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The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories
 
 
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The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Lesley Dormen (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)


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Hardcover, Deckle Edge, April 3, 2007 --  
Paperback $14.00  

Book Description

April 3, 2007
"I looked out the window and was filled with contentment. I was on a train. There was no landscape, ugly or beautiful, to demand my attention . . . None of the passengers within my view were badly dressed. I had the right book with me . . . I was happily married but alone, nothing in the immediate past to regret, nothing in the immediate future to fear. In between -- the best place to be."

At fifty, Grace Hanford has lived long enough to be a daughter, a stepdaughter, a girlfriend, a sister, a sister-in-law, a wife, a stepmother, and an orphan. She has fallen in and out of love -- with troublesome men, with her glamorous mother, with her wild best friend, and with New York City -- more times than she can count. Still, Grace is more comic than melancholic, and a gifted confessor. She lives life as if every day is a movie in which her role is yet to be determined -- and her audience loves her for it.

In The Best Place to Be, we follow Grace from her fatherless childhood through her years at an all-girls college to adulthood in the city and her many dating escapades (and escapes) as an urban sophisticate. Wherever she may be, Grace tries to find her place in the world with humor and the blunt surprise of truth. And always, in the background, there is Grace's mother, brother, and the man she could or might or will call husband, out of reach -- until she reaches.

In the tradition of Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, The Best Place to Be is at once funny, moving, and deeply provocative, a love letter to the self-determined woman that shimmers with hilarious insight and graceful wit.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Each of the eight related stories in Dormen's accomplished collection offers a snapshot from the scattershot life of Grace Hanford. "Fifty and holding," a child of divorce from Cleveland, Ohio, with decades of therapy and blind dates behind her, Grace has spent years "dissecting the romantic lives of single women in their twenties and thirties" for Marvelous Woman magazine in New York City. Married to money-manager Richard, Grace has all the trappings of middle-age (the kitchen renovation, the "looming face-lift") except children of her own (Richard has two from a previous marriage). The first—and best—story, "The Old Economy Husband," lays out Grace's life in Greenwich Village, where she's lived long enough to watch the UPS man go gray. While ghostwriting an etiquette book, she recognizes she has relinquished her earlier theories about love and chosen a man "who made me feel like my fiercest, most clear-hearted twelve-year-old self." Subsequent stories limn with less panache the transitional periods in Grace's life: attending Elmira College for Women circa 1964 ("The Secret of Drawing"), quarreling with her younger brother over their dead mother's effects ("Gladiators"), arranging a reunion with her estranged father ("Curvy"). Dormen's narrator takes plenty of knocks, making the happiness she finds all the sweeter. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Raised by a self-involved, divorce-prone mother; alienated from her father; and engaged in an occasionally volatile relationship with her younger brother, New Yorker Grace Hanford lives life as a continuous struggle to find balance. Dormen's novel-in-stories is distinctive in that the collection does not progress in chronological order. Rather, each of the eight stories focuses on a different point in Grace's life--as an eager, sensitive freshman at an all-girls college, a thirtysomething single reaching out to her estranged father, or married and middle-aged on a trip to Rome. Grace is inquisitive, clever, sublimely compulsive, and owns an inherent loneliness that (unlike some despondent protagonists) doesn't come across as trivialized or steeped in self-pity. A common discord links the collection, though some readers may find more resonance in the stories as they stand alone rather than as an inclusive novel. Emerging writer Dormen's engaging fiction moves at a fluid pace with an equally affecting sense of poignancy and humor. Leah Strauss
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (April 3, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1416532617
  • ISBN-13: 978-1416532613
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,899,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars seriously good, August 11, 2007
By 
This review is from: The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories (Hardcover)
I read this book the way I eat chocolate truffles: savoring and devouring at once, with the best sense of indulgence. I love Grace's humor, her perfectly tuned guilt, her yearnings and--despite her various efforts--her kindness. And I love the redemptive power of her irony. Bring this book to the beach or on your work commute; read it before bed. It will both take you out of your life's grip and at the same time make you recognize that grip more...forgivingly. DELIGHTEDLY recommended.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Read, May 8, 2007
This review is from: The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories (Hardcover)
I loved this book. It made me remember why I read in the first place - to laugh, to nod my head in acknowledgement, to recognize some deep essential link we all have. Dormen's Grace is an amazing invention. She'll stick with you long after you finished the last page of this jewel of a book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Read and re-read, September 15, 2007
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This review is from: The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories (Hardcover)
I very rarely re-read a book. I read this book in May, loved it and just finished it again. Getting so much more out of it this time. It feels like a weekend with your best friend. It was so relateable, her relationship with her husband was so wonderfully nice, and true. I at times felt like I was reading about my life in regards to her marriage. But it was also just nice to read, that, in spite of some bad things, the character still finds so much enjoyment in life. It is all about finding joy, after all in the everyday living. I laughed out loud several times. Buy the book you won't be dissapointed.
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