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Heart of the Matter: A Novel
Written by Emily Giffin
Narrated by Cynthia Nixon
Book Actions
Start Listening- Publisher:
- Macmillan Audio
- Released:
- May 11, 2010
- ISBN:
- 9781427209603
- Format:
- Audiobook (abridged)
Description
Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her own mother's warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life.
Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie—a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance—and even to some degree, friendships—believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.
Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.
In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin's Heart of the Matter creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.
A Macmillan Audio production.
Book Actions
Start ListeningBook Information
Heart of the Matter: A Novel
Written by Emily Giffin
Narrated by Cynthia Nixon
Description
Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her own mother's warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life.
Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie—a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance—and even to some degree, friendships—believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.
Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.
In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin's Heart of the Matter creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.
A Macmillan Audio production.
- Publisher:
- Macmillan Audio
- Released:
- May 11, 2010
- ISBN:
- 9781427209603
- Format:
- Audiobook (abridged)
About the author
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Reviews
Anyway, you should read this if you have the slightest tinge of idealist in you. If you hate religion, just pretend that Scobie's real problem is that his adultery doesn't mesh with his Marxism, or his capitalism, or whatever ideology you want to throw in there. Point being, unlike a lot of books, you get a picture of someone who chooses his ideology over messy real life, and it's both depressing as hell and crazy inspiring. And for god's sake: fiction is no sociology, nor political theory.
Like many of Greene's books, The Heart of the Matter is shadowed by the author's faith. Like his schoolmate and writing contemporary Evelyn Waugh Catholicism is a continuing theme; however, with Greene it goes beyond a theme; it is nearly a haunting. I can't believe the stringency of his faith and how he portrayed it won many converts for the church. At times reading the book seemed an act of masochism in the name of art; a spiritual tormenting like self flagellation and wearing a hair shirt. Now this may not seem much of a recommendation for a book, in an odd way it his. It will get under your skin and flail its way through the corridors of your brain and heart. At least it did mine.
Throughout Greene masterfully manipulates scenes, details and characters producing subtle doubles, haunting metaphors, smalls clues, and well-conceived symbols (the broken rosary, the rusted handcuffs). But beyond the artistry, which is nothing if the book lacks a soul, is the lonely, responsibility-ridden Scobie, a man worthy of the reader's concern and love.