About the Book
From the editor of the New York Times bestselling essay anthology The Bitch in the House and the novel Sweet Ruin comes a compelling domestic drama about a woman who must hold her family together after her husband disappears. For the past fourteen years, Eve Adams has worked part-time while raising her two children and emotionally supporting her sculptor husband, Eric, through his early fame and success. Now, at forty-two, she suddenly finds herself with a growing career of her own--a private nutritionist practice and a book deal--even as Eric's career sinks deeper into the slump it slipped into a few years ago.
After a dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate Eve's success, Eric drives the babysitter home and, simply, doesn't come back. Eve must now shift the family in possibly irreparable ways, forcing her to realize that competence in one area of life doesn't always keep things from unraveling in another.
Gone is an outstanding novel about change and about redefining, in middle age, everything from one's marriage to one's career to one's role as a best friend, parent, and spouse. It is a novel about passion and forgiveness and knowing when to let something go and when to fight to hold on to it, about learning to say goodbye--but, if you're lucky, not forever.
About the Author :
Cathi Hanauer is the author of the novels My Sister's Bones and Sweet Ruin and the editor of the New York Times bestselling essay anthology The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage. Her articles, essays, and/or criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Elle, O, Glamour, Self, Parenting, Whole Living, and other magazines. She lives with her family in western Massachusetts. Visit her website at CathiHanauer.com.
Review :
"Hanauer's treatment of Eve and Eric's--as well as their children's--predicaments ring true with emotional clarity, and her eye for detail and ear for conversational patterns lends credibility to this stark family drama," --Publisher's Weekly "Gone is the most beautifully crafted novel I have read in a while." --New Jersey Journal
"If you're looking for more than fluff and folly this summer, Hanauer's novel delivers. At its core, though, it remains a simple, beautifully told story about a marriage, love, and what remains when one partner has gone." --Florida Times-Union
"Cathi Hanauer succeeds beautifully in creating a story that will make you care and keep turning the pages to discover what will happen to this family, all the while rooting for them." --Dani Shapiro, national bestselling author of Devotion and Black & White
"Gone is about the big things--love and death and work and children--and it treats them all with freshness and acuity. Hanauer draws her characters with real generosity and with insight about the pitfalls of contemporary life. It's a compelling, big-hearted book." --Joshua Henkin, author of The World Without You and Matrimony
"Gone offers a clear-eyed vision of what is gained and lost in a contemporary marriage when the wife and mother begins gaining power outside the home." --Vanity Fair
"Beautifully complicated and often funny, Cathi Hanauer's Gone asks the question many long-marrieds barely dare to contemplate: What would you do if your husband left to drive the babysitter home and just never came back?" --O Magazine
"Cathi Hanauer is a great chronicler of modern love and life, who has created, in the pages of Gone, the beautiful, intricate story of a beautiful, intricate marriage. This novel will resonate with anyone who has ever been married--which is to say, it will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled to reconcile love against ambivalence, loyalty against the lure of solitude, and domestic fidelity against the call of the open road." --Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed
"Cathi Hanauer's new novel Gone picks up ten years down the road from The Bitch in the House, her groundbreaking, best-selling 2002 anthology of marital rage, domestic wrangling, and passion (or lack thereof). This is a gorgeous, wrenching book, a literary feat." --Kate Christensen, Pen Faulkner Award-winning author of The Astral and The Great Man
"Hanauer delivers a novel that is rich with relatable characters, realistic in its approach and highly readable." --Kirkus Reviews
"Hanauer's crisp examination of a troubled family keenly depicts the mercurial nature of contemporary marriage and parenthood." --Booklist
"Lose yourself in Cathi Hanauer's Gone, the tension-filled tale of a woman who becomes a single mother when her husband vanishes after driving the babysitter home." --Shape Magazine ("Summer's Best Reads")
"Trust Cathi Hanauer to write such a touching, funny, smart book about the way families and marriage both gird and choke a life. The husband and wife here, a sensitive and spirited pair, each yearn for freedom as they still fully embrace the bonds that tether them to one another. It's that earthly paradox that Hanauer understands so deeply and executes so beautifully in her latest, greatest novel." --Helen Schulman, New York Times bestselling author of This Beautiful Life
