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    A Year and a Day: A Novel
    Unavailable
    A Year and a Day: A Novel
    Unavailable
    A Year and a Day: A Novel
    Ebook467 pages5 hours

    A Year and a Day: A Novel

    By Leslie Pietrzyk

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Fifteen-year-old Alice dreams of her first kiss, has sleepovers, auditions for Our Town, and tries to pass high school biology. It's 1975, and at first look, her life would seem to be normal and unexceptional. But in the world that Leslie Pietrzyk paints, every moment she chronicles is revealed through the kaleidoscope of loss, stained by the fact that Alice's mother, without warning, note, or apology, deliberately parks her car on the railroad tracks, in the path of an oncoming train.

    In the emotional year that follows, Alice and her older brother find themselves in the care of their great aunt, forced to cope and move forward. Lonely and confused, Alice absorbs herself in her mother Annette's familiar rituals, trying to recapture their connection -- only to be stunned by the sound of her mother's voice speaking to her, engaging Alice in "conversations" and offering some insight into the life that she had led, beyond her role as Alice's mother.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061871399
    Unavailable
    A Year and a Day: A Novel
    Author

    Leslie Pietrzyk

    Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of Pears on a Willow Tree. Her short fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, and The Iowa Review. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

    Read more from Leslie Pietrzyk

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    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful story of a 15 year old girl who loses her mother, and spends a year questioning why, all the while hearing her mother's voice speaking to her, coaching her, teaching her, and telling her things that she did not know when her mother was alive.Alice Martin is a typical teenager...hanging out with friends, having crushes on boys, and cherishes the times that she spends with her mom. Her mother, however, occasionally falls into deep depressions, and it was during one of these spells, that she kills herself. Alice, her 17 year old brother Will, and her Aunt Aggy struggle to find the answers why Annette Martin decided to do what she did.Alice knows that nothing will ever be the same again, and wrestles with the fact that her mom is gone forever, and there are a lot of unanswered questions. When she begins hearing her dead mother's voice in her thoughts, she is not even afraid. Her mother's voice stays with her for a year and a day, answering many of Alice's questions.This is moving coming-of-age story with a beautiful ending.