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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780345477682
ISBN number: 0345477685
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: April 25, 2006
Publishing house: Ballantine Books
Release Date: April 25, 2006
Sale Popularity Level: 155174
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Product Description:
After surviving a near-fatal accident, thirty-year-old Lizzy Mitchell faces a long road to recovery. She remembers little about the days she spent in and out of consciousness, save for one thing: She saw her beloved deceased uncle, Father Mike, the man who raised her in the rectory of his Maine church until she was nine, at which time she was abruptly sent away to boarding school. Was Father Mike an angel, a messenger from the beyond, or something more corporeal? Though her troubled marriage and her broken body need tending, Lizzy knows she must uncover the details of her accident–and delve deep into events of twenty years before, when whispers and accusations forced a good man to give up the only family he had. With deft insight into the snares of the human heart, Monica Wood has written an intimate and emotionally expansive novel full of understanding and hope.
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Rated by buyers 
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Lingering in my memory and rising to the top of my favorites: Absolutely gripping, unforgettable: exposes the happiness of childhood under exceptional parenting, while exploring the tragedy of adult grief and loss and the concomitant shrinkage of personhood that go with them.
Rated by buyers -
A near-fatal accident leaves Lizzy Mitchell pinned together on a hospital bed like a chicken on a spit. In her post-trauma state she feels the presence of her uncle at her bedside, and can't go back to her own life with all its losses and unanswered questions.
Lizzy was orphaned as a baby and lived with her uncle, a small-town Catholic priest, until she was nine. Her childhood was filled with love and belonging: "Once, I had known his step before it landed. I had drifted into sleep on the tide of his voice. I had not wholly understood where he left off and I began." Then an accusation was made which Lizzy did not understand until she was much older, and he was torn from her with no explanation. The pain of that loss -- "whereishewhereishewhereishe" -- shaped her life to the age of thirty, when her accident, she says, "shook loose that old bitterness from its hiding place inside my own body." Her search for truth eventually reveals the secrets and lies that took everything away from her. What was the price of it all, and who paid that devastating price?
Maine author Monica Wood uses language with astonishing grace and style. More subtly, her use of structure keeps the book on course through changing points of view. Every phrase perfectly serves the story, honors and enriches the reader. Prepare to savor this book.
Good fiction is about much more than the story. The territory of Any Bitter Thing: A Novel isn't limited to parental love, or innocence and betrayal, or priestly vows, or friendship and marriage, or even loss and redemption -- though it maps those areas with painful clarity. Wood's characters search for the place in time where Before turns into After, the exact point where both reside, the synthesis of what was and what is, that moment we fail to notice as it drifts or darts past. Which of them will find that elusive place? And when they find it, will it make them whole?
DO read this wonderful book.
Linda Bulger, 2008
Rated by buyers -
I wanted to step right into this book. The characters were amazing and whether you love them or hate them is beside the point. So many various points of view. So much to love about this book!
Rated by buyers -
This book is SO good! I highly recommend it. The writing is superb...you are drawn in to this page-turner and believe me, it is hard to put down!
Rated by buyers -
I was cruising Amazon for a good book to read on vacation this summer in Door County Wisconsin and "Any Bitter Thing" popped up as an "if you liked this, then try this..." recommendation. What a blessing! I know other readers have claimed this book to be one of the best they have ever read, and I join them. "Any Bitter Thing" joins my top ten books of all time--up there with "To Kill A Mockingbird," "Peace Like a River," "Accidental Tourist," "Gardens of Kyoto" "Catcher in the Rye," "A Separate Peace," "A Prayer for Owen Meany," "Memoirs of a Geisha," and "Gilead." I finished the book in 2 days. Reading this book was like sitting down to a 5-star dinner, complete with all the courses and ending with the perfect, most satisfying dessert. Bravo, Ms. Wood! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
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