Five days a novel
Laura spends her days looking at other people's potential calamities. She works in the radiography unit of a small hospital on the Maine coast, bearing constant witness to the fears of patient after frightened patient. In a job where finding nothing is always the best possible outcome, she is w...
| Main Author: | Kennedy, Douglas, 1955- |
|---|---|
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Atria Books,
2013.
|
| Edition: | First Atria Books hardcover edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
Laura spends her days looking at other people's potential calamities. She works in the radiography unit of a small hospital on the Maine coast, bearing constant witness to the fears of patient after frightened patient. In a job where finding nothing is always the best possible outcome, she is well versed in the random injustices of life, a truism that has lately been playing out in her marriage as well. Since being downsized, her husband, Dan, has become withdrawn, his emotional distance gradually corroding their relationship. With a son in college and a daughter soon due to leave home, Laura has begun to fear that the marital sounds of silence will only deepen once the nest is truly empty. When an opportunity arises to attend a weekend medical conference in Boston, Laura jumps at this respite from home. While checking in, she meets a man as gray and uninspired as her drab hotel room. Richard is an outwardly dull, fiftysomething insurance salesman. But during a chance second encounter, Laura discovers him to be surprisingly complex and thoughtful, someone who, like herself, is grappling with the same big questions about decisions made and the human capacity for self-entrapment. As their conversation deepens and begins to veer into shared confessions, the overwhelming sense of personal and intimate connection arises. A transformative love affair begins. But can this potential, much-longed-for happiness be married to their own difficult personal circumstances? Can they upend their lives and embrace that most loaded of words: change? A love story as clear-sighted and ruminative as it is affecting, Five Days will have you reflecting about the choices we all make that shape our destinies. Crafted with Kennedy's trademark evocative prose and pitch-perfect in its depiction of the complex realities of modern life, it is a novel that speaks directly to the many contradictions of the human heart. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: |
309 pages ; 24 cm |
| ISBN: |
9781451666335 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1451666330 (hardcover : alk. paper) 9781451666359 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1451666357 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
| Author Notes: |
Kennedy first supported himself as a playwright. His early radio plays, Shakespeare on Five Dollars a Day and The Don Giovanni Blues, were broadcast by the BBC. Kennedy's first book, Beyond the Pyramids, was published in London in 1988. In the next few years, Kennedy went on to write two more travelogues and the novel The Dead Heart, none of which were ever published in the United States. It wasn't until 1997 that one of Kennedy's books made an American debut. The book, The Big Picture, focuses on a suburban yuppie lawyer who throws his life away with one sudden act of violence. A selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club, film rights have been optioned by Fox 2000 and foreign rights have been sold in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Norway, and Spain. In addition to his books, Douglas Kennedy is a much-published journalist whose work regularly appears in such London publications as The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, British GQ, and Arena. (Bowker Author Biography) |