good book also called GOLDENGROVE, then hunt up a copy of Darryl Ponicsan's novel from the 70s. He was the author of THE LAST DETAIL and I read all of his books until he disappeared into the neverland of screenwriting out west, not so surprising, I suppose, considering his uncanny ear for dialogue that always rang true. Now he's turned to painting in the Sonoma Valley. So here I am writing about other books (and authors) instead of Prose's GOLDENGROVE. Maybe because I kept thinking, while reading it, that I would rather be reading something else - something better. To borrow an expression from her book, this read was a "Debbie Downer."
    • 3/5
      Well written but almost exhaustingly detailed. Because I was listening to the audio version I kept going....but I definitely wished I could speed up the reading speed to get to the end.
    • 3/5
      I found this book to be a quick read but I think the author handled the grief of losing a daughter and sister as something that one would "get over" in a very short period of time, like the summer. At the end of the book I was left with a feeling that this was rushed and unfinished. I also think the author added characters that had no relationship to the dead girl.
    • 4/5
      Lovely novel about saying goodbye and moving on after a tragedy
    • 4/5
      Well-written novel about a young girl's coming of age while in grieving for her beloved sister. I had read Prose's 'Hunterers and Gatherers' prior to this and not been enthralled. This was significantly better.
    • 4/5
      In Judith Guest's Ordinary People, two siblings go out on the water but only one returns: the more promising, handsome, and popular brother drowns in a storm, and the rest of the book explores the family dealing with guilt and grief. In Francine Prose's Goldengrove, two siblings go out on the water but only one returns: the more promising, handsome, and popular sister drowns, and the rest of the book explores the family dealing with guilt and grief. So, am I saying been there, done that? Yes, but Goldengrove isn't a bad read, if you're in the mood for this sort of novel. For one thing, it has been over 20 years since Guest's book was first published, and society has changed quite a bit since then. For another, the focus is primarily on 13-year old Nico and her developing relationship with Aaron, her dead sister's boyfriend, who seems to be the only person who really understand how she feels. As in [Ordinary People], Nico's parents prefer not to talk about Margaret's death, but instead of being upscale suburbia types, they are more along the hippie line; Dad runs a used book store called Goldengrove. People start to remark on how much Nico, who has lost considerable weight while grieving, is starting to look like Margaret--which gives an edge to Aaron's interest in her. The book is well written overall, and Prose gives believable voice to the fears and ponderings of a young girl going through the grieiving process at a critical point in her own development.
    • 4/5
      This is my first time reading a work of fiction by Francine Prose and I wonder why I waited so long. I love her crisp and observant writing, and she did a wonderful job of capturing the grief and the spiraling out of control a family experiences at the unexpected death of their daughter/sister. Nico's voice is perfect as she tries to navigate how drastically her life has changed.
    • 4/5
      The death of her teenage sister sends 13-year old Nico and her parents into a gigantic tailspin. They are shocked into immobility and pain and turn to dangerous diversions. Nico finds herself submitting to the strange requests of her sister's boyfriend. Francine Prose is a writer of epic proportions and she turns this seemingly depressing story into an exquisite, spare, quiet coming-of-age tale that will stay with you.
    • 4/5
      After the death of her older sister, Nico becomes a little too close with her sister’s boyfriend. This is the story of the summer Nico’s sister died and how Nico, her parents, and her sister’s boyfriend find a way to get through it.Although I had read reviews for this book, and well as the description, I was still surprised by the book. It was exactly the story that was described, simply about a girl who lost her sister and the grieving process she goes through, but I still expected to find more to the story. How could an entire book be so simple if it was going to be a “page-turner?” Well I was surprised when it was exactly that. The simplicity of the story was what enhanced the complex emotions.As depressed as Nico and her family are throughout the book, every time I stopped reading for a moment I found I was left with a strange sense of hope instead of feeling depressed like I would have expected.Overall I adored this book and was stunned how fast of a read it was. It was simply a fascinating look at what we do after we lose someone we love.
    • 2/5
      In a word, meh - by the way, is "meh" a word? The prose is beautiful and haunting - Goldengrove is an extremely well-written novel. Why then the meh? Well, I just couldn't manage to get involved with any of the characters. Consequently in the end, I was completely unmoved by their story. The plot is bland and just plain disappointing, and the characters were flat as pancakes. Goldengrove completely failed to hit the mark with me.Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible book. Gracefully and elegantly worded though it may be, it just didn't work for me. Sometimes well-formed sentences and paragraphs cannot save a novel. It took another week out of my life to slog through Goldengrove - and without anything to show for it. I am a very disappointed reader.
    • 4/5
      Nico’s sister Margaret was four years older than her and all that she was not. She was slim, attractive to opposite sex, a talented singer, and looking forward to going to college in the fall. Although their family was close and their parents were former hippies, Margaret wasn’t especially getting along with them. Her father didn’t approve of her boyfriend, Aaron, and her mother fought with her about smoking because of her heart condition. One summer Sunday the sisters were sunbathing out in the lake on their boat. They could hear their mother practicing at the piano in their lake front house. Nico was curious about all the things that Margaret was and wondering if she would ever be like her. Even still, Nico couldn’t help bringing up her sister’s smoking habit. When Margaret had enough, she saluted Nico and dove into the lake. She was never seen alive again. At age 13, Nico had to learn to navigate the waters of a life of kept secrets while haunted by a sister who seemed so nearly perfect.Goldengrove is a lyrical look at life after a tragic loss. The way that time, place, and emotion are described is really beautiful. The language Prose used was interesting in and of itself, specifically just after Margaret dies. Her use of words made scenes where Nico and her parents couldn’t sleep very powerful. You could see them in different places within the house trying to keep quiet, knowing all along that they were fooling no one into believing they were sleeping. Their mourning was almost poetic.The loss of Margaret didn’t quite bring the family closer together. It cut a hole between her parents and between parents and “only remaining child.” Nico isn’t sure if there is anyone who can understand what she’s going through except for Aaron. As she kept Margaret’s secret dates with Aaron, Nico begins seeing him in secret as well. Together they feel as though they can cross sacred ground. They both were trying to recapture Margaret by using each other and it was when this storyline got deep that I felt that the beauty of the prose was lost for a while. It’s lyrical quality was broken. Going from lyrical to creepy just didn’t work well for me. I think this was true to Nico’s experience as well and didn’t really disrupt my enjoyment. I just wish some of the harder aspects of Nico’s summer with Aaron had that same poetic quality.Goldengrove is the first novel I’ve read by Francine Prose. It sounds strange to say that I really enjoyed a novel that deals with the aftermath of losing a sibling during childhood, but I did. The language was beautiful and engaging almost entirely throughout. I would be interested to know if this novel would seem as lifelike and honest to someone who has experienced the loss of a sibling during childhood. I was enchanted by the cover and the novel did not disappoint. I am looking forward to reading more of Prose’s work.
    • 4/5
      It was meant to be an idyllic summer – a summer like all the ones before it. But when thirteen year old Nico’s older sister Margaret dives into Mirror Lake and never surfaces, everything changes. Set in New England, Goldengrove is the story of that fateful summer. Narrated in the provocative and compelling voice of Nico, the novel reveals the cracks in a family which widen with the tragedy. Nico, on the cusp of womanhood, finds herself floating free without the sage advice of her sister. Nico connects with Margaret’s boyfriend, the artistic and slightly strange Aaron – a person whom she feels free to share her stories of Margaret and the pain of loss. But Aaron is also struggling with Margaret’s death…and in Nico he sees the young woman who he once loved.As the summer slips by, Aaron and Nico’s relationship inches towards a dangerous conclusion … and Nico must struggle to move from adolescence into adulthood, and come to an understanding of her own needs in the wake of her sister’s death.Francine Prose’s novel is that of grief, recovery, and the search for one’s identity. Tender, yet realistic, Goldengrove explores the impact of suddenly losing a child and a sibling. Although the story is told from Nico’s point of view, Prose gives the reader a glimpse into the devastation such a loss has on parents.Prose does a remarkable job building her characters. Nico’s father’s relationship with his youngest daughter is flawlessly portrayed. Nico clings to her father, wants the connection with him, but also pushes him away as she discovers her own sexuality and desires. Their love of art and reading binds them together, even when everything else seems to be changing.I read this novel late into the night – drawn to Nico and her journey through grief. Prose writes radiantly and with a deep understanding of her characters. If there is a flaw in the novel, it is the ending when Prose lifts the reader away from Mirror Lake and the adolescent Nico, and transports us into Nico’s life as an adult. I would have preferred the book end on page 264 – still drenched in late summer sun with a hopeful glimpse into the future.Despite this minor complaint, Goldengrove is a book I can recommend for its beautiful writing and tender look at a young girl growing up in the wake of tragedy.
    • 5/5
      My third read by Francine Prose bore some resemblance to Blue Angel, which was a disturbing book for an English professor to read. It involves a sexy, manipulative student who plunges an instructor into a world of chaos. Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, the first I read, had so much clarity and good sense, it drove me to her fiction. I foresee another dozen titles by Prose on my bookshelves.The narrator, Nico, lives in an idyllic, lake-side cottage with her father, who owns a book store named Goldengrove, her mother -- a piano teacher -- and her sister, Margaret. Margaret has a secret life, and after a tragedy, Nico seems headed into secrets of her own. I felt the same sense of foreboding I experienced with Blue Angel while reading Goldengrove, but her spectacular, lyrical prose has an element of poetry in every line, and that alone drove me on to the tense ending. I underlined numerous wonderful lines, for example: “Now we acted as if the tiniest pressure could shatter our eggshell selves” (84) and “That Sunday, that first Sunday in May, was so warm I couldn’t help wondering: Was it simply a beautiful day, or a symptom of global warming? Even the trees looked uncomfortable, naked and embarrassed, as if they were all simultaneously having that dream in which you look down and realize you’ve forgotten to put on your clothes” (2). Well, I have had that dream, and I know exactly how Nico feels in this scene.This psychological portrait of a family dealing with loss calls to mind Tolstoy’s opening line of Anna Karenina. To paraphrase, all members of an unhappy family handle their unhappiness in different ways. However, this book never really strikes a sustained depressing note. 5 stars--Jim, 10/11/09
    • 3/5
      The Short of It:An unsettling look at what happens to a family when a loved one is suddenly no more. The Rest of It:I've often wondered about death. Death that results from illness is quite different than a death that results from an accident or a sudden heart attack. In this novel, Margaret dies suddenly. Her family has no time to prepare themselves for the loss and for Nico, Margaret's younger sister, it's as if Margaret is there one minute and gone the next. How does a family deal with such a loss?As Nico struggles with her grief, she realizes that Aaron, Margaret's boyfriend is really the only person that understands what she is going through. They form an unlikely friendship which at times seems inappropriate but seeing what these two have been through, and what Margaret meant to them, all I saw were two people in a lot of pain trying desperately to overcome their grief.Francine Prose does a remarkable job of describing what Nico is feeling and although Margaret was not on the page for long, you definitely get a feel for her personality as these characters look back on their moments with her. Many have said that Nico seems older than her thirteen years. This may be true, but to me she came across as an 'old soul' which made her relationship with Aaron a bit easier for me to understand.As Prose takes us through the novel, Nico sees signs that Margaret is still with her. I've always been fascinated by signs. They function as a form of comfort and generally exist to help us through a crisis. Prose does a wonderful job of providing comfort to Nico in the way of signs and whether or not you believe they exist in real life doesn't really matter, because they exist realistically within the novel. I had one small quibble with Aaron. At the beginning of the novel, a comment is made which might lead the reader to think that all is not right with Aaron. As I was reading, I kept waiting for that secret to be revealed but in my opinion nothing was revealed. I felt that his actions were motivated by his loss so perhaps I missed something there.This novel was a very quick read. Once I started it, I could not put it down. The prose was easy to follow and I cared about the characters and what they were going through. This was my first experience with Prose's writing style but it definitely won't be my last.
    • 4/5
      Goldengrove by Francine ProseThirteen year old Nico plans to spend the summer with her sister before Margaret leaves for college. But Margaret drowns quietly in the lake and Nico is left stunned and devastated. She is unable to deal with anything that reminds her of Margaret until her sister's boyfriend, Aaron, suggests an experiment, that they together do the things that Margaret loved. Margaret, who could sing "My Funny Valentine" and bring people to tears, who loved jazz, poetry, and old movies. Nico's parents never approved of Aaron, so Nico has to sneak behind their backs. But her mother is busy self-medicating and her father, who owns a bookstore, is writing a book about how cultures imagine the end of the world. But Nico starts to get in over her head with Aaron, and is torn between her sister's identity and her own.Goldengrove is a beautifully written novel dealing with family grief and coming of age. While the plot suggests a depressing read, it isn't in the hands of Prose. It is moving and touching and hopeful. While her parents have their own issues, they are not neglectful and Nico has a very close relationship with her dad. Though their world has been shattered, they do attempt family normalcy. Nico and her dad eat lunch daily, before she goes to work afternoons in Goldengrove, the family bookstore and he discussed his book with her. Margaret had a heart problem and Nico is convinced she does, too and reads medical books while her dad writes, trying to diagnose herself, convinced she is dying. The only thing she looks forward to is spending time with Aaron, reminiscing about Margaret. But Aaron is looking for Nico to be Margaret.Nico is an interesting, sympathetic character, wise beyond her years, coping with a horrible loss. There are no real dramatic moments in this novel, but it is not a slow read. The words are lyrical and poetic. "When I think of that time, I picture the four of us wading in the shallows, admiring our reflections in the glassy, motionless lake. Then something -a pebble, a raindrop- breaks the surface and shatters the mirror. A ripple reaches the distant bank. Our years of bad luck begin."I have never read anything by Francine Prose before and discovered that she has written several novels. I plan to read more works by her in the future. I highly recommend this touching story.
    • 3/5
      The story of a young teenage girl grieving for her older sister. At the end of the school year, the sister drowns and Nico, the main character was the last to see her. The story is of the summer, where she and her family struggle to put their lives back togethier. Not a bad novel, but a little like tv movie where in the end all of them get on with life. A interesting sub plot is the relationship Nico has with the dead sister's boyfriend.
    • 4/5
      A nicely-written book about a young girl and trying to come to terms with her sister's death. The sister's boyfriend is trying to do the same thing, and they end up in a spooky relationship trying to almost resurrect her. The boy's character changed suddenly in the middle, and he became cruel and weird in a way that didn't quite hold my suspension of disbelief.
    • 2/5
      About a 13 yr old girl who looses her perfect sister- she drowns because of a heart condition- and the twisted, bizarre relationship she (Nico) has with her sisters boyfriend and how she comes to find herself and the will to move on.
    • 4/5
      “to a young child”Margaret, are you grievingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leaves, like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! as the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy & by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you will weep & know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sorrow’s springs are the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It is the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.–Gerard Manley HopkinsGrief is such an individual, totally consuming, and heart-wrenching experience — especially when the death is by a young person or is totally unexpected. This book explores the grief process very well. Margaret and Nico are teenage sisters. While Nico generally seeks out her parent’s approval, Margaret is a little on the wild side. However, that is not what gets her killed. Margaret has a heart problem and ends up drowning in the lake near their home.The story is told from Nico’s point of view, and about her struggle to get through each day, each month, each year. She worries about her own health and about how her parents are coping with her sister’s death. She’s concerned for her sister’s boyfriend and how he’s dealing with it. She even endures those around her who try to make her into parts of Margaret instead of herself.Finally, the story ends with an adult Nico writing about how she and her family have recovered from their grief over the years. Although — as anyone knows who has been through it — you never really get over the death of someone close to you.
    • 3/5
      Francine Prose's latest novel, Goldengrove, is a subtle, quiet, reflective novel about a family's journey through overwhelming grief after the sudden death of the eldest daughter. The novel takes place over the course of one terrible summer. The action focuses on Nico, the surviving daughter, as she battles with grief, depression, and loss of identity…all at the same time that her body is awakening to its own budding sexuality. Nico is an awkward 13-year old, unsure of who she is, and how her life may unfold. Her identity has always been entwined tightly with that of her three-years-older, beautiful, and talented sister, Margaret. The novel builds suspense as we watch Nico's drift dangerously toward an inappropriate relationship with Aaron, her dead sister's boyfriend. Originally the two come together to help each other deal with their grief, but the relationship turns strange, disturbing, and unhealthy. Many times, I found myself unable to put the book down fearing that Nico was drifting into harm's way.I've enjoyed a number of Francine Prose's novels. A year ago, I reviewed her nonfiction work, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them and I gave that book a strong five-star Amazon rating. Prose is an accomplished writer—I can count on her to deliver a finely crafted work of literary fiction. That said, I was definitely disappointed with this work. Don't get me wrong: I did enjoy it…but, for me, it only earned a three-star rating. I felt strongly that something was missing, and it took me a while to figure it out.I've waited for over a week to write this review, I needed to sort out where this book failed me. The writing was excellent; the characterizations, extraordinary—in fact, I can still conjure up vivid images of the main character, Nico, her mother, father, sister, and a host of other lesser characters. Prose made these people real in my mind, and that is no small accomplishment. The story is not complex—it is realistic in the extreme, almost pedestrian. That's okay, too. I'm one of those readers who actually yearn for novels with outstanding characterization and slim realistic plots. So what was it that failed me here with this lovely, subtle coming-of-age book about grief and identity? In the end, it was the lack of any deeper meaning—the lack of overarching revealing themes about the truth of the human condition. The authors tells the story well, but leaves it up to her readers to derive whatever meaning they may discover within the story. In a work of popular fiction, that's okay, but in a work of literary fiction, I expected the author to take greater risks delivering, from within the body of the story, sparkling intellectual depth and insight about human nature. Perhaps my disappointment was exaggerated because I read another books recently with a strikingly similar storyline about a young girl dealing with grief, sexual awakening, and inappropriate relationships—one that left a far stronger impression on me, and was in many ways in my estimation, a better book. That novel was The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle—a debut novel that won a solid four-star rating from me. The author's overarching themes about the reality of the human condition at the end of this novel seared their way into my heart and soul—I found my eyes brimming with tears because of the honesty and clarity of the vision…and I am one not easily moved by sentiment. I suppose I expected something like this from Prose's book and was deeply disappointed when it was not there.Of special note, Prose does an outstanding job of recreating the progression into and out of psychological depression. But again, for me, the author misses the mark: she gets the description right, but fails to reveal any insight—there are no stunning interior revelations.Although I enjoyed Goldengrove, I do not recommend it: there are better books being published that deserve your time. But I'll still keep an eye out for Francine Prose's next novel, and when it appears, I will probably fall in line to buy it and read it.
    • 3/5
      I'd allowed myself to drift into that hushed and watery border zone...Is an example of the word pictures created by Francine Prose. This is a story of sadness and loss, grief and discovery. A story told in the voice of Nico, the sister left behind.Nico's family struggles to survive the death of a beloved child. A whimsical, talented and loving girl just beginning to become a woman. The angst of the fear that it could have been prevented if only something were different, or someone had done or not done this or that.To be honest, this is a story that has been told before, but rarely in such a compelling and beguiling way. I read Goldengrove in one sitting. I had to know how it ended for Nico. It is her story.

    Book preview

    Goldengrove - Francine Prose

    One

    WE LIVED ON THE SHORE OF MIRROR LAKE, AND FOR MANY YEARS our lives were as calm and transparent as its waters. Our old house followed the curve of the bank, in segments, like a train, each room and screened porch added on, one by one, decade by decade.

    When I think of that time, I picture the four of us wading in the shallows, admiring our reflections in the glassy, motionless lake. Then something—a pebble, a raindrop—breaks the surface and shatters the mirror. A ripple reaches the distant bank. Our years of bad luck begin.

    That was how Margaret would have thought. My sister was the poet.

    I was Miss One-Thing-After-the-Next. Which is how I remember what happened.

    But that’s not how it happened at all. One thing happened, then everything else, like a domino falling and setting off a collapse that snakes out toward the horizon and spills over into the future.

    IF ALL THE CLOCKS AND CALENDARS VANISHED, CHILDREN WOULD still know when Sunday came. They would still feel that suck of dead air, that hollow vacuum created when time slips behind a curtain, when the minutes quit their orderly tick and ooze away, one by one. Colors are muted, a jellylike haze hovers and blurs the landscape. The phone doesn’t ring, and the rest of the world hides and conspires to pretend that everyone’s baking cookies or watching the game on TV. Then Monday arrives, and the comforting racket starts up all over again.

    Even before that Sunday, I was glad to see the day end. It wasn’t that I liked school so much, but the weekends lasted forever. The loneliness, the hours to fill with books, homework, computer, watching old films with my sister, if she was in the mood. Silence, then the Sunday sounds of our house by the lake. My mother playing the piano, my dad’s prehistoric Selectric.

    That Sunday, that first Sunday in May, was so warm I couldn’t help wondering: Was it simply a beautiful day, or a symptom of global warming? Even the trees looked uncomfortable, naked and embarrassed, as if they were all simultaneously having that dream in which you look down and realize you’ve forgotten to put on your clothes.

    Two Cleopatras in our royal barge, my sister and I reclined and let our little rowboat drift out onto the lake. Margaret arched her shoulders, flung one arm over the side, and trailed her fingertips in the water. It was one of those actressy gestures she’d copied from the classic black-and-white movies to which she was addicted. She liked me to watch them with her, and we were allowed to stay up, because our mother said we would learn more from Some Like It Hot than from a year of school. It was often hard to tell what our mother meant, exactly, except that we learned to flutter our lashes and say, What’s a girl to do? in breathy little-girl whispers.

    One thing Margaret and I had in common was: we could do imitations. We knew whole scenes by heart, like the end of Flying Deuces, when Hardy is killed in a plane crash and then reincarnated as a horse with a black mustache and a bowler hat. Laurel’s so happy to see him he throws his arms around Ollie—that is, the horse possessed by Ollie’s grumpy spirit.

    Sometimes Margaret would do a gesture or line and ask me what film it was from. Her silvery laughter was my prize for getting it right. The only rowboat scene I knew was the one in which Montgomery Clift pushes Shelley Winters into the water. And I was pretty certain that wasn’t what Margaret was doing.

    Margaret said, This is heaven.

    I wished I could have been like her instead of the kind of person who said, Don’t you ever worry about the polar ice caps melting?

    Debbie Downer, said Margaret. Give yourself a break. It’s Sunday, Nico. Take a day off. Squinting, she aimed her smoke rings so that they encircled the sun like foggy auras.

    Margaret had promised our parents she wouldn’t smoke. Mom’s parents and Dad’s father had all died young of smoking-related causes. Both of our parents used to smoke. Their friends had started dying. The new weapon in the arsenal of Mom and Dad’s War on Smoking was some bad news we’d gotten that fall: Margaret had a heart condition. A mild one, but I worried.

    She’d fainted the first and last time Mom talked us into doing yoga with her. I still have a photo my father took that day on the lawn, of the three of us doing downward-facing dog or some other mortifying position that, our mother had convinced herself, was helping her arthritis. Margaret, Mom, and I are bent till our heads nearly touch the ground, like those snakes that, Margaret told me, bite their tails and roll after the children they swallow whole. Planted apart for balance, our legs take up most of the photo, downward-facing croquet hoops of descending sizes. What the picture doesn’t show is that, seconds after it was taken, Margaret collapsed in a pile of leaves. At first we’d thought she was joking.

    Our pediatrician, Dr. Viscott, ran some tests and said that Margaret should eat well, exercise, don’t smoke. That stutter on her heart graph was something they’d keep their eye on.

    Margaret knew she could smoke around me. Smoking was the least of the things she trusted me to keep secret.

    From across the lake, we heard our mother practicing the spooky Chopin waltz that always made me think of ballroom dance music for ghosts. She kept making mistakes and starting over again. She’d wanted to be a pianist, she’d gone to music school, but she changed her plans when she met my dad and they ran off to be hippies. Margaret had found a snapshot of them picking soybeans on a commune in northern California. Long hair, overalls, bandannas, a Jesus beard on Dad.

    For years our mom had had a job writing liner notes for inserts in classical CDs. Now her fingers were sprouting lumps, but still she tried to learn whatever piano piece she was writing about.

    You know what’s crazy? I said. Every time you blow a smoke ring, Mom hits a wrong note. Maybe she does have ESP.

    "Maybe I do," said Margaret.

    Our mother often boasted about her mind-reading powers. I think she meant it to scare us out of doing anything she’d disapprove of. She liked to say her own ancestors would have burned her at the stake. Both our parents were the rogue only children of starchy New England families, so naturally they’d fallen extra hard for the whole peace-and-love agenda, even though, by the time they joined, the hippie movement was mostly over. They’d counted on the world becoming one big organic farm, and when that didn’t happen, they’d sort of had to scramble.

    Our house had been Mom’s parents’ summer place. She’d inherited it when her father died, just before Margaret was born. Puritan family portraits decorated the upstairs bathroom. Mom thought it was funny to hang them there, but the glowering dead men and women had delayed my toilet training until Dad figured it out and briefly turned their faces to the wall.

    There’s a lot Mom doesn’t know. Margaret let another smoky ring slip from between her lips. Okay. Who am I, Nico?

    "The caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland?"

    Beautiful, Margaret said.

    I braced myself for the crash that came when Mom made so many mistakes she banged her fist on the piano. Then heavy silence weighed on the air, scooping out a depression I imagined filling with the rattling of Dad’s electric typewriter.

    It was pitiful how the computer age had bypassed our father completely. He couldn’t even swipe his card at the supermarket checkout. Margaret and I had to do it for him, while the checkers smiled sweetly and wished we were dead so they could be our handsome father’s wife or girlfriend or daughter. Oddly, Dad’s backwardness was never counted among the traits that Margaret, the lover of everything old—films, jazz songs, vintage postcards and clothes—inherited from him. Margaret said she was born too late, and it did seem a little strange, to live in the twenty-first century and long for the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s.

    In our family, everything was neatly divided up. Margaret and Mom were the musical ones. Margaret and Dad were the beauties. Margaret and I were the mimics. Dad and I were the thinkers. I got A’s in math. I liked knowing why things happened and the order in which they occurred. My teachers said that I might be a scientist some day. Or so they learned from the aptitude test they’d made me take in sixth grade. It was true that when I surfed the Web, I liked following the links that led from marine biology to ecological disaster.

    No one had ever suggested that Margaret take an aptitude test. Everyone knew she was going to be a singer. My father used to say that he and I always wanted to know what everything meant, but that my mother and Margaret only cared about how it sounded.

    Goldengrove, Dad’s bookstore, was on the corner of Main and West Street. His female customers worshipped him, they’d buy anything he suggested. His real ambition was to write. Ever since I could remember, he’d spent evenings and Sundays working on a book about how people in different cultures and eras imagined the end of the world. He said he planned to call it Eschatology for Dummies.

    Water kissed the side of the boat.

    Sing something, I told Margaret. In the fall she was leaving for Oberlin with a full scholarship in music.

    Like what? she asked, as if she didn’t know.

    At the Senior Show, she’d sung My Funny Valentine. She’d sung it half-speed, smoky, low. She’d gotten a standing ovation. Mom was the first one out of her seat and the last to stop applauding, even though she hated the song and had lobbied hard against it.

    "Why that one? Mom had asked Margaret. There are plenty of beautiful standards. Sing ‘Little Girl Blue’ if you really want to depress the shit out of everyone, honey. But ‘My Funny Valentine’? Some patronizing jerk telling the poor ugly duckling he doesn’t care if her mouth’s a little weak. Laughable. Unphotographable. He’s doing her a favor, even though her figure isn’t Greek?"

    What does that mean? I’d said.

    It means she has a body, said Mom. A normal female body.

    Margaret said, "It’s a love song, okay? It’s not what I think love is. Or you, Mom. It’s what one person thinks love is all about."

    "One person? said Mom. One guy. Don’t kid yourself."

    I didn’t care if Mom liked the song. I’d heard it as a promise. Some boy would come along some day and love me for myself, even if I was unphotographable, or a few pounds overweight. Being somebody’s laughable valentine was better than being no one’s, funny or not.

    Margaret eased down her bathing-suit straps to get a head start on her tan. I was wearing the sort of one-piece suit that magazines called slimming. I yanked the elastic over where my white, dimpled thighs popped out.

    Am I fat? I asked Margaret. You have to tell me.

    You’re perfect, Nico.

    I said, You didn’t look.

    I don’t have to, she said. I know what you look like. I looked like you do when I was your age.

    You were fat four years ago? I don’t remember that.

    You. Are. Not. Fat, said Margaret.

    So what you’re saying, I asked, though I was pretty sure she wasn’t saying that at all, is that in four years I’ll look like you?

    Trust me on this, Margaret said. Whether you want to or not.

    People told us we looked alike, but I couldn’t see it. Margaret was the beautiful sister, willowy and blond. The lake breeze carried her perfect smell. She smelled like cookies baking. She claimed it wasn’t perfume. It was her essence, I guessed. I was the pudgy, awkward sister. I still smelled dusty, like a kid.

    Our parents had given us the wrong names. Margaret should have been Nico, I should have been anything else. They told us they’d named Margaret after a line in a poem. They claimed they’d just liked the sound of Nico, but I didn’t believe them.

    Dad still had his record player and his record collection. That was how Margaret discovered the Velvet Underground and Nico with her chalky, disappointed voice. It was strange how she sounded like Margaret, only hollow and checked-out, and with a foreign accent that made it seem she was learning the words as she sang them.

    Margaret had rented, on DVD, a documentary about Nico, and we’d watched the sad story of the German superstar who flamed out after her fifteen minutes of fame. My sister was silent, all the way through. I didn’t like how she sat jackknifed forward, studying, taking lessons.

    When I’d asked Mom if they’d named me after that Nico, she’d hesitated, then said, Do you really think Daddy and I would name our child after some Wagnerian zombie junkie? By the way, that’s another hideous song. Don’t be anyone’s mirror, darling.

    I leaned over and felt the water. It knew that summer wasn’t here.

    Please, I asked Margaret. Sing ‘My Funny Valentine.’ Just for me, just once.

    With a crisp, thumb-and-forefinger flick she’d learned from some ’40s detective, Margaret skipped her cigarette across the lake. Then she let her eyelids droop and began to sing.

    She always sang it differently, but it was always pure sex. When she sang, "Stay little valentine, stay, it sounded like honey, like grown-up female code-speak for Please, have sex with me, please." I’d wondered how she could have sung it like that in front of the whole school, and how the teachers and parents could have given her a standing ovation. Near the end, someone’s disgusting father actually sobbed out loud. Didn’t it cross their minds that she could never have sung it that way unless she was having sex with her boyfriend, Aaron?

    Maybe they weren’t applauding Margaret, but rather the chance that someone from Emersonville might have the talent to leave the last place on earth where no one had a cell phone. Ever since 9/11, yuppie families had been fleeing the city, buying houses around the lake. They said they had to get used to it, but they’d learned to love the country: no cell phones, no BlackBerries, a slower way of life. Throughout the civilized world, teenagers lived on their phones and text-messaged from room to room. But the nearest towers were in Albany or Pittsfield, and my sister and I and our friends at school were stuck in a time-warp bubble. No wonder Margaret was obsessed with the past. We lived in it, in a way. Some day, I promised myself, I would move to Boston or New York. Margaret and I could handle the city, even if our parents couldn’t.

    "Yet you’re my favorite work of art." Margaret sang to the lake and the trees and the sun. I knew that, in her secret heart, she was singing to Aaron. It was strange, how the music changed everything, so that, note by note, Mirror Lake began to look like one of Aaron’s paintings.

    At the same Senior Show, Aaron did a PowerPoint presentation of his paintings of the lake in different lights and seasons. The first painting was of the Fourth of July, of colored stars exploding and wobbling in the black water. Somehow everyone recognized that they weren’t ordinary landscapes, but something special and new, as if an old master had decided to paint on velvet. The audience gasped each time a new image appeared, until they heard themselves and giggled. Aaron waited, then clicked on the next image, and the crowd gasped again.

    Margaret was the singer, Aaron the artist. They were the glamour couple, their radiance outshone the feeble gleam of the football captain and his slutty cheerleader girlfriend. They were superheroes with superpowers. Aaron saw more than a normal person. Once, when he and Margaret and I were riding around, he’d braked and shown us a grove of orange mushrooms like fingers wriggling out of the moss. Margaret was always the first to hear thunder, or a mouse in the wall, or some amazing Billie Holiday phrase I’d never noticed even though she’d played me God Bless the Child a thousand times before.

    "Is your figure less than Greek?" Margaret sailed the line over the lake, and I tried not to think about how our mother had mocked it.

    Margaret and Aaron were in love. I was their alibi. Margaret would tell my parents she was taking me to the movies, and I’d go to the theater, and she and Aaron would pick me up when the film was over.

    On the way home I’d tell Margaret about the film, in case Mom or Dad asked. But they never did. They always said lying was worse than whatever the lie was about. I already knew that even if they were right, you couldn’t live in a family without a lie or two as a cushion between you and the people you loved. If you were lucky, you might not need a big lie, maybe not even one as large as Margaret smoking and having sex with her boyfriend.

    The first time Margaret and Aaron went out, Aaron came in to meet us. Mom and Dad intercepted him at the door, a body block they intended to seem welcoming and friendly. He shook hands, starting with Mom, who winced. An electrical current arced between Aaron and my father, sparking with more information than either wanted the other to have. By the time Aaron got to me, his palm was so wet that I had to stop myself from wiping mine on my jeans.

    The next morning, Dad said, There’s something squirrelly about the guy. As if he had a secret acorn stash, and the thing he really gets off on is not telling the other squirrels where he’s got it hidden.

    Margaret said, "You say that about every guy I go out with. Every guy I bring home, it’s like Romeo and Juliet. In fact she’d only dated one guy, junior year, and it hadn’t lasted. A senior with a bolt through his ear who made everyone call him Turbo. Maybe you think that any guy who would want to hang out with me must have something wrong with him."

    Quite the opposite, said Dad.

    Mom said, I know what your father means. The kid’s too good-looking. Little Adonis carries himself like a vessel of some precious oil he’ll drip on you if you’re lucky.

    Margaret said, How strange that someone who married Dad should hate someone for being handsome.

    "We don’t hate him, said Mom. Hate is a little extreme, dear."

    That’s enough, our father said. The kid’s got a screw loose, is all.

    It embarrassed us when our dad used lame, old-fashioned phrases like that. Something’s not somebody’s cup of tea. That’s how the cookie crumbles.

    "What screw loose?" Margaret asked.

    Dad said, I don’t know, sweetheart. The one that holds it all together.

    Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart?

    Margaret’s voice rose and lingered lightly on smart. She made it sound like fun, like flirtation, not like a list of qualities some guy is telling his girlfriend she lacks.

    Mom and Dad told Margaret she couldn’t smoke, but not that she couldn’t see Aaron. They always said it was a mistake to forbid kids to do something, unless you wanted to make it their heart’s desire. They often talked as if all four of us were involved in some group child-raising project, as if treating us like semi-adults would make us do what they wanted. But they gave Margaret such a hard time about Aaron—Little Adonis this, screw loose that—that it was easier to pretend that Margaret and I were going to the movies.

    Besides, Margaret liked conspiracies, codes, secret signals, her version of the tactics with which the brave Resistance couriers outfoxed the Nazis in her beloved French World War II films. We had a system worked out: Margaret and I would drive most of the way to town in Mom’s car and meet Aaron at a designated spot. We’d park Mom’s car behind a barn and get into Aaron’s van, and they’d drop me off at the mildewy-smelling, fake-retro Rialto.

    "Don’t change a hair for me, not if you care for me." Our little rowboat caught a current and turned, then stopped turning.

    Sometimes I tried to see Aaron from our parents’ point of view. Squirrelly didn’t seem like the word for a sweet-tempered guy who, like my sister, seemed to throw off a golden light. Screw loose? Margaret was right. Our parents would have hated any boy she brought home.

    Aaron often had paint on his jeans and his hands, and once, when he showed up with a comet of blue across his forehead, I nearly reached over to wipe it off, but Margaret got there first. Aaron treated me like a person, unlike the boys in my school, to whom I was a window through which they kept looking for a hotter girl with bigger breasts.

    After the movie, Aaron would ask me to imitate the stars. My Julia Roberts, especially, cracked the two of them up. He called me kid, which he’d probably got from a film he’d watched with Margaret. They liked the same things—jazz, old movies, art—though I never knew if Aaron had before they’d started going out.

    Stay little valentine, stay.

    Lazily, the boat revolved, until Margaret’s blond hair was back-lit. When I looked into the sun,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1