Reed's Beach - Softcover

Lott, Bret

3.24

92 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671038192 ISBN 13: 9780671038199

Publisher: Washington Square Press, 1999

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Hugh and Laura Walker could never have anticipated that the single greatest source of joy in their lives could so suddenly fill them with such unrelenting grief. The death of their only child, seven-year-old Michael - struck by a car just seconds after stepping off his school bus - has left them stranded in a sea of sorrow. With no emotional compass to guide them, the Walkers retreat to an old cottage located near Cape May, New Jersey, where, separated from the daily reminders of their numbing loss, they hope to reenter the world of the living. Their struggle emerges as both a profound meditation on the nature of grief and a riveting reminder "that there is no safe haven from the black sea of being a parent." Over the course of one very long day, we share with Hugh and Laura Walker all the haunting emotions that race through their hearts as they attempt to piece their lives together. Lurking just below their sanity and resolve are memories - of afternoons spent making angels in the snow with Michael, of the simple joy they once felt in watching their son roll down a hill, and finally of the slow-motion and unnervingly surreal stream of events accompanying their son's fatal accident. As Laura seeks the kindness and guidance of a new neighbor while Hugh navigates a minefield of well-intentioned coworkers at his New Jersey office, it becomes chillingly apparent that loss has loosened the once solid foundation of the Walkers' marriage. Further threatening their precarious union is a secret Laura harbors - a secret essential to her self-preservation, and which could destroy all she and Hugh have ever been to each other.

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Review:

New Orleans Times-Picayune Profoundly affecting....Bret Lott writes about grief with as much accuracy and with as much wisdom as anybody who has ever addressed the subject....Deeply sad, but, miraculously, at once hauntingly beautiful.

Cleveland Plain Dealer Compelling....Lott masterfully (but never depressingly) delineates his haunted protagonists' oppressive pain....His prose is graceful, almost hypnotic, and the emotional tension is consistently high.

Boston Globe Poetic storytelling....lyrical....Bret Lott can be trusted with fragile objects. His gentle touch gives Hugh's and Laura's pain a heartbreaking purity.

Richmond Times-Dispatch Beautifully written....Bret Lott is a master of descriptive detail. Few writers have his gift for awakening all of a reader's senses.

Charlotte Observer Pure poetry....Reed's Beach is simultaneously one of the saddest and most beautiful stories I have ever read. It is doubtful any parent can read it without tears....Lott subtly strikes emotional chords [for] all readers....Yet another insightful, inspiring, marvelous novel to treasure from Bret Lott.

San Francisco Chronicle Bret Lott's much-applauded body of work examines the struggles of ordinary, middle-class Americans to cope with life's inevitable blows. In his fourth novel, Reed's Beach, Lott explores what is said to be the cruelest blow of all, the death of a child....Lott is a fine writer, capturing with subtlety, yet laserlike accuracy, the whimsy of life and the trauma of grief, the profound existential angst that loss triggers....Engrossing.

Washington Post Book World Lott captures the delicate interplay of past and present, the way that memories have of breaking into our thoughts; he understands the need to accept those memories as a source of joy, not pain, in the wake of unimaginable loss....Beautifully paced.

About the Author:

Bret Lott is the author of five highly acclaimed novels, The Man Who Owned Vermont, A Stranger's House, Jewel, Reed's Beach, and The Hunt Club, as well as two collections of widely anthologized short stories, A Dream of Old Leaves and How to Get Home, and a memoir, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. He lives with his wife and two sons near Charleston, South Carolina, and teaches at the College of Charleston and Vermont College.

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