Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - Good Harbor

Good Harbor
Good Harbor
Author: Anita Diamant
Anita Diamant whose rich portrayal of the biblical world of women illuminated her acclaimed international bestseller The Red Tent, now crafts a moving novel of contemporary female friendship. — Good Harbor is the long stretch of Cape Ann beach where two women friends walk and talk, sharing their personal histories and learning life's lessons from...  more »
Info icon
The Market's bargain prices are even better for Paperbackswap club members!
Retail Price: $15.00
Buy New (Paperback): $12.29 (save 18%) or
Become a PBS member and pay $8.39+1 PBS book credit Help icon(save 44%)
ISBN-13: 9780743225724
ISBN-10: 0743225724
Publication Date: 9/17/2002
Pages: 256
Rating:
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
 191

3.5 stars, based on 191 ratings
Publisher: Scribner
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Good Harbor on + 34 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 10
Great book. I especially reccomend it to anyone who has had their lives touched by breast cancer -either their own or a loved one. Also a great story about friendships and the healing powers friendships have.
RoyalCatwoman avatar reviewed Good Harbor on + 278 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 7
Set in the small Massachusetts fishing town of Gloucester, Good Harbor is a slow-paced study of female friendship. Here Diamant can luxuriate in the development of just two principal characters: 59-year-old Kathleen Levine, a children's librarian who is undergoing radiation therapy for breast cancer, and a 42-year-old romance novelist, Joyce Tabachnik, who has bought a summer retreat in Gloucester in the hope of finally writing a "serious" book. The two meet at temple after a service presided over by a newly hired female rabbi. (What joy it must have been for Diamant, who chronicled so much oppression of Hebrew women in The Red Tent, to casually include the presence of female clergy.) Kathleen has no real confidante aside from her husband, Buddy; Joyce is facing estrangement from both her business-minded husband, Frank, and her soccer-obsessed daughter, Nina. What the women are lacking, they find in each other. As their intimacy grows, Diamant sometimes tells us what we already know, breaking into a conversation, for example, to announce how well things are going ("They smiled at each other. They were going to be okay."). This is a moving story nonetheless--short on incident, but with carefully drawn characters and fluid, matter-of-fact prose.
reviewed Good Harbor on + 8 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
This was a satisfying read...the story of two women at different points in their lives, relying on each other for support and guidance.
reviewed Good Harbor on + 140 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
This was a very good book about women friendships.
reviewed Good Harbor on + 26 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The women in the book remained a part of my spirit for weeks after I read it.
Read All 35 Book Reviews of "Good Harbor"

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

vallipow avatar reviewed Good Harbor on + 40 more book reviews
Good Harbor is a story about two women who are dealing with challenges that cause them to reassess their lives, their choices, and even their femininity during a period of about a year. One, the elder, deals with breast cancer and aging; she also continues to confront the grief and loss she and her husband share, but deal differently with, from the senseless and accidental death many years earlier of a beloved young child.

The younger woman is coming to a different type of watershed in her life, as she assesses her professional dreams, her marriage, and whether she is losing touch with her adolescent daughter, whose personality is very different from hers.

The two women become friends when the younger moves into a house in Good Harbor, MA, where the older woman has lived for years and has very deep roots. The friendship comes at a time when both women need to reexplore their lives with someone who hasn't already "typed" them based on a shared history or set of expectations.

Diamant does an excellent job of exploring the lives of these women, and she is sympathetic in her portrayals of their husbands and children. It is written very differently from and is not, for me, as wonderful as her novel The Red Tent, but it is a nice read.
reviewed Good Harbor on
A departure from her other books but I enjoyed it. Liked the aspect of the womens friendship.
reviewed Good Harbor on + 38 more book reviews
Love this book.
reviewed Good Harbor on + 11 more book reviews
I loved this book. The author has a great insite for woman's report. I love this author. Great book !
reviewed Good Harbor on + 59 more book reviews
unabridged
reviewed Good Harbor on + 23 more book reviews
This was an easy read, but no where near as good as Diamont's first novel, The Red Tent.


Genres: