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Topic: Happens Every Day

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javagal avatar
Friend of PBS-Silver medal
Subject: Happens Every Day
Date Posted: 4/7/2009 10:25 PM ET
Member Since: 10/19/2005
Posts: 385
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I heard a good review for this book on NPR and bought the hardcover as it sounded  intriging.  What a great read!  I won't be posting it for a while as I need to make certain all my friends read it first. 

Wish list it now!

Happens Every Day

Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life -- a handsome, intelligent, loving husband; two glorious toddlers; a beautiful house; the time and place to express all her ebullience and affection and optimism. Suddenly, that life was over. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons.

When Josiah took a teaching job at a Midwestern college, Isabel and their sons moved with him from New York City to Ohio, where Isabel taught acting, threw herself into the college community, and delighted in the less-scheduled lives of toddlers raised away from the city. But within a few months, the marriage was over. The life Isabel had made crumbled. "Happens every day," said a friend.

Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. Gillies has written a dizzyingly candid, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, reading this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away. Hers is a remarkable new voice -- instinctive, funny, and irresistible. ~Amazon

MaGee avatar
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Date Posted: 4/9/2009 7:22 AM ET
Member Since: 4/18/2008
Posts: 10,406
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Thanks for the recommendation.