- Paperback: 304 pages
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0099437759
- ISBN-13: 978-0099437758
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 222 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Hyperbole is the hallmark of Hoffman's prose. As her 14th novel begins, readers meet Ethan Ford, reliable master carpenter, fire department volunteer and life-saving hero, perfect husband and all-round hunk. In a crescendo of overkill, Hoffman (The River King) identifies Ethan as "truly an extraordinary person." Readers may mutter "enough already," even while recognizing that such a glorious buildup means that Ethan is riding for a fall. But in this case, Hoffman's strategy is effective, because Ethan is suddenly arrested on suspicion of the rape and murder of teenager Rachel Morris 15 years earlier in Maryland. Ethan confesses to the crime, but says that he is now "a different man,'' who has redeemed himself through exemplary behavior. What this revelation means to his beautiful wife of 13 years, Jorie; his 12-year old son, Collie; his friends and admirers in the small community of Monroe, Mass.; and especially to Collie's friend, Kat Williams, who tipped off the police after she saw Ethan's photo on a TV crime blotter, allows the novel to investigate the themes of devotion, betrayal, guilt and forgiveness in trenchantly effective ways. Hoffman avoids the temptation of a feel-good ending, at the same time providing a sensitive assessment of the moral qualities constituting a good life. Throughout, her observations of the natural world are conveyed with gorgeous clarity and the supporting characters are roundly drawn. If the source of Ethan's monumental selfishness is never adequately explained, perhaps this is Hoffman's intention; evil exists, she suggests, and repentance is often not sufficient to earn true absolution. Literary Guild main selection; Doubleday Book Club featured alternate and Mystery Guild alternate; 14-city author tour. (July 23)Forecast: Hoffman's books always lure a large audience, and since this novel, with issues worth pondering, is superior to some of her more whimsical efforts, it should do well right out of the gate.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.From Booklist
Hoffman writes from on high, a storytelling goddess who drenches the earth with flower-opening sunshine one day, only to bring on the most abysmal gloom the next. She enchants and she riles, and her powers are extraordinary, although the overture to her fourteenth novel is awfully sweet. Ethan and Jorie, gorgeous and madly in love after 13 years of marriage, are just too horribly perfect. Ethan is a carpenter, baseball coach, and volunteer fireman. Jorie is a homemaker and a gifted gardener, and their 12-year-old son, Collie, is handsome and good. It's enough to make you puke, and that's exactly Hoffman's intention because this is a make-believe life that has run its course. The girl-next-door, the younger, funny-looking one named Kat, not her exquisite and coldhearted sister Rosarie, misses her father, who committed suicide, and has never trusted Collie's, so when she recognizes an old photograph of Ethan shown on a most-wanted TV show, she makes the fateful call and then watches in shock while her neighbors' lives collapse like a house that looks fine from the outside but has been consumed by termites until it's no more than a shell. Nothing will ever be the same for the denizens of Monroe, Massachusetts, after Ethan is arrested for the long-unsolved murder of a 15-year-old Maryland girl. Many rally to his cause; Kat and Collie grow up too fast; Jorie's best friend copes with breast cancer; and Jorie, devastated but lucid, realizes that she must learn the truth whatever the cost. This canny tale of abrupt reversals and courageous, unpopular choices is as suspenseful as it is lyrical and provocative. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
IT'S THE LAST MONDAY OF THE month, a brutally gorgeous morning brimming with blue air and the sweet scent of honeysuckle, which grows wild in the woods beyond Front Street, when Ethan Ford fails to show up for work. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
IT'S THE LAST MONDAY OF THE month, a brutally gorgeous morning brimming with blue air and the sweet scent of honeysuckle, which grows wild in the woods beyond Front Street, when Ethan Ford fails to show up for work. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining Suspense,
By
This review is from: Blue Diary (Paperback)
The questions that is at the heart of this book is one that we all think about from time to time whether dealing with friends or family. What are they thinking and feeling, and really how much do we know that person?In this book the twist is a wife who finds out her prefect (somewhat a bit more than perfect and close to being a bit too much) has a rather dubious past which comes to light when it catches up with him and begs the questions is he the same person or changed? Some of the book was a bit "extreme" in terms of the set up, and also Jorie's perhaps missing what happened in the past, but it is fiction afterall (and a theme that has been used before in books and movies) so some artistic license is to be expected, and it results in a very entertaining book overall.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing!,
By
This review is from: Blue Diary (Audio Cassette)
Blue Diary is a suspenseful page-turner, and a novel that I will never forget. Blue Diary is the first book I have read by Alice Hoffman, and now I cannot wait to read another. Blue Diary is a compelling story about Ethan Ford, a man whose life gets turned upside-down when authorities show up at his door one afternoon, and this in turn affects the lives of everyone living in the small town of Monroe-especially Ethan's "perfect" family. This novel brings up many questions, questions that may never be answered for some. Questions such as, is a person truly capable of change? Should one ever completely trust another person? And is a lie ever justified? Along with these questions, the novel touches on many different themes, themes of guilt, betrayal, devotion, forgiveness, and loss. The themes and questions this novel touches upon are cleverly made evident within several different subplots, and are definitely something that everyone can relate to in one way or another, regardless of one's age. If anyone is looking for a thrilling read about the power of forgiveness and guilt, pick up a copy of Blue Diary, and I'm positive you'll enjoy it.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Romantic imagery but little realism,
By A Customer
This review is from: Blue Diary (School & Library Binding)
Can we really ever know anyone completely? Even the most loving and intimate partner of 13 years? Jorie, the protagonist of this lush novel, finds out the answer to this question, but she might have asked it much earlier, maybe at the wedding when his side of the chapel was completely empty. Hoffman is a talented writer, and I kept reading, with special interest in the sharply defined adolescent characters, but Jorie's ignorance about her husband's past is unreal and puts a hole in the plot too big to ignore.
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