Another Life Altogether: A Novel [Hardcover]

Elaine Beale (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 2010

A keenly observed depiction of the effects of a mother’s mental illness on her young daughter, Another Life Altogether is a profoundly moving, funny, and ultimately heartrending coming-of-age story.

After years of living in the shadow of her mother’s mental illness, Jesse Bennett is given a fresh chance at happiness when her family moves to a village in northern England. But just as it seems that she might be able to build a perfect life for herself after befriending two of her new school’s most popular girls, her mother’s worsening mental state and the secret Jesse fiercely guards about herself threaten to destroy her fragile stability. Caught in the storm of her mother’s moods, her father’s desperation, and her classmates’ strict adherence to cruel social hierarchies, Jesse is forced to choose between doing what’s right and preserving her long-held hope for a normal life.

At the heart of a maddening, eccentric, and ultimately lovable family—from her manic mother and her long-suffering father to her blowsy Aunt Mabel and her Uncle Ted, a comically inept criminal—Jesse is an utterly sympathetic narrator who navigates the ups and downs of adolescence with insight, emotional vulnerability, and a wickedly sharp sense of humor. Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, Another Life Altogether marks the arrival of an immensely gifted novelist.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jesse Bennett, the 13-year-old heroine of Beale's charming debut, longs to escape the humdrum life of Britain's East Yorkshire. Stuck in a small town with her unstable mother and ineffectual father, Jesse wants to see the world, but her hopes of breaking free are dashed when her mother attempts suicide and her father, reasoning that a change of scene will help his wife recover, moves the family farther into the country. But the people of rural Midham are less than welcoming to the strange new arrivals. Eventually, Jesse falls in with Tracey and Amanda, the toughest and most feared girls in town, though with this security comes increased scrutiny: Jesse must pretend to be just like her mates, and even though she cares nothing for clothes or boys and despises the meanness, she develops a crush on Amanda that threatens to end unfavorably. Beale's lively narrative captures, with touching accuracy, the plights of adolescence; if the novel sometimes veers toward the saccharine and relies on less than surprising plot twists, Jesse's affirming arc offers hope in a place where it's in very short supply. (Feb.)
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Review

"Another Life Altogether captivated me from the very first page. Dazzling in its authenticity and utterly absorbing, it is an uplifting story about adolescence, family, and finding one’s place in the world. With the character of Jesse Bennett, Elaine Beale manages to create hope and humor in an otherwise turbulent world. It is a rare, insightful, and gorgeously written novel."—Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants


"Another Life Altogether captivated me from the very first page. Dazzling in its authenticity and utterly absorbing, it is an uplifting story about adolescence, family, and finding one’s place in the world. With the character of Jesse Bennett, Elaine Beale manages to create hope and humor in an otherwise turbulent world. It is a rare, insightful, and gorgeously written novel."—Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

"Elaine Beale is an extraordinary writer, and Another Life Altogether is heartbreaking and hilarious all at once, as only life can be."—Sandra Cisneros

"Sparkling…Beale [reveals] a mature talent with a sharp eye for both the intricacies of the surface detail and the complexities of the inner life…[She] reminds us that writing, always potentially dangerous, also confers grace, and that with the power of the word, we all have the potential to become the heroines of our own lives."—Boston Globe

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Spiegel & Grau; First Edition edition (February 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385530048
• ISBN-13: 978-0385530040
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.3 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #310,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elaine Beale grew up in East Yorkshire, England. She studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and was the winner of the 2007 Poets & Writers California Exchange writing contest in fiction. She lives in Oakland, CA.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cracking good read!, March 29, 2010

By 

Cipriano "www.bookpuddle.blogspot.com" (Planet Claire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Another Life Altogether: A Novel (Hardcover)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. -- Anna Karenina --

I thought of that legendary opening sentence when Elaine Beale raised the curtain of Another Life Altogether with this inaugural humdinger:
The day after my mother was admitted to the mental hospital, I told everyone at school that she had entered a competition on the back of a Corn Flakes box and won a cruise around the world.
The narrator is Jesse Bennett, a thoughtful, intelligent, introspective thirteen year old girl struggling to find her identity, her place. It's the 1970's. Yorkshire, England. Bay City Rollers, etc.
Jesse's an only child, trying to fit in and be accepted amongst her peers, and it doesn't help matters that her mother has serious psychological problems that keep landing her in Delapole, the local loony bin! Her optimistic father deals with the debilitated home situation by pretending things are not as bad as they really are, but [as one might imagine] the toll on a daughter in such a scenario can be devastating. Jesse resents the fact that she must excuse her mother's actions, and continually protect her from herself.
The Bennetts move to the country, to a remote community in order to make a new start of things. Here Jesse encounters the same struggle for acceptance but eventually strikes a friendship with Tracey, a bit of a rotten-apple of a kid. Influenced by her allegiance to Tracey, Jesse struggles to be true to herself and her own capabilities and desires. Fitting in is everything -- and meanwhile, her mother gets loonier and loonier.
Jesse has a secret known only to herself, and expressed only in the unsent letters she has hidden away in a cookie-tin, kept in the closet. If her secret gets out, she feels it would spell the end of her life as she knows it. The shame would be too great. Life, this life, or any other worth living, would be over.
Little does she know that the very release of that secret may be the only way she can experience real freedom. Real life. Truly, another life altogether.

Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Indeed. And this is the story of a uniquely unhappy family that found a way to overcome tremendous obstacles to happiness. In many ways, this novel is a testament to the merits of staying together for the sake of love. There are dozens of memorable characters I have not mentioned. Themes and threads I have not remotely touched upon. Suffice it to say that this is a deeply resonant, often times hilarious, heart-rending story. An unflaky look at flakiness. A searing, worthwhile, five-star-of-five al dente feast of a meal.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Life Altogether, by Elaine Beale, March 22, 2010

By 

Barbara Leigh Ohrstrom "book lover" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Another Life Altogether: A Novel (Hardcover)

Another Life Altogether: A Novel This subtle book meets the test of literature: it is a luminous and beautiful story centered around a compelling and complex character, and the sentences themselves are gorgeous. I read the book in a weekend and could not put it down. For anyone who has faced alienation and lonesomeness, for anyone who has struggled between doing what is right and doing what wins social acceptance, this book will resonate for you. Warm, humane, and compassionate, the book also exposes the complexities and shortcomings of the human being struggling with conditions within the family and the social hazing of schools. The book is set within the context of surviving bullying, but because the main character, Jesse, is so ambivalent between her fierce longing to be accepted and her fierce need to be true to herself, tension and suspense filled the book: what will Jesse ultimately do? Other characters demonstrate how being an outsider or alienated, even within one's own family, can originate from multiple causes: poverty, mental illness, family violence, and homophobia.

But mostly, I loved it because I felt it; the main character, her mother, her father, the girl with whom she fell in love, and the antagonist all generated passions within me. I was lost in Jesse's world while reading this book; I fell in love with the book, which is exactly what any grand piece of literature really and truly does. So read it to relate to it, read it to get validated in political viewpoints, but mostly, just read it because it will make you feel, and ultimately, in these days of challenge for all of us to be true, it will make you feel a little less alone; it will make you feel good.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving, funny and very well written, March 13, 2010

By 

Susan K. Jones - See all my reviews

This review is from: Another Life Altogether: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is probably not a book I would have picked up but it caught my attention after I saw a very positive review. And I'm very glad I did get it because I really loved it. In fact, I stayed up waaayyy too late finishing it. The story is set in Britain in the 1970s and is about a young woman struggling to come to terms with herself (she's not exactly popular at school) and a family which, while pretty out there, seems very real. It's filled with really vivid characters and some very darkly funny scenes observed by a the main character who manages to be be witty and real and incredibly charming. (If you like that wry British wit, you'll be particularly appreciative of the humor here.) I felt so much for the heroine's struggles, but at the same time I laughed out loud many times. This is a book that I felt worked on lots of levels -- a great narrative voice, a compelling plot that pulls together astoundingly well, a set of very vivid characters, and a story that has enormous emotional resonance. While I couldn't help rooting for the heroine, she's far from perfect--which ultimately makes her a lot more likeable. This was an immensely satisfying read. I felt transported and I also felt really enriched by this novel--which is a great combo, I think.