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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780307209863 ISBN: 0307209865 Label: Three Rivers Press Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 304 Publication Date: April 04, 2006 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Release Date: April 04, 2006 Studio: Three Rivers Press Editorial Review: Product Description: On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books. This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever, a suspenseful, deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever. Keeping fact, speculation, and contradiction playing off one another as the details unfold, author Lee Martin creates a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. His beautiful, clear-eyed prose builds to an extremely nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss. Reminiscent of books such as The Little Friend and The Lovely Bones, but most memorable for its own perceptions and power, The Bright Forever is a compelling and emotional tale about the human need to know even the hardest truth. A Featured Alternate of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Book-of-the-Month Club Also available as a Books on Tape AudioBook and an eBook Download Description: “With what consummate skill Lee Martin conjures up a small town in the grip of tragedy and how deftly he explores the way in which a casual remark, a brief kiss, a white lie can have the most terrible consequences. The Bright Forever is a remarkable and almost unbearably suspenseful novel.” —Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona and Eva Moves the Furniture “Lee Martin’s The Bright Forever goes deep into the mystery of being alive on this earth. Written in the clearest prose, working back and forth over its complex story, and told in the dark, desperate, vivid voices of its various speakers, it holds you spellbound to the end, to its final, sad revelations.” —Kent Haruf, author of Eventide and Plainsong “Like Winesburg, Ohio, The Bright Forever captures, in alternating voices, the individual acts of desperation that lead to a community’s sorrow. And, like Sherwood Anderson, Lee Martin is not happy to let guilt reside singularly or simply. This is a morally complex quilt, a page-turner that also insists on the reader’s participation in moral contemplation.” —Antonya Nelson, author of Female Trouble and Talking in Bed “I read The Bright Forever in one sitting. I couldn’t put it down. Part Mystic River, part Winesburg, Ohio, this harrowing and beautiful book is one of the most powerful novels I’ve read in years and heralds the breakout of a remarkable talent.” —Bret Lott, author of A Song I Knew by Heart and Jewel “The Bright Forever will get under your skin with its exquisite psychology and fine-tuned suspense. Lee Martin has created a world of aching beauty and terrible loss.” —Jean Thompson, author of City Boy and Wide Blue Yonder “The Bright Forever is ravishing. . . . Lee Martin’s characters, dear readers, are us—riven and bedeviled, our souls gone grainy and rank, our hearts busted and beating heavily for love. We have Martin to thank for having the moral courage—yes, an old-fashioned but rare virtue—to tell it to us plain.” —Lee K. Abbott, author of Living After Midnight A Featured Alternate of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Book-of-the-Month Club From the Hardcover edition. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Efficiently Simple to Powerful EffectThe Bright Forever Surprised me. By it's rather hokey cover with the little blonde curl on it, I went into it thinking it would probably be a lightweight summer read. I was wrong. Lee Martin's writing was, from cover to cover, superbly powerful and simple. His writing is so bullseye efficient that it deceptively makes the book seem simple. Martin's simply pointed and poignant prose effected a sleight of hand effect, and one that the Pulitzer Prize judges obviously and rightly admired. ... Read More Rating:  - Disturbing, Nauseating SubjectIt was hard to find the enthusiasm to finish this creepy look at the underbelly of "perfect" suburban American life in the 70's. Superbly written, but I would have liked a story that explored the characters inner souls without so much sickness and depravity. Like Stephen King, the author is an excellent writer, but his subject matter leaves me cold. Rating: - Touching book, some shaky momentsBefore I say anything else, I can't understand why some reviewers commented on this book being very similar or a "rip-off" of Sebold's "The Lovely Bones." Why? Because the subject of both books were quietly, provacatively told tales of a young girl's disappearance and the grief of her family? Books sharing subject matter are not the "same" or "rip-offs" of one another. If that were so, we would be sadly limited in point of view, tone, vision, etc. Assuming people who read "Bones" craved more of the same ... Read More Rating: - Just "Okay" -- Well-written, but hardly suspenseful.As a librarian in Indiana, the blurb on this one caught my attention. A kid returning library books in a small Indiana town goes missing?! Hmmmm! It was an OK read and I will likely recommend it to some of my library patrons. I didn't find myself caring too much about the characters, though. No one was particularly compelling to me. Rating:  - ILLUMINATING!Martin's THE BRIGHT FOREVER was an illuminating find. The author certainly has a gift for storytelling and knows how to keep a reader going and going. He provides the reader with small clues which always left me wanting more. It was definitely one of my fastest reads because I couldn't put it down! The story itself is a sad one: a little girl full of life and innocence turns up missing in a small, sleepy town where the biggest news the town newspaper might ever report is the results of ... Read More |
