by SusanHenderson (Author)
Tillie is an eight-year-old girl who doesn't stop. She buzzes with an incessant creative energy, dreaming and dancing and always talking, talking, talking: and all for her beautiful mother Mara. But for Mara even the ordinary world is too much; suffocating under an unshakeable misery, all she longs for is life to leave her alone. When Tillie's father receives a promotion, he sees a new chance to impose order - and by the time Tillie arrives in their new house her mother is nowhere to be seen. Tillie's imagination feverishly tries to solve the mystery, but the truth is far more distressing than she ever could have thought. An achingly real depiction of a family struggling with mental illness, Up from the Blue is a wrenching debut recalling the works of Lionel Shriver, Mark Haddon, and Emma Donoghue.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 01 May 2011
ISBN 10: 1851688439
ISBN 13: 9781851688432
Book Overview: Up from the Blue is a beautiful, haunting, spirited debut, charged with secrets and deep longing. Susan Henderson has written a moving love story, a portrait of that deep lasting love between mother and daughter. Julianna Baggott - Author of Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, The Madam and Which Brings Me to Yo Haunting and unsettling, Up From the Blue's real alchemy is the way it uncovers the stories that alternately save us and keep us from our real truths. Incandescently written, this is a stunning debut with heart. Caroline Leavitt - author of Girls in Trouble and Pictures of You A rare literary page-turner full of shocking discoveries and twists. Susan Henderson has created a remarkable narrator-as memorable for her feistiness as for her tenderness. Up From the Blue is going to be one of this year's major debuts. Josh Kilmer-Purcell - author of I Am Not Myself These Days Susan Henderson's debut novel Up From the Blue is elegant and engrossing...Tillie Harris is both tender and tough, charming and filled with wonder by the difficulties she must overcome. Henderson is a talent to watch. Danielle Trussoni - author of Angelology and Falling Through the Earth Up from the Blue deftly portrays a family with contradictions we can all relate to-it's beautiful and maddening, hopeful and condemning, simple, yet like a knot that takes a lifetime to untangle. You will love it completely, even as it hurts you...it's a heartbreaking, rewarding story that still haunts me. Jamie Ford - New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet A remarkable debut, not just for the uncanny accuracy and charm of eight-year-old Tillie's narrative voice, but for the way the characters reveal unexpected angles of themselves that somehow make them realer than real. Up from the Blue lingers in the mind. Mark Childress - author of Crazy in Alabama and One Mississippi A haunting tale of the terrible ways in which we fail each other; of the whys, the what ifs, and the what nows. This is not a book you'll soon forget. Sara Gruen - New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants