"A beautiful étude of humanity. ... A song of the soul. ... It would be hard to close
this book and not feel changed."
-Foreword Reviews
"This quietly meditative novel touched me deeply, just as the three main characters' lives
touch each other in profound ways."
--Tiffany, Grass Roots Books & Music, Corvallis OR (Staff Pick)
touch each other in profound ways."
--Tiffany, Grass Roots Books & Music, Corvallis OR (Staff Pick)
"The Beauty of Ordinary Things is a soulful, tender, affecting novel, with complex, searching, sympathetic characters whose situations and plights one deeply cares about. Harriet Scott Chessman has written another wonderful book!"
--RON HANSEN, author of Mariette in Ecstasy and A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion “Elegantly crafted … I was fully immersed … and read [it] in one sitting.” --NewPages "Deep as a prayer...This book speaks softly, but oh how it lingers in the mind."--DEBRA DEAN, author of The Madonnas of Leningrad "Reading The Beauty of Ordinary Things is to immerse oneself in an extended prose poem, the gift of a silent walk on a snowy day." --Lisen Stromberg, Peninsula Parlour Literary Series "In evoking the rituals of cloistered life and the complexity of military experience, Chessman...tells a multifaceted yet graceful tale. ... Articulately render[s] the often-inchoate nature of private experience. ... Bridging the often disparate world of faith and politics, The Beauty of Ordinary Things marvelously presents us with a vision of life far from ordinary."--Wellesley Magazine "Threads of hope and redemption, crossed with the harsh reality of war and strife ... Chessman's lyrical prose transports this story of ordinary people to heights of extraordinary beauty."--LitChat |
"This beautiful short novel is populated by characters who are connected to each other by filaments of memory, regret and yearning. Each strand is lovely on its own, and the whole is captivating, radiant, mysterious, and deeply moving. I loved it."--ANN PACKER, author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier and Swim Back to Me
“A slender, wise triumph of a novel, exquisitely distilled. Read this book; it will open your heart.” --MICHELLE RICHMOND, bestselling author of The Year of Fog “An exquisitely written and profoundly moving story of love's possibilities, powers, and consolations.” --PRISCILLA GILMAN, author of The Anti-Romantic Child “Quite simply stunning. In an exquisite few pages, Harriet Scott Chessman delivers a gigantic story.” --MEG WAITE CLAYTON, New York Times bestselling author of The Wednesday Daughters “Stays with one, hauntingly, long after one finishes reading. You will never forget Benny Finn or Sister Clare.”--MAUD CAROL MARKSON, author of Looking After Pigeon and When We Get Home “A gorgeous meditation on love and spirit, grief and passion, that unfolds with startling elegance. It captivated and moved me in equal measure.”--CAROLINA DE ROBERTIS, author of Perla and The Invisible Mountain |
Back from a tour of duty in Vietnam, Benny Finn, eldest son in a large Irish-American family, strives to find his bearings amid the everyday life of 1973 New England. At a Benedictine abbey in rural New Hampshire, Sister Clare, a young novice, confronts the day-to-day realities of a cloistered existence. Linking these two is Isabel Howell, a college student soon to discover that she must chart the course of her own life in a way she could not have imagined.
Deeply felt, often luminously moving, The Beauty of Ordinary Things carries forward the promise of Harriet Scott Chessman's earlier work, revealing a writer richly aware of the range of human tragedy and tenderness.
Deeply felt, often luminously moving, The Beauty of Ordinary Things carries forward the promise of Harriet Scott Chessman's earlier work, revealing a writer richly aware of the range of human tragedy and tenderness.
Harriet Scott Chessman is the author of three previous novels, including the #1 Indie Next Pick and book-club favorite Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper as well as the Good Morning America Book Club selection and San Francisco Chronicle top pick, Someone Not Really Her Mother (forthcoming in a new edition from Atelier26, spring 2015). Her fiction has been translated into ten languages.
FICTION/LITERATURE
ISBN: 978-0-9893023-1-9
144 pages
5.5x8.5 trade paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9893023-1-9
144 pages
5.5x8.5 trade paperback
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