WHEN SHE WAS GONE By Gwendolen Gross

Congrats to LeslieGC who has won the copy of When She Was Gone! Please email me at stephanieelliot@gmail.com with your full name and address so I can get you your book! Thanks!

 

When She Was Gone

Gwendolen Gross

But first, the winner of Jennifer Weiner's The Next Best Thing is: THE GANG's MOMMA who has actually been away doing some very exciting things of her own! Congrats for many reasons! Please send me an email at stephanieelliot@gmail.com to get your autographed copy of Jen's book! YAY!

  I love Gwendolen Gross and have ever since I read The Other Mother which was a character study of sorts between a working mother and a stay-at-home mom. I loved The Orphan Sister also and just finished When She Was Gone, a story about a young woman who goes missing a week before she is supposed to leave for college.

It's told from the perspective of her family and those in her neighborhood. While I originally expected it to be a story about Linsey, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that while, yes, it was essentially a story 'about' Linsey and her disappearance, it really was more of a story about those surrounding her - her family, her boyfriend, the people in her neighborhood and their lives. It was almost a character sketch and it was fascinating and so vivid. There were so many times I stopped at various phrases and thought, "HOW DID GWENDOLEN GROSS COME UP WITH THAT?" It's one of those books where I wish I had a highlighter with me to mark all the cool phrases of imagery cuz I'm a geek like that. I was so intrigued because we learn about Linsey and her life through the eyes of her neighbors and in turn, we are also 'hearing' the stories about them as well. It's really fascinating how we are essentially getting several stories in one.

Before I get to the synopsis of When She Was Gone, here are Gwendolen's These Three Things that she wanted YOU to know about her! They are very interesting!

THESE THREE THINGS FROM GWENDOLEN GROSS.
Three things about me! Who doesn't like to talk about themselves?

First: I was very small as a baby and toddler, and I spoke very early. My parents describe a chatter-box one and a half year old startling diners at a restaurant, speaking full sentences as if possessed.

Second: One boring but glorious summer in Vermont, my mom drove my sister and I all the way to the Bread and Puppet Circus to practice, build, and then participate in the show--the Domestic Resurrection Circus about Washerwomen, that year. We spent our days learning to strap on tall stilts by sitting atop a school bus, and to dance in both ends of an elephant costume. We ran through the lupins purpling our jeans shorts. We helped make the washerwomen, maybe twenty feet high held with wooden frames, eerie flapping white fabric, for the resurrection portion of the program. We did not learn to make the strange black bread the puppet master served at the free bread booth with the most potent aioli I'd ever tasted. And, being nine and twelve, I'm pretty sure we had no idea what the sweet smoke that rose over the grounds indicated--we just knew the adults there were terrifically mellow.

Third: When I was in high school, I was a boy scout. Well, technically, anyway. I belonged to Explorer Post 507, a group of adventurous souls who felt the need to get out of the ordinary world by hiking, biking, rock climbing, ice climbing, and generally getting out (the title of my second book, as well). Once, I got lost in a cave with my friends Lisa and Paul. Paul was in his twenties, so he was technically one of the advisers (maybe half the group was advisers?). We split off from a group following the underground river through the lake on the inflatable boat Sean had packed in (rappelling down a muddy cliff into the cold womb of the earth) and rolled down a silt cheek of the earth in the dark, the ceiling just a few feet above our heads. We followed a trickle of river toward an exit, only it wasn't an exit, and we didn't realize that until we'd been swimming in the cold and black, and came up against a wall instead of an opening. There's a happy ending. We retraced our steps and came out, late and gasping, into the absurd green of late-afternoon timothy grass, but I'll never forget that feeling of absence: not knowing where to go, seeing hardly anything, feeling wet and cold and permanent under the earth. Poor Gollum.

Here's the synopsis of When She Was Gone, which, by the way, I LOVE THE COVER!!

What happened to Linsey Hart? When the Cornell-bound teenager disappears into the steamy blue of a late-summer morning, her quiet neighborhood is left to pick apart the threads of their own lives and assumptions. 

Linsey’s neighbors are just ordinary people—but even ordinary people can keep terrible secrets hidden close. There’s Linsey’s mother, Abigail, whose door-to-door searching makes her social-outcast status painfully obvious; Mr. Leonard, the quiet, retired piano teacher with insomnia, who saw Linsey leave; Reeva, the queen bee of a clique of mothers, now obsessed with a secret interest; Timmy, Linsey’s lovelorn ex-boyfriend; and George, an eleven-year-old loner who is determined to find out what happened to his missing neighbor. 

As the days of Linsey’s absence tick by, dread and hope threaten to tear a community apart. This luminous new novel by the acclaimed author of The Orphan Sister explores coming of age in the shadows of a suburban life, and what is revealed when the light suddenly shines in…

If you'd like to win a copy of When She Was Gone, leave a comment here and tell me if you ever thought about running away when you were younger, and if so, where would you go? I once got so mad at my parents, I opened the window in my bedroom, and hid in my closet for WHAT SEEMED LIKE HOURS, HOPING FOREVER that they would come searching for me, only to discover that I had run away. Unfortunately, they never came looking for me and I got bored hiding in my closet so I came out. So much for my extravagant plan to 'run away.' How about you - where did you dream of running away to? Leave a comment to enter to win When She Was Gone!

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If you're new to Booking with Manic, thank you for stopping by! We love new readers! Some notes - If you're entering to win a book, please leave a comment on this post and use an identifying name when commenting. It's usually a great idea to include an email, which I will never give out to anyone else. You can only enter once please. You'll need to check back here in a few days to see if you've won the book -- I will either list the winner in a new post OR highlight the winner's name at the top of this post, or tell you where you can find the winner's name at the top of this post. I do NOT personally contact the winners. It is YOUR responsibility to come back to see if you've won. Most books are supplied directly through publishers, publicists and the authors. Winners will receive books directly from the publisher or author within 3 weeks from the time you provide me with your address, unless I send you the book (sometimes I will). Sorry, but we can only ship to U.S. and Canada so if you're from another country, thank you for coming by to read and discover new authors, but we can't send you a book. Any questions on how I run the blog or suggestions on who you would like to see featured, please email me at stephanieelliot[at]gmail.com. Thank you for your support!