Product Description

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar now gives us a beautiful new novel that is at once a deeply moving personal story and a powerful spiritual journey.

In Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker has created a work that ranks among her ?nest achievements: the story of a woman’s spiritual adventure that becomes a passage through time, a quest for self, and a collision with love.

Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married many times, she has lived a life rich with explorations of the natural world and the human soul. Now, at fifty-seven, she leaves her lover, Yolo, to embark on a new excursion, one that begins on the Colorado River, proceeds through the past, and flows, inexorably, into the future. As Yolo begins his own parallel voyage, Kate encounters celibates and lovers, shamans and snakes, memories of family disaster and marital discord, and emerges at a place where nothing remains but love.

Told with the accessible style and deep feeling that are its author’s hallmarks, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart is Alice Walker’s most surprising achievement.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #524603 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-29
• Released on: 2005-03-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
Praise for Alice Walker:

“Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer.”
—The New York Times Book Review, about The Color Purple

“Amazing, overwhelming.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, about The Temple of My Familiar

“Places Walker in the company of Faulkner.”
—The Nation, about The Color Purple

“Hugely original...once again demonstrates Walker’s gigantic talent.”
—Baltimore Sun, about By the Light of My Father’s Smile


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar now gives us a beautiful new novel that is at once a deeply moving personal story and a powerful spiritual journey.

In Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker has created a work that ranks among her ?nest achievements: the story of a woman's spiritual adventure that becomes a passage through time, a quest for self, and a collision with love.

Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married many times, she has lived a life rich with explorations of the natural world and the human soul. Now, at fifty-seven, she leaves her lover, Yolo, to embark on a new excursion, one that begins on the Colorado River, proceeds through the past, and flows, inexorably, into the future. As Yolo begins his own parallel voyage, Kate encounters celibates and lovers, shamans and snakes, memories of family disaster and marital discord, and emerges at a place where nothing remains but love.

Told with the accessible style and deep feeling that are its author's hallmarks, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart is Alice Walker's most surprising achievement.


From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author
ALICE WALKER won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Her other novels include By the Light of My Father's Smile and Possessing the Secret of Joy. She is also the author of three collections of short stories, three collections of essays, five volumes of poetry, and several children's books. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker now lives in northern California.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Instructions
Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart works on several levels. Its a great book to take on vacation. It would be a great treasure on a cruise or retreat. It is quite digestible in a weekend, although I would encourage a somewhat slower reading so that the juiciness of Walker's prose and perspectives can seep through various levels of consciousness.

Obviously, Now Is The Time considers the personal and emotional journeys of Kate, a somewhat famous writer and her lover Yolo, a working artist. When their relationship reaches the usual inevitable point of where do we go next, both lovers, separately embark on planned and unplanned journeys of self-discovery. The two people who return from a trip to Hawaii and a vision questing experience in a tropical rainforest have interesting souvenirs. While Kate travels the farthest in terms of distance, like Yolo, what she really discovers is what she shares with others.

Notably, Kate and Yolo, are members of the civil rights generation and have survived the sexual revolution and womens' liberation and all of the other significant social and political signifiers of the past fifty years. Walker uses these and other characters to suggest that after the revolution, after the foolishness and foibles of youth, the real work of self-mastery is the one true human vocation.

I found the dual storyline a bit distracting. Still it is one of Walker's stronger and more compelling works. Its well worth reading, sharing with a friend or two and discussing at length.

A Novel for Our Time
Alice Walker's Now is the Time to Open Your Heart is a must read for all of you out there searching for a new view of life. This book is so on target, so filled with wisom, so evocative, so fair minded that I plan to re-read it immediately because I'm sure I missed things the first time around. In order to transform the world we need to transform our imaginations, get out of the stale mental processes that have led us to our impasse. Alice Walker has fulfilled this beautifully in this wonderful truthful novel.

Life Changing!
This book was one of the most engaging, life altering books I have ever read. I connected to the characters of Yolo and Kate like they were a part of me I had forgotten about yet been searching for. Though it doesnt flow like a typical fiction novel - its more of a character study - this book gives ideas and experiences everyone needs to connect to. Highly recommend.