Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48855 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-05
• Released on: 2008-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

Amazon.com Review

A Conversation with Kristin Hannah

Amazon.com: Why did you choose Seattle as the backdrop for Firefly Lane? Is there something unique about growing up in the Northwest that helped you to define the kind of women Kate and Tully become?

Kristin Hannah: Quite simply, I chose Seattle as the backdrop for Firefly Lane because it's so much a part of who I am. I've lived in the Northwest for most of my life, and obviously, in all those years, I've seen this part of the country evolve from an undiscovered gem into the Emerald City. So many of the places from my youth are gone, or changed, or moved, and I guess I wanted to remember the physical reminders of those bygone days. And while Kate and Tully are absolutely Northwest girls, I like to think their story will speak to women who grew up in vastly different, more populated areas. After all, it's ultimately about friendship, and those seeds can be planted anywhere.

Amazon.com: While you were writing, at any point did you find yourself feeling more sympathetic to Kate or to Tully? How did you keep the weight of the plot balanced between them as their stories evolved?

KH: There's no way to avoid the truth that Kate is more than a little like me. Thus, I identified with her from the very beginning--she was the small town girl who had to get up in the pre-dawn hours to feed her horses, and read The Lord of the Rings during every family vacation, and felt lost in the first few months at the sprawling University of Washington. All of that was me, so naturally, the problem was not in feeling sympathetic toward Katie; it was much more about holding her at arm's length, seeing her not as an extension of myself, but as a completely fictional woman. Tully was a different story entirely. While many readers might be surprised by this, I really fell in love with Tully. In the final analysis, she's one of my favorite characters of all time. I know she's bold and selfish and myopic and ambitious to a fault, but she's also terribly broken, wounded by her parents, unable to believe in love, and ultimately very real. I think all of us know a "Tully" in our lives, and they bring a lot of drama...and a lot of fire and sparkle.

Amazon.com: You have a beautiful way of showing both the tension and tenderness between mothers and daughters. Was it a challenge to write Tully's painful history with her own mother, and later, the conflict that builds between Kate and her own daughter?

KH: Honestly, I believe that the mother-daughter relationship is magical, complex, potentially dangerous, profoundly powerful, and deeply transformative. To put it simply, all of us have this relationship, and in a very real way, "none of us comes out alive." We are all formed first as daughters and then tested as mothers. There's nothing like motherhood to make us reassess how we were as daughters. One of my favorite parts of Firefly Lane was the circle of Kate’s relationship with her mom. First we see her as an angry teen, slamming the door on her mother...and then later her own daughter does the same thing to her. There's a real symmetry in that, a truth that many of us have learned. I have often wished in the past few years that my mom were here to help me as I raised my own teenage son. As a girl, with my own mom, I thought I knew it all; now I know better. Somewhere, I know my mom is smiling.

Amazon.com: Throughout the novel, both Kate and Tully question the reliability of love. Is it that question that creates the rift between them and, ultimately, reunites them in friendship?

KH: You're right, they each do continually question the reliability of love. For Kate, it's a self-esteem issue. She absolutely believes in love--she's grown up surrounded by it--but she constantly questions Johnny's commitment to her. I always felt that was largely because she felt like a moon to Tully's bright and shining sun. For Tully, she honestly doesn’t believe that true romantic love exists, and for all of her overblown ambition and belief in herself, she has been wounded by her mother's repeated abandonment. The result is that she feels she's unlovable.

Amazon.com: Kate and Tully are each big personalities in their own way. Was it hard to create male characters who really understand them?

KH:The challenge with regard to male characters was not so much creating men who understood Kate and Tully, it was rather to create love stories that equaled the power and emotional intensity of the friendship. After all, the men in the story were important--Johnny particularly--but it was really a story about the women.

Amazon.com: When Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone first came out, many readers were shocked that a man could write such an intimate portrait of a woman. Do you think women are in fact the best writers of women's fiction? Would you ever consider writing a novel where men take center stage?

KH: One of the great things about being a writer is that we get the chance to inhabit the minds and souls of a variety of individuals. I really don't think male/female is the central question in terms of the viability of a voice and/or vision. We writers can "become" murderers, animals, psychopaths, vampires, lawyers, doctors, wizards, children. In short, our storytelling skills and character-building abilities are limited only by our own imaginations. Until recently, most of my novels--while female-centric in vision--were equally narrated by male characters, and one--Angel Falls—was primarily narrated by men. I didn't see the writing of that any different than anything else.

Amazon.com: Do you see yourself as a writer of romance or women's fiction? What do you see as the differences in these two genres--is one an evolution of the other, or is the label unimportant?

KH: I began as a romance author and moved into women's fiction about ten years ago. While many definitions abound, mine is this: romance is a subsection of the broad, all-inclusive women's commercial fiction market. Women's fiction in general is not an evolution of romance; much of women's fiction is completely unrelated to any romantic elements. However, it is true that many current commercial women's fiction authors began in romance.

Amazon.com:Many women read fictional romance to escape the stress of everyday life and find inspiration in a happy ending. Is there a primary experience that you hope your readers will have after reading Firefly Lane?

KH: I am a sucker for a happy ending myself. In fact, my husband and I often go round and round about movies in which I hate the ending and he loves it. He always says I'm only comfortable with happy ever after, but that's not true. What I want is an emotionally satisfying, organic ending. I want to be totally engaged until the last page, and I want to believe every moment up until I close the book. Sometimes I want to laugh, sometimes I want to cry, and sometimes I want to scream that it can’t really be over. (Harry Potter comes to mind on this one). The point is, I want to be moved deeply. That's what I look for in other books and what I hope to deliver in my own.

Just FYI, here are some of my favorite endings: Gone With the Wind, Middlemarch, Prince of Tides, An Inconvenient Wife, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, It, Shadow of the Wind. Some are happy, some are sad, some are bittersweet. All are memorable.

Amazon.com: If you could meet any writer, living or dead, who would it be, and what would you ask them?

KH: There are, of course, dozens of choices here, and I could certainly go through the classics and come up with many names and questions, but the truth is that I would love to sit down with Stephen King and listen to some rock and roll, and ask him how in the world he has stayed so good for so long.

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From Publishers Weekly
Hannah (On Mystic Lake) goes a little too far into Lifetime movie territory in her latest, an epic exploration of the complicated terrain between best friends—one who chooses marriage and motherhood while the other opts for career and celebrity. The adventures of poor, ambitious Tully Hart and middle-class romantic Kate Mularkey begin in the 1970s, but don't really get moving until about halfway into the book, when Tully, who claws her way to the heights of broadcast journalism, discovers it's lonely at the top, and Katie, a stay-at-home Seattle housewife, forgets what it's like to be a rebellious teen. What holds the overlong narrative together is the appealing nature of Tully and Katie's devotion to one another even as they are repeatedly tested by jealousy and ambition. Katie's husband, Johnny, is smitten with Tully, and Tully, who is abandoned by her own booze-and-drug-addled mother, relishes the adoration from Katie's daughter, Marah. Hannah takes the easy way out with an over-the-top tear-jerker ending, though her upbeat message of the power of friendship and family will, for some readers, trump even the most contrived plot twists.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

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Customer Reviews

Highly Recommended & Perfect !! Keep the Hankies Handy
I usually begin my reviews with a brief synopsis, but in the case of Firefly Lane, I want to get the important stuff out there first: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - Kristin Hannah is at the top of her game with this emotional three hanky read!

Just what is a friend? And what would you do for your best friend? What kind of sacrifices would you make? Many of us will never find this out. But some of us will. Some of us already know. Kristin Hannah shows us with this outstanding novel what friendship really is and how it can endure over the years. She shows us the power of friendship.

Now for the a few details - without revealing so much as to rob readers of discoveries they should make themselves. Kate Mularkey and Tully Hart meet when they are in junior high - both felt they were outsiders. Tully comes into Kate's life a low point. She is the most beautiful, classiest person she has ever met - and she has moved right across the street. But Tully has a secret, one she hides with a lie. Eventually Kate learns to trust Tully and they become best of friends with a friendship that lasts through college and as their lives take very different paths. But this doesn't mean everything is always easy between the two. And it doesn't mean that one isn't jealous of the other, but it does mean that they are there for one another. Which, as the story evolves, reveals itself in a powerful way.

Those who grew up in the 70s will love the references to the songs as the decades go by. Those who grew up in the Pacific Northwest will enjoy all the references to familiar events and locations that make everything come to life and lend an air of authenticity to the novel.

I have followed Kristin Hannah's writing career from the beginning. From its start in historical romance and a hero with the unusual name of Stone Man McKenna to a wonderful time-travel set in the San Juan Islands (Once In Every Life) to the gut-wrenchingly emotional If You Believe to her breakout novel On Mystic Lake and then several bestselling novels that have made her a favorite with readers everywhere. Now with Firefly Lane she has simply reached the summit of the mountain. Make yourself comfortable - set yourself by the fireplace, grab a cup (or two or three) of your favorite beverage, a box of tissues, and put your feet up. You'll be there for awhile because you won't want to put this book down once you've started. Oh - and you'll probably want to have your best friend's phone number handy for you'll want to phone her as soon as you finish.

A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP BEAUTIFULLY READ
Remember what childhood friendships can be like? Quite often, we become best friends with someone and probably swear to each other that this friendship will last forever. Such is the case in Kristin Hannah's touching story Firefly Lane. We hear, "Best friends forever. They'd believed it would last, that vow, that someday they'd be old women, sitting in their rocking chairs on a creaking deck, talking about the times of their lives, and laughing. "

Even the best intentioned promises can sometimes go awry as we learn in this 30 year history of friendship between Kate and Tully. It began in 1974 when Kate Mularkey was feeling especially isolated and coming to terms with the fact that she wasn't popular or pretty. In fact, she might best be described as ordinary.

Then, miracle of miracles a new family moved in across the street and in that family was Tully Hart , the coolest, best looking girl Kate had ever seen. Further, Tully wanted to be her friend, not just an acquaintance but best friends. They were opposites in many ways, but that didn't matter they swore their friendship would never end.

Tully had aspirations and in the years to come she would do whatever it took to become successful, to be acknowledged by all as the best. She does reach the top as a broadcast journalist. Kate, on the other hand, has no such dreams. She simply wants to be a wife and mother, which she does with her husband Johnny and daughter Marah.

Years pass, 30 of them, when suddenly a friendship that was to last forever seems irreparably broken.

Stage and television actress Susan Ericksen delivers an estimable reading, tracing this story of two women and their friendship, its ups and downs, its strength and resiliency.

- Gail Cooke

A Tale of Life-long Friendship
Tully and Katie. Katie and Tully. The two girls met in the summer of 1974, when they were both in 8th grade. Katie was from a normal, middle-class family. She wore glasses and braces and was basically a nobody at school. Her mom was constantly trying to get in her business and help her to make friends...to no avail. That is, until Tallulah Rose Hart, better known as Tully, moved into the house across the street. Tully was beautiful, destined to be the most popular girl in school....so cool and confident. But looks can be deceiving because Tully was as insecure as they come. She was living with Cloud, the mother who had abandoned her twice before. The mother that was more interested in demonstrations and drugs than her own daughter. Tully was always on edge, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But one night, Katie and Tully started talking. From that moment, they were inseparable. That is, until Cloud once again took off, and Tully had to go back and live with her grandmother. But a best friend is a best friend, and even distance couldn't keep them apart.

As the years went by, the girls went to college and studied journalism. Tully wanted to be a star. The next national anchorwoman. And Katie. She really just wanted to find love. Through careers and life changes, the two women stayed friends. Best Friends Forever. Or one could hope.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. But when I was reading this book, I couldn't help but think I had read it before. Then it hit me. I saw the movie: Beaches. Ok....so it wasn't exactly the same, but the theme was there. Although the writing was pleasant, the storyline is a tired one. One that has been done MANY times before.

And the characters of Kate and Tully. Very black and white...in a world that is many shades of gray. Tully was selfish and self-centered. Thinking of her career and her career only. Even when she knew she was in love, she didn't think twice about throwing it away for her job. It didn't even make her think twice about stabbing her best friend in the back for ratings (good intentions aside, she had to know she was wrong). And Kate was just the opposite. She had a very good job, but didn't think twice about giving it up when she found a man to complete her. In today's world, women really can have both, and it kind of frustrates me when I read books like this.

For all of this, I didn't hate this book. I've just read it all before. It didn't stop me from reading it, and even being sad at the end (if you've seen Beaches, I'm sure you see where this is going). But in the words of Randy Jackson from American Idol, "Dude. It just didn't do it for me".