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.
About the author
Emily Giffin is the author of Something Borrowed, her smash-hit debut novel that was made into a major motion picture. She is also the author of Something Blue, Baby Proof, Love the One You’re With, and Heart of the Matter. Giffin is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Virginia School of Law. After practicing litigation at a Manhattan firm for several years, she moved to London to write full time. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and children.
Reviews
What people think about Heart of the Matter
4.0Reader reviews
- (4/5)Scobie, a police officer serving in a war-time West African state, is distrusted, being scrupulously honest and immune to bribery. But then he falls in love, and in doing so is forced to betray everything he believes in, with tragic consequences. This is a terrifying depiction of a man's inner-struggle and is one of Graham Greene's most tragic novel. It is on the 1001 books list to read before you die. I look forward to reading another of Greene's novels in the near future and recommend this book to those who classics.
- (5/5)the most depressing book i have ever read
- (5/5)Not a review, just some random thoughts upon completing this novel. Scobie is such a tragic figure! And I can't help wondering how autobiographic his struggles with love & religion were since both Scobie & Greene converted to Catholicism. The broken rosary Scobie kept meaning to have repaired is a symbol that sticks in my mind... Another thing that struck me was the encapsulated in the phrase:" - that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness."Despite the religious aspects running through this book, it seemed almost existentialist in tone.
- (2/5)Bit flakey I thought. The characters were unlikable. A miss for me
- (3/5)Here are my thoughts as to what I liked about this book, and where it fell short. First, I liked the last four or five chapters which gave voice to the key issues or themes of the book, i.e. commitment, trust, and interpersonal responsibility between individuals, married couples, parent and child. These issues were in these closing chapters dealt with effectively and artfully through the dialogue/interactions between the characters, rather than through the narrators voice telling us what they were or should be thinking, wanting, hoping. Until the final chapters the key issues were masked and somewhat tritely at that, by the narrator's descriptions, and even in these final chapters, the voices of the children were ignored. My opinion is that the story, the characters, the complexities of both deserve a deeper more sophisticated treatment.
- (4/5)This book is great from the core and up. The structure is marvellous, the writing is, stylistically, by a master, and I didn't want to miss a paragraph. It's a horrid tale of rôles, love, hierarchies (including God), friendship and treachery. I loved it.