The Awakening [Paperback]

Angela Hunt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2004

Aurora Rose Norquest is different from her neighbors, different from most people. Still single at thirty-five, she spends every hour of her days and nights in an elegant Manhattan apartment, quietly caring for her invalid mother.

Then her mother dies, and Aurora's world spins on its axis. Reality shatters into startlingly realistic nightmares, and the shards of troubling memories slice into her sleep. Everything Aurora has believed about herself and her world fades into murky dreams that will not let her rest. Something, someone is pursuing Aurora--growing more threatening by the day, testing the limits of her sanity.

Will she find the courage to confront her unseen pursuer? Or will she surrender to the destructive melancholy that haunts her days and nights? What will it take to satisfy the relentless intruder whose voice presses her toward The Awakening?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A dreamlike quality pervades this lovely tale by Hunt, the veteran author of more than 70 books. Thirty-five-year-old Aurora Norquest is left floundering after the mother she's nursed through dementia dies. Aurora rattles around her Manhattan apartment, suffering from agoraphobia and contemplating suicide. She also begins to wonder about the father she's never known, a famous horror novelist. Yet something as significant as finding her father is a long shot for Aurora, who is afraid even to walk to her apartment building's lobby. Then Philip, an economics teacher, gently pries Aurora from her cocoon and awakens her to life—and to faith. (Readers will notice the names correspond to the princess and prince in Sleeping Beauty, among other parallels.) As Aurora confronts her haunting dreams, voices (could they be from God?) and fears, she begins to discover that much about her past that she had taken for granted was untrue. The novelist father—who has everything, yet longs for the daughter he's never known— intentionally mirrors the biblical parable of the shepherd and the one lost sheep. The capable Hunt handles the mechanics of storytelling with aplomb, and the happy conclusion, while a bit rushed, should please.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Hunt's The Awakening features an introverted central character, Aurora Norquest, who has cared for her invalid mother for many years and has developed a pathological fear of leaving her Manhattan apartment. When at last her mother dies, Aurora begins experiencing some disturbing dreams accompanied by an authoritative voice. Somehow all of this seems connected to her mysterious father, a horror writer who deserted her mother when Aurora was still in the womb. A kindly confirmed bachelor helps Aurora to overcome her obsessions. Though Hunt's premise is interesting, in the end it collapses into atmospherics and is little more than a formula romance. John Mort
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (July 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0849944813
• ISBN-13: 978-0849944819
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #765,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christy-Award winner Angela Hunt writes for readers who have learned to expect the unexpected in novels from this versatile author. With nearly four million copies of her books sold worldwide, she is the best-selling author of more than 100 works ranging from picture books (The Tale of Three Trees) to novels.

Now that her two children have reached their twenties, Angie and her youth-pastor husband live in Florida with Very Big Dogs (a direct result of watching Sandlot too many times). This affinity for mastiffs has not been without its rewards--one of their dogs was featured on Live with Regis and Kelly as the second-largest canine in America. Their dog received this dubious honor after an all-expenses-paid trip to Manhattan for the dog and the Hunts, complete with VIP air travel and a stretch limo in which they toured New York City. Afterward, the dog gave out paw-tographs at the airport.

When she's not home writing, Angie often travels to teach writing workshops at schools and writers' conferences. And to talk about her dogs, of course.

Readers may visit her web site at www.angelahuntbooks.com and write her at [e-mail].

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Contemporary Faith-Based Literature, August 1, 2006

By 

Juel D. Kulinski (Central Coast, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Awakening (Paperback)

The Awakening is a truly astounding work of art, all the more compelling as it arises from a genre, Christian literature, that has been a dim light in the field of literature, to say the least. I am reluctant to even write a review on this book as I feel completely handicapped in relating how much Angela Hunt means to me. Since becoming a Christian I became both lost and found; found in Christ, but lost in the world. Everything I had once loved, the literature, the art, movies, it all now lacked that God-spark and spirit. When I would reach for Christian fiction I was deflated by the lack of creativity, intelligence, percision of language, not to mention the ability to bridge my spirit. Books have always been my bridge to the world, my path to feeling connected and understood and so for the last 3 1/2 year I have been flailing as no contemporary Christian writer came even close to creating a connection in me. Then came Angela Hunt onto the shelves of my church library and what a blessing she is. She never cowers from asking a tough question that one of a weaker faith would fear to ask, let alone satisfyingly tackle.

In The Awakening we have Aurora, the significance of the name not lost, trapped by lies built up as stakes supposedly to keep her safe. I related deeply to this woman who connects to the world through books, and is somewhat wary of the human heart. She is in want of nothing, rich, intelligent, attractive, but she is disconnected from the world, from her heart and from her soul and her mind is becoming unseamed as it knows she needs the truth to survive, but is Aurora strong enough to let the truth enter her world? Gently a neighbor helps Aurora see the light, the light of truth, of God, of her own being and she lifts those stakes of lies and realizes she is not alone, she is not helpless. I would recommend this book to anyone as a testimony to the power of Christ and as a testimony that there really is a contemporary Christian writer who knows her way around a pen. Thank you Angela Hunt.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous!, July 23, 2004

By 

Lisa Samson "author" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Awakening (Paperback)

I'm a jaded reader, I admit, and one without a long attention span. Too easily I can put down even the most engaging of books. But there are some that pull me back every spare second I have. The Awakening was such a book. Angela Hunt has created a world within a world, guiding the reader through the life of an agoraphobic, and an appealing one at that. Ms. Hunt deals with faith issues with a light, yet authentic touch, which is highly appropriate considering the story itself is a parable telling of how much God loves us and wants to be with us. I find that Angela Hunt matures year by year, book by book.
I thought about this story long after I turned the last page.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An ethereal quality, August 2, 2004

By 

FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Awakening (Paperback)

Aurora Norquest, the protagonist of Angela Hunt's THE AWAKENING: A Novel of Discovery, has hit bottom. She has spent much of her twenties and thirties as her mother's caregiver, but after the Alzheimer's-stricken Mary Elizabeth dies, Aurora (herself stricken with agoraphobia) rattles aimlessly around their Manhattan apartment. Despite the nosy-parker attentions of her mother's oldest friend and neighbor Clara Bowman, and in spite of the much gentler inquiries from her newest friend and neighbor, Philip Cannon, Aurora finds that things for her are falling apart and she has no center.

One of the reasons Aurora has no center to hold on to is because her mother's death leaves her a de facto orphan. Her father, Theodore Norquest, a wildly successful popular novelist, left the family before she was born and she has never received any communication from him. Slowly, as Aurora begins to explore what she might do now, she rekindles the interest she has always had simmering about contacting her father.

This is where Philip, a software engineer of about her own age, comes in handy --- he knows how to help Aurora (who can't even make it down to her building's lobby) connect to the world via the Internet (she's been receiving groceries, medicines and other supplies for years from New York City's endless variety of delivery services). While Philip remains gentle in his inquiries and in sharing his faith with Aurora, he obviously wants to help her break out of her cocoon rather than enabling her to remain stuck.

However, the darkest horizon is still to come (did you think it was a coincidence that "Aurora" means "dawn?" Not a chance --- but more on that in a moment). Mesmerized by a beautiful woman in a nearby penthouse who has everything, but lives an empty, perhaps morally repugnant, life, Aurora questions whether there is any purpose for her own life and makes a bad decision. When Philip comes to her rescue, bits and pieces of light peek through, and she learns that some of her beliefs about the past aren't accurate. By the story's end, Aurora is living in a new day and, while she has a lot of work ahead of her, has regained her hope and humanity.

By setting Aurora in her high-rise apartment, giving sparse details about appearances and situations, and including a somewhat mystical element, Hunt has given her novel an ethereal quality that is very appealing. Does this sound like a fairy tale? It's meant to be: Hunt set out to write something completely different from her previous books --- a parable. Of course, the original parables told by Jesus were simple stories, and although Hunt does keep things simple in THE AWAKENING, her modern artistic viewpoint (and perhaps modern readers' needs, too) means that things are a little more complicated in Aurora's world. That's why it feels more accurate to call this an allegorical novel, along the lines of John Bunyan's classic, THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, than to call it a parable.

But in the end that's quibbling over literary terms, since this novel does teach a lesson: we are all searching for Our Father, and so often we don't know how hard He has been trying to reach us.

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick