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Fiction.
Literature.
Humor (Fiction.)
HTML:Alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, a wise, bighearted novel of love, disaster, and unconventional familyâ??from the acclaimed author of Standard Deviation, who has been called the "literary descendant of Jane Austen, sharing Austen's essentially comic world view" (NPR).
I think this book got so many good reviews because readers were deeply lonely during the pandemic, and found the endless details about the lives of these characters appealing. I enjoy a quirky novel, but didn't find this one appealing. The long lists (the names of Duncan's exes, Gary's dislikes, students' interpersonal issues) were distracting and not charming at all. The last chapter was good, but not good enough to be worth the time involved getting through the earlier chapters. ( )
One of those books, that's more or less about fairly normal life but in a good way. The cast of characters are great and Jane's little everyday insights rang very true to me. ( )
!!!!! this story !!!!! ugh i loooooved this. i don't know if i missed the connection somwhere, but why is this book titled early morning riser? anyways, i looooved this if that wasn't clear. really a simple story, it's not twisty not flashy, but the characters are quirky and there's a little bit of drama and conflict, but really the story is about everybody's day to day life and there's gentle humor sprinkled throughout and it's about how even bad days have moments to be treasured. reading this was such a bliss. i completely understand why people don't love this as nothing big happens, but books don't always need to be dramatic! i'm all about the simplicity of this book. and the uplifting story full of love, hope and happiness ( )
Didn't like any of the characters. Wanted to shake most of them and yell "what is wrong with you" because they acted like 10 year olds. Nope, not for me! ( )
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
I see gold in the air And promises in our streams. I see love in our hearts And futures in our dreams.
—JESSE WOODS, "Gold in the Air"
I like it in the light, but the world is different Than it was last night
—THE WEEPIES, "Early Morning Riser"
Dedicatòria
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For my father
Primeres paraules
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Jane met Duncan less than a month after she moved to Boyne City.
Citacions
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(It seemed to Jane that people who lived downstate had cabins in Northern Michigan, and people who lived in Northern Michigan had cabins in the Upper Peninsula, but where did people who lived in the Upper Peninsula have cabins? Canada? And where did Canadian people have cabins? At what point did there cease to be an appeal in going north and people gave up and bought time-shares in Florida?)
The hostess led them to a round table near a window overlooking the golf course. Beyond the careful green fairways, Lake Michigan heaved like a large blue dinosaur. What would it be like to run across the golf course and throw yourself into the waves? Just to keep swimming and not come back?
Jimmy ducked his head in a pleased way. It was so easy to make Jimmy happy. It was actually so easy to make almost anyone happy. Why didn't she do more of it?
She felt like a sled dog pulling a very heavy toboggan toward the lodge at the end of the day.
Jane smiled, wondering why it was only possible to feel fond of her mother when she was not actually in her mother's presence.
The day was lavender-colored now. The sun had set, but the light lingered, like a child reluctant to go to bed.
She still had wedding related things to do, but they no longer weighed so heavily upon her. Instead, she reached for the mantra of her college days: In twenty-four hours, this will all be over. She used to apply it to exams and doctor appointments, but she could apply it here, too.
Jane's mind felt like a box of Skittles dropped on the floor, thoughts scattering and rolling everywhere.
Ms. Lowry was walking up and down the aisles, her eyes scanning from side to side, as though restlessness were a spider she could track down and stamp out.
She seemed to have forgotten how to be herself. Or perhaps she had left her real self back in the principal's office, and now she was just a shadow person, a wraith.
Jane had sometimes thought that Jimmy and Gary could be combined into a whole functioning person, but not she decided she was wrong about that. They would need a third person, maybe even a fourth.
They were just in time. The sky was striped with every flavor of sherbet—raspberry, orange, peach, lemon—and every stripe was reflected in the lake. The sun peeked over the horizon slowly, slowly, growing to a shimmering gold oval that trembled for a moment, heavy, gravid—like a giant egg yolk that would fall forward and fry itself on the silver pan of Lake Charlevoix. And then it rose higher, a perfect yellow circle.
She had always assumed that her relationship with Duncan was getting stronger and more permanent the longer it went on. But maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe Matthew was right, and they had flunked the relationship test by failing to move on to the next level. Maybe they had stopped working and just didn't realize it yet.
It all reminded Jane that having a baby was not that miraculous. Any two fools could do it.
Through the window, she could see the cars in the parking lot all waiting patiently for their owners like horses tied outside a saloon, the wintry pinkish sky cold and unpromising.
If they put too much food on the tray at once, or a piece of food Patrice did not approve of, she would clear the decks with a swipe of her chubby forearem.
"I know," Aggie said. "But I thought he would always be there, waiting to be forgiven." Duncan took a drink from his coffee cup. "Mighty thoughtless of him to die before you got around to that."
"Jeopardy! is how Gary keeps his mind sharp." "Man," Duncan said, "I hate to think what he'd be like without it."
Gary was standing at the bottom of the steps with his backpack, as meek as a guppy brought home from the pet store. "Come on in," Jane said to him, striving for a welcoming tone and falling short. Perhaps very short.
She washed Glenn's hair, and then turned to Patrice, who was lying on her back with just her face poking out of the water. Her expression was serene, almost beatific. She reminded Jane of the pre-cogs in Minority Report.
When Jane got to school, she discovered that two of the four parent chaperones had canceled. (Parents got less reliable as the school year went along; by May, they scattered like cockroaches in the light whenever help was needed.)
They could actually hear the bus before they saw it. It was one of the older models, and it rattled and coughed up the street like a laboring dray horse. It turned into the school drive, its yellow paint long faded to a curdled-cream color, its black lettering chipped away. They all waited patiently as it heaved its way over to them and the doors wheezed open. The driver was a heavyset, deep-voiced woman called Quiche, who wheezed just like the bus.
She remembered glimpsing a woman on Main Street shortly after Patrice's birth and thinking, That woman wouldn't look so bad if she wore makeup and better clothes, and realizing abruptly that she was seeing her own reflection in a storefront.
She thought about how handsome Duncan still was, his older cowboy looks a perfect match to Aggie's milkmaid beauty. She remembered telling her that he and Aggie had still slept together even after she married Gary. "Just once in a while," he had said. "Usually when she sold a house and wanted to celebrate. It was like a treat for her. The other real estate agents used to go to the Sportsman after a sale, but Aggie never was much a drinker."
The dirt road that led up to the farm made the bus shake so much Jane feared it might jitter apart like an old toy.
They walked through the dunes, Patrice exclaiming over everything like some sort of space alien.
The girls ambled up and down the beach, but Jane's thoughts ranged further still, out across the lake to the horizon where the water met the sky in a hazy blue line, and even beyond that, to the unknown mists on the other side.
When they reached the parking lot, Patrice had a temper tantrum so severe that it might have qualified as a psychotic break.
She reached for patience the way she might reach an arm behind the sofa to retrieve a dropped television remote. She groped for a moment, felt patience fumble from her fingertips, and then got a grip on it and pulled it out.
"Sure," she said. "But first, do you think you could bring me a beer from the fridge?" Only the very best mothers drank alcohol at one in the afternoon while their children napped in cars. She had to remember that.
The screen door squeaked open and slapped closed, and Jimmy sat down beside her. He carried two cans of beer and handed one to her. The beer was Duncan's favorite, Bell's Two-Hearted Ale. It was stronger than what Jane usually drank and stronger than what she liked Jimmy to drink, but surely whoever had coined that phrase about desperate times calling for desperate measures had had Jane in mind. Jane on this particular day. She popped the tab on her can and clinked it against Jimmy's. "Cheers." "Cheers," Jimmy said. Jane took a long drink of her beer and waited for it to work its magic. But maybe not even alcohol could bring her back from the dark edge where she now resided. She was taking another drink when Aggie's SUV turned onto the street, as sinister as a custard-blue shark fin slicing through water. Aggie was behind the wheel, leaning forward like the aggressive driver she was. Her wide face was highly visible and highly annoyed: her eyes narrowed, her brows drawn together, her mouth a grim line. It was amazing how she could project anger at a hundred yards. "Whoa," Jimmy said in a startled voice, so Jane knew he had seen it, too.
Jane had not known it was possible for someone to be so hungover and not be hooked up to dialysis somewhere.
Sometimes Patrice's tantrums could be averted, like a toppling wineglass grabbed in the nick of time. Her bad mood sloshed around but didn't spill out.
"Jane," Aggie interrupted loudly. Her voice was sharp, probing, like a finger poked at Jane's chest.
Aggie's voice was as bitter as chicory.
Aggie gave him a look so withering that it seemed possible it might leave a brown patch on the grass.
"Aggie sure is mad at you, Duncan," Jimmy said. "Aggie is a pain in the ass," Duncan said, so sincerely that to Jane it sounded like I love Jane and Jane alone for all my life.
Duncan climbed the porch steps, still holding Patrice, and kissed Jane on the lips. He tasted like a beer-soaked breath mint. It was not unpleasant.
The traffic had finally cleared, and Aggie was driving away. She had been in such a hurry that she'd slammed the car door on a corner of the full skirt of her dress, and it fluttered forlornly, like a handkerchief waved from a departing train.
Gary pulled at his collar and grimaced. "Aggie told me to wear this, but it's not very comfortable. I don't like it when she dresses me." "I feel you, brother," Duncan said with more sincerity than Jane had ever heard him use when speaking to Gary.
"Muskegon?" Duncan leaned forward, his eyes sharp with interest. "Did you know the Trimble sisters?" "No, I don't believe so." Duncan sat back. "Good." Everyone let out a breath of relief. Duncan had slept with two or perhaps all three of the Trimble sisters. He said they were all so close in age and looked so much alike, he'd never been sure who he was with. Mr. Trimble had threatened to shoot Duncan with his duck-hunting gun if he ever showed up at their house again.
Some people speak to children like they're adults and it's charming and respectful, and then there was Jane's mother.
The girls giggled, and Jane's mother seemed to be enjoying herself. Maybe, Jane thought, you could only like playing Life when you don't actually have much of one.
Maybe coming to look at Raelynne would be a thing she did with visitors now, instead of going to the South Pier Lighthouse in Charlevoix.
He had the bewildered air of a natural-disaster survivor.
They went to tumbling class, where Glenn graduated to Level Two, and on the way home, Patrice let out a wail from the backseat and cried out, "I'm trying to be happy for Glenn, but I just can't do it!"
Jane's heart cramped. Your heart was a muscle, right? Hers had a charley horse.
Jimmy would never be new, never be the same. How could Duncan not realize that every time you fell in love and it didn't work out, it scraped out a little piece of you, like scooping out a piece of cantaloupe with a melon baller, and there were only so many times that could happen before the scoop marks started to show?
He was smiling proudly, his face as sweet and open as a sugar cookie. He was so happy for Patrice, so happy for all of them, so delighted by their accomplishments. Could anyone else, ever, be so devoted and selfless? Maybe Jane was wrong; maybe she had been wrong all these years. She'd spent so much time either feeling responsible for Jimmy or feeling sorry for him that she'd forgotten to love him.
Darreres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
When she opened her eyes, the alien sun would be gone, the beach would be as softly colored as chalk dust. All she had to do was stay here and let Jimmy hold her. Just let him hold her until the world slowly righted itself, and she could go on.
Fiction.
Literature.
Humor (Fiction.)
HTML:Alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, a wise, bighearted novel of love, disaster, and unconventional familyâ??from the acclaimed author of Standard Deviation, who has been called the "literary descendant of Jane Austen, sharing Austen's essentially comic world view" (NPR).
Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhereâ??at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan's apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in itâ??never mind four. Five if you count Aggie's eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices. But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane's life is permanently intertwined with Duncan's, Aggie's, and Jimmy's, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane's eyes? Katherine Heiny's Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work
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