Saturday, July 7, 2012

Gone by Cathi Hanauer

My Rating: Good read

Synopsis: For the past fourteen years, Eve Adams has worked part-time while raising her two children and emotionally supporting her sculptor husband, Eric, through his early fame and success. Now, at forty-two, she suddenly finds herself with a growing career of her own—a private nutritionist practice and a book deal—even as Eric’s career sinks deeper into the slump it slipped into a few years ago.

After a dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate Eve’s success, Eric drives the babysitter home and, simply, doesn’t come back. Eve must now shift the family in possibly irreparable ways, forcing her to realize that competence in one area of life doesn’t always keep things from unraveling in another.

Gone is an outstanding novel about change and about redefining, in middle age, everything from one’s marriage to one’s career to one’s role as a best friend, parent, and spouse. It is a novel about passion and forgiveness and knowing when to let something go and when to fight to hold on to it, about learning to say goodbye—but, if you’re lucky, not forever.

My Review:  When I first read the synopsis of Gone, I thought I was going to be reading a "juicy" book about a husband who runs off with the babysitter one night.  Gone was not that book at all.  Gone does have a good story line and lots of interesting information along with it.  You can really tell that the author, Cathi Hanauer, did a lot of research.


Gone revolves around the four main characters:

  • Eric driving away one night while taking the baby-sitter home, but it really gets into his depression and how he gets the help he needs.   
  • Eve and her job as a nutritionist (which I found very informative) and how she is the type of person to always be in charge and help others.  She finds herself in a position that she has no control over.  
  • Magnolia (their daughter) becoming a typical teenage girl with all the struggles, including her best friend becoming the girlfriend of the boy she has always had a crush on.  What could be harder for a fourteen year to handle along with her Dad leaving?  
  • Danny (their son) dealing with abandonment issues since his father left.  
The story of each one of them unfolds in a six week span and all comes together in the end.  I believed Eve was a very strong women, but I wanted her to confront Eric and not ignore him and the fact that he left her.  I felt she dealt with what she needed to do to provide for her kids and get through the day and didn't face the "real" issue of her husband leaving.


Meet the Author: Cathi Hanauer is the author of the novels My Sister's Bones and Sweet Ruin and the editor of the New York Times bestselling essay anthology The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage. Her articles, essays, and/or criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Elle, O, Glamour, Self, Parenting, Whole Living, and other magazines. She lives with her family in western Massachusetts.

Purchase It:  You can purchase Gone on Amazon for $24.99 ($16.49 for Prime members and Kindle version for $11.99)

Connect:  You can connect with Cathi on her website.

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