BOOKISH FRIDAY: “HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which we  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with My Head Is Full of Books.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Today’s feature is my current read:  How the Light Gets In, by Joyce Maynard.

Book Beginning:

Of all the pictures that still haunt her twenty-five years later, of that day they brought Toby to the hospital, Eleanor had no idea why this would be the one that has lodged in her brain.

It concerns her husband, Cam.  A moment in the waiting room, somewhere in the middle of that awful stretch of hours the two of them waited to find out whether their son would live or die or end up somewhere in between.

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Friday 56:

Wintertime now. The woodstove’s lit.  Eleanor and Toby sit at the kitchen table—Toby playing solitaire, Eleanor on her laptop, as usual.

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Synopsis:Following the death of her former husband, Cam, fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. Toby’s older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife; their sister, Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Although all appears stable, old resentments, anger, and bitterness simmer just beneath the surface.

How the Light Gets In follows Eleanor and her family through fifteen years (2010 to 2024) as their story plays out against a uniquely American backdrop and the events that transform their world (climate change, the January 6th insurrection, school violence) and shape their lives (later-life love, parental alienation, steadfast friendship). With her trademark sensitivity and insight, Joyce Maynard paints an indelible portrait of characters both familiar and new making their way over rough, messy, and treacherous terrain to find their way to what is, for each, a place to call “home.”

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Would you keep reading?  I am captivated by this book.

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