Please help me welcome Anita Dawes back to The Write Stuff this afternoon. Anita is sharing a lovely review of her novel Simple. I’m sure you’ll enjoy checking it out and will also be happy to pass it along to your favorite social media sites. Thanks so much, and thanks for being here, Anita!

REVIEW:

D. W. Peach
5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting page-turner!
Verified Purchase

This story was a riveting page-turner that I was unable to put down and couldn’t wait to get back to when I did. The tale takes place in the backwoods hill country of the Eastern US where life unfolds according to different rules than it does in town. The law has no influence, relationships are frequently brutal, and survival requires living by one’s instincts.

The main character, Leanne, grows up in a cabin with her grandmother and extended family where a “meanness” comes out in violence and cruelty. She and her mentally disabled uncle, Simple, are burdened with kind hearts and eventually, their defiant choices put them in mortal danger of their own family.

Part of what makes the book so engrossing is its utter unpredictability. The tension is on a knife’s edge at all times. The family is explosive, and Leanne, though only fourteen, survives by her wits, knowing full well the nature of her adversaries. All of the characters are thoroughly believable and so real that I’m staying far away from any place where I might run into their like. Honestly, it’s a bit chilling.

Dawe’s prose reflects the colloquial dialog and lack of education among the hill-folk, and yet it flows smoothly and is effortless to read. Each character’s voice is distinct and consistent. There is no gratuitous sex or violence, although these elements are frequently present as ways in which the family’s goals, anger, and revenge are carried out. The details regarding hill-life lend credibility to the story and increase immersion.

Despite the brutality, ultimately this is a read about the power of kindness and love, and finding one’s way home. This book is one of my favorites this year. Definitely high on my recommendation list.

BLURB:

SHADES OF DELIVERANCE MEETS THE WALTONS…
Simple’s life is a painful nightmare.

He is one huge bear of a man, but with the heart and mind of an innocent child. He suffers terrible abuse from his vicious and uncaring backwoods family.

Together with his half-sister Leanne, they are hunted like wild animals and suffer the terror of nearly being burned alive as they try to escape.

Will they ever discover the joy of freedom?

Buy Simple HERE

Author Anita Dawes

Hi, my name is Anita and although I am over 70, I am by no means a ‘silver surfer’. I have been writing fiction for a while now but never been picked up by the mainstream publishers. They all loved what I wrote, but said it was hard to slot them into a category!  It came tantalizingly close with Bad Moon, but no cigar, as they say.

When I retired, and with the help of my sister-in-law Jaye, I decided to dust off some of my manuscripts and try to achieve the impossible.

I am a paper and pencil girl. You could chain me to a computer for years and nothing would happen! Jaye is managing to cope with it, but then she has much more patience than I do.  (She is as stubborn as a mule, which helps!)

They say you are never too old to learn, but in my case never is another word for infinity!

You can find Anita on Social Media here:

Email:   jenanita01@btinternet.com
Website/blog
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Author Page
Pinterest
Bloglovin

 

Head on over to Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord for a great weekly recap. Be sure to watch some of the videos she shared this week. My favorite is the one with the baby elephants! 🙂 And then pass this one along. Your social media friends will love it. Thanks, and thanks as always to Sally for such a great and inspiring blog! 🙂 ❤

 

Sorry I’m late closing submissions—not that there were any—but I had an appointment and just got home. Sad to say, we had no winners this week, but as you all know by now, that’s not the main reason I love this quiz. I just enjoy reading these excellent opening lines and thinking about how to do a better job with my own.

Hope you enjoyed this very interesting line this week, even if it was totally unfamiliar to you. But now, it’s time to find out the answer.

 “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” is the intriguing opening line of Anne Tyler’s 2001 novel, Back When We Were Grown Ups, written in memory of her husband, who died in 1997.

The book was made into a movie in 2004, starring Blythe Danner, Faye Dunaway, Peter Fonda, and Jack Palance.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about the book:

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person.” So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel.

The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s?

On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms.

Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.

As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.

You can buy Back When We Were Grown Ups HERE

Thanks for playing this week, everybody, and next week, I’ll try to choose an easier first line. See you then!