Product Description

For as long as Alice Green can remember, her mother has moved in and out of family life -- often disappearing without explanation, leaving their home progressively more hollow. Alice and her brother, August, react in different ways. Years later, when her brother becomes strangely remote, Alice finds him in an isolated beach town. There a deeply buried secret will have to unravel in order for Alice to come to terms with her fractured family.

Available only in Basic 7.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6583063 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-02
• Format: Large Print
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 446 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Wanderlust strikes hard in this fitfully engaging second novel by Hershon (Swimming), in which loyalty and commitment vie with the irrepressible desire to escape. Growing up in a cavernous Long Island house, Alice Green seems always to be waiting for her mother, Charlotte, to return. A capricious woman who travels to exotic countries at a moment's notice for weeks at a time, Charlotte and her absences put a palpable strain on the Green family. Alice's father, a professor of neurobiology, glosses over her foibles, and Alice turns for comfort to her older brother, August, a self-contained boy who becomes a rebellious adolescent, spending more and more time with his rich, orphaned girlfriend, Cady. When Alice is 16 and August 18, their mother is killed in a fire, and August leaves home, gradually drifting farther and farther away. Like their mother, he travels all over the world and balks at coming home even when his father dies. Alice-a nervous, peace-making child, then a defiant teenager willing to kiss anyone, and finally the only member of the family determined to hold things together-travels to Baja, Mexico, to find August, in a final attempt to understand him. While she is there, he reveals a secret that gives her a new perspective on their past. Hershon creates a few complex, well-rounded characters-Alice and Cady are particularly satisfying-but August and Charlotte never become much more than ciphers, their wanderings only cursorily explained. Hershon aims for lyricism but sometimes misses the mark ("The sky drained slowly as she anticipated the sight of her father's car coming home from the lab") in what is, overall, a choppy sophomore effort.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A remarkable portrait of a troubled family... Hershon is a gifted writer. The precision of her prose is a delight." -- The Boston Globe

"Taught and suspenseful...Hershon succeeds in creating idiosyncratic characters and a story that won’t let go of your attention." -- The New York Times Book Review

"[A] brilliant second novel...Hershon’s writing is intimate and arresting, and her characters are vivid." -- The Washington Post

Review
“Brilliant. . . Hershon’s writing is intimate and arresting, and her characters are vivid. Her triumph is the breathing, shimmering world she creates around the Green family.”
—The Washington Post

“TAUT AND SUSPENSEFUL . . . Hershon succeeds in creating idiosyncratic characters and a story that won’t let go of your attention.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“REMARKABLE . . . As tightly wound and as tender as its main character, Alice Green. . . . Hershon is a gifted writer. The precision of her prose is a delight. . . . [This] poignant, utterly convincing depiction of family unhappiness will strike a familiar chord with many readers.”
—The Boston Globe

“Hershon’s epic novel is full of dense psychological portraits . . . [She] propels this story about the shifting and dangerous tides of love and need into something close to majesty.”
—The Washington Post

“Hershon immerses readers completely in this deeply moving novel.”
—Romantic Times

“Recommended . . . Breezy dialog and rich descriptions of people and locales keep the reader engaged.”
—Library Journal

Customer Reviews

Secrets and lies are revealed in this subtle family saga
Family secrets, generational lies, and sibling relationships are the major themes in the accomplished, beautifully written, but uneven story from Johanna Hershon. Hershon is a subtle, delicate writer and she weaves together a clever story that spans the early 70's up until 2001. The novel is slow to start, with the later sections of the story working better than the first sections. Alice Green is the central protagonist and principle narrator of this "quite" little tale of family dysfunction and miscommunication. Her mother, Charlotte is world wise, selfish, and unable to settle down. She spends months away in foreign countries trying to "reinvent herself" and dreads coming back to her children, and her suffocating monogamous marriage to her husband.

Alice's unraveling of her one of Mother's hidden secrets and her relationship with her disaffected and dissolute bother August makes up the core of the novel. And her journey of understanding takes her to Mexico where she finally comes to terms with her mother's estrangement and August's betrayals. Hershon's strengths as a writer is her ability to paint, in minute detail, a specific scene: there are, for example, some wonderful descriptions of the Baja Peninsula when Alice goes in her "road trip" to find August; the dusty dryness, the poverty, the dirt, the local food, and the seedy hotels are all bought vividly to life.

Hershon adept at creating fully realized and compassionate characters. Alice is headstrong, reclusive but with a strong sense of purpose, and she possesses the will to do what is right. August is irresponsive and disaffected, and admits that he can't handle family life while his mother Charlotte "is the way she is." And then there's Charlotte locked into a marriage, and aching to disappear just like an escape artist. This is a tale of ordinary people trying to cope with hurt and betrayal, and its very insightful in its tone and content. The Outside of August is perhaps one of the more subtle and intuitive books of the year.

Michael.

well done, but a bit repetitive
I enjoyed this read a lot (after a slow start) but I was slightly disappointed to see Hershon revisit the same exact territory she dealt with in Swimming. Superficial details have changed, but she follows the same formula: a main character's life is defined by a family trauma from years ago, she searches for an estranged brother- who she has an intense, near obsessive love for- in order to find out "what really happened", and once she finds closure, she is finally able to become emotionally available and present in her own life. It worked, but for anyone who read her first book, it will no doubt feel familliar.

Meh.
I enjoyed the first half of the story, but once things moved to Mexico, I had to plod along. The characters didn't develop well enough as adults for them to be at all interesting. The story meandered somewhat predictably to a dull ending.