|
|
|
|
|
A Northern Light
| Our Price |
$ 15.40
|
|
| Retail Value |
$ 19.25 |
|
| You Save |
$ 3.85 (20%) |
|
| Item Number |
2238190 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Item Description...
Product Description
Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder.
Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Jennifer Donnelly's astonishing debut novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.
Includes a reader's guide and an interview with the author.
Outline Review
It's 1906 and 16-year-old Mattie Gokey is at a crossroads in her life. She's escaped the overwhelming responsibilities of helping to run her father's brokedown farm in exchange for a paid summer job as a serving girl at a fancy hotel in the Adirondacks. She's saving as much of her salary as she can, but she's having trouble deciding how she's going to use the money at the end of the summer. Mattie's gift is for writing and she's been accepted to Barnard College in New York City, but she's held back by her sense of responsibility to her family--and by her budding romance with handsome-but-dull Royal Loomis. Royal awakens feelings in Mattie that she doesn't want to ignore, but she can't deny her passion for words and her desire to write. At the hotel, Mattie gets caught up in the disappearance of a young couple who had gone out together in a rowboat. Mattie spoke with the young woman, Grace Brown, just before the fateful boating trip, when Grace gave her a packet of love letters and asked her to burn them. When Grace is found drowned, Mattie reads the letters and finds that she holds the key to unraveling the girl's death and her beau's mysterious disappearance. Grace Brown's story is a true one (it's the same story told in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and in the film adaptation, A Place in the Sun), and author Jennifer Donnelly masterfully interweaves the real-life story with Mattie's, making her seem even more real. Mattie's frank voice reveals much about poverty, racism, and feminism at the turn of the twentieth century. She witnesses illness and death at a range far closer than most teens do today, and she's there when her best friend Minnie gives birth to twins. Mattie describes Minnie's harrowing labor with gut-wrenching clarity, and a visit with Minnie and the twins a few weeks later dispels any romance from the reality of young motherhood (and marriage). Overall, readers will get a taste of how bitter--and how sweet--ordinary life in the early 1900s could be. Despite the wide variety of troubles Mattie describes, the book never feels melodramatic, just heartbreakingly real. (14 and older) --Jennifer Lindsay
|
Item Specifications...
Pages 396
Dimensions: Length: 8.27" Width: 5.02" Height: 1.17"
Weight: 0.93 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
ISBN 0756936144
EAN 9780756936143
|
Availability 6 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 04:05.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
|
Product Categories
Similar Products
Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | a northern light Jan 29, 2010 |
| this seems to be aimed at a younger reader. not as good as her other books, winter rose and tea rose | | |  | An honest journey of finding yourself Jan 28, 2010 |
Have you ever wondered how life would be if you were born just eighty or one hundred years earlier? Well, here is the chance to experience that life through the eyes of 16-year-old Mattie Gokey. In the book "A Northern Light," by Jennifer Donnelly, Mattie lives a harsh and difficult farming life with her father and three younger sisters during the year 1906. With her mother dead, Mattie has now inherited the responsibility of looking after the family. Her dream is to go to college and become a writer. However, throughout the book, her dreams become smaller and more hopeless. While struggling with her feelings for a handsome young boy who wishes to marry her but who lacks an intellectual appeal, she becomes involved in the mystery of a young girl who was murdered. Will she follow her dreams to the end or continue in a life of dull repetitiveness?
This book was extremely well written and engages you right from the start. The book contains images and descriptions that will stay with you forever about how life was like in the 1900s. This book is written for young adults, but I believe it is for a mature audience of about 16 years of age and older. A few brief parts in the book are a bit explicit, but I believe they are there to convey the reality of life for Mattie. A detailed scene of birth and some sexuality are included.
The nature of this book is to show the audience how anyone can fight for their dreams. I thought this book was honest and very engaging. I would highly recommend this book.
| | | | Ok but prefer the "Roses" .... Dec 30, 2009 |
| I discovered Jennifer Connelly's incredible writing talent with "The Tea Rose" and "The Winter Rose;" both novels have become favorites of mine which I always recommend to friends/family. When I saw this book, I had to get it, without reading what it was about, nor realizing it was written for a younger audience. Therefore, I was unprepared for the writing style which was so different from the "Rose" books, and did find it more gearer to a younger audience than my other two favorites of hers. I'm not saying it wasn't meant for adults as well, just that it didn't compare on a literary level to the two "Rose" novels. That being said, the book was indeed interesting and I recommend it, with the caveat not to compare it to the "Rose" novels. | | |  | Comfort Food Dec 2, 2009 |
This book is so well written and the story is so well told, that I could barely put it down. Donnelly's characters are unique and well developed and yet completely human.
Set in the North Woods of Maine in 1906, Mattie is trying to figure out what she wants from life. She is strong and fragile at once. The events surrounding the real-life murder of Grace Brown at the lake where Mattie is working, finally give Mattie the courage to follow her dreams.
The glimpses into the daily lives of the people that farmed and logged the North Woods are delightful and haunting. Excellent literature. | | | | Book Nerds Review Nov 19, 2009 |
por*ten*tous
This is by far one of my favourite books, for so many reasons!
My second favourite thing about A Northern Light is Mattie. I love Mattie, she is a very rare type of person (I've come to find out) which I have been blessed with of having plenty of in my family. The type of person that will do anything within their power for their family, even though it's not exactly what they want to do with their life. Mattie puts her dreams aside to help her father and her family until she finally meets a tutor that lets her know that it is okay for her to follow her dreams, and pushes her to do exactly that! Donnelly also managed to tug on my heartstrings with Mattie's struggle with how to deal with Grace, and the secret that only the two of them, and one other person the police can't find, share. Throw in a cute boy who isn't so smart, and doesn't expect much of her, a black best-friend (remember: this was 1906), and a pack of friends whose mother deals with some extreme problems, and you have one little girl with a big weight on her shoulders. Yet, Mattie manages to handle it all in stride, grace, and with hope for the future. Mattie is honestly one of the strongest, most believable, honest, likable, and well written characters I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
My third favourite thing about the book is Mattie and Weaver's word games. Often times when they're throwing words back and forth, I found myself trying to play along - choosing words neither of them had said yet - and often times I also failed. I love reading, I love writing, but a large vocabulary of words has never been my strongest suit. Therefore it was awesome being able to read an amazing story as well as learn some new things (words) along the way, more-so than usual.
The number one thing that I absolutely love the most is actually a combination of two things: 1, the fact that Grace Brown was once a real person, and her story really happened; 2, the writing. Grace's story is so utterly heartbreaking (maybe more so cause I've read anything I could find on it), and Jennifer Donnelly did such an amazing job of combining something she wasn't even alive for into a world she never got to see so authentically. I never questioned what she described, any of the language, people, settings, etc. While reading the book for all I know, she HAD been alive and HAD witnessed the horrific incident on Big Moose Lake. | | | Write your own review about A Northern Light
|
Shopping Cart (0 Items)
