Everything Inside
Stories (A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick)
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3.9 • 94 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • "Unforgettable tales of families and lovers—from Haiti to Miami, Brooklyn, and beyond—often struggling with grief, loss, and missed connections.” —Vanity Fair • REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
A romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends. A marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences. A young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival. Two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives. A baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new. A man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.
Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity. At once wide in scope and intimate, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull us together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Families fracture and reform in Danticat's outstanding and deeply memorable story collection. Set among the Haitian "dyaspora" including Miami, New York, and Haiti itself, the tales describe the complicated lives of people who live in one place but are drawn elsewhere. The American children of immigrants discover that their lives have been shaped by their parents' Haitian pasts, as in the touching, funny "In the Old Days," when a New York high school teacher learns that her absent father, who divorced her mother and returned to Haiti, is dying, and rushes to meet him. In the book's standout story, "Sunrise, Sunset," a woman with dementia struggles to impart the lessons of motherhood to her own daughter: "You are always saying hello to them while preparing them to say goodbye to you." And the charming "Hot Air Balloons" follows two college freshmen Neah, the child of academics, and Lucy, the daughter of migrant farm workers as each comes to her own understanding of Haiti, a place of "idyllic beaches" and "dewy mountaintops," as well as corruption and poverty, where girls are "recruited for orgies with international aid workers." In plain, propulsive prose, and with great compassion, Danticat writes both of her characters' losses and of their determination to continue: "There are loves that outlive lovers." 50,000-copy announced first printing.)
Customer Reviews
Captivating
Each story wrapped me around within the first couple of pages.