Crazy in Love [Mass Market Paperback]

Luanne Rice (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2006

In this acclaimed early novel New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice takes readers on an intensely moving journey through the intimate terrain of a rapturous marriage in sudden jeopardy–and follows one woman’s courageous search to find her way when everything, even her heart, seems lost.…

Georgie Symonds didn’t think anything could shake her perfect marriage. She and Nick were meant for each other, everyone said so, and their life on the Connecticut shore, among Georgie’s close-knit family, is picture-perfect. But lately Nick has been consumed with his job on Wall Street, and Georgie finds herself plagued with suspicions too awful to contemplate. To distract herself, she plunges into her work with the Swift Observatory, examining the stories of people whose lives have been changed by unexpected tragedy. But it’s when a handsome stranger arrives on her doorstep that Georgie learns firsthand that when your dreams are in danger of collapsing, it’s time to create new ones.…

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Georgie Swift Symonds is crazy in love with her Wall Street lawyer husband Nickso "crazy" in fact, that she has paranoic fantasies that he is unfaithful, and she hounds him with obsessive suspicions. And, she so cherishes her familyher pugnaciously senile grandmother Pem; her TV-celebrity mother Honora; her sister Clare, brother-in-law Donald and two nephewsthat she spends much of her time dreading any change or loss in their close intimacy. The three generations of women and the men who have married into the clan live in a family compound on the Sound in Connecticut. Though she is childless and nearly devoid of domestic responsibilities, Georgie doesn't want a job that will remove her from the family nest. She conceives of a project she dubs the Swift Observatory: interviewing people whose lives have been radically altered by sudden tragedy. But try as she might to avoid it, change does come to Georgie and her family in unpredictable ways. Rice (Angels All Over Town) conveys the delights and pains of loving relationships with verve and charm, and she charts Georgie's deepening maturation with a sure hand, mingling humor and poignancy. While readers may find Georgie's immersion in the hermetic family relationship a bit suffocating and cloying, Rice's skill with fluid dialogue and the appeal of her engaging characters more than compensate for this drawback.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Georgie Swift is surrounded by loved onesgrandmother, mother, and sisterin a matriarchal compound on Connecticut's Long Island Sound. It's all very close and loving, so close that after eight years of marriage, Georgie is obsessed with "togetherness" and cannot bear to spend a night away from her husband. To overcome this, she sets up the Swift Observatory with herself as the Observer. Through this organization, which oddly enough is supported by a foundation, she, as the Observer, combs the newspapers for human interest tales of tragedy, and arranges interviews with the victims. When tragedy inevitably strikes her own family, the Observer must turn her sights on herself. For public libraries. Marion Hanscom, SUNY at Binghamton Lib.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (January 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553587811
• ISBN-13: 978-0553587814
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #671,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

LUANNE RICE is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-nine novels, most recently The Silver Boat. Her books, including Cloud Nine and Dream Country, often center on love, family, nature and the sea, and have been translated into twenty-four languages. A number of Rice's novels have been adapted for television, including Crazy in Love for TNT, Blue Moon for CBS, the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations of Follow the Stars Home and Silver Bells, and Beach Girls as a summer drama series for Lifetime Television. She has contributed a theatrical piece to the new off Broadway play Motherhood Out Loud. Rice loves nature and frequently writes about it. Born in New Britain, Connecticut, Rice divides her time between New York City and Old Lyme, Connecticut, in the house where she spent all her childhood summers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This was written in 1988, February 27, 2002

By 

mzglorybe (Southern CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Crazy in Love (Hardcover)

I read this after reading some of her newest novels - which I have loved. This one, however, is similar to a couple others of her older ones that lack substance. It is more difficult to connect with these characters, showing us that writers do indeed improve with experience, as we all do.

The main character here is a woman named Georgie, who is "crazy in love' with her husband - to the point of obsession, and the poor guy, who is in love with her, can't seem to convince her that she doesn't have to be insecure about their relationship or be jealous... yet she hates to see him go to work each time he has to leave. She wants to follow him around, and does sometimes.

Georgie was driving me up the wall, just reading about it, and I am a woman. She gets funding for a research project about Human Nature where she interviews people and tells their stories about events in their lives, but even that doesn't get the reader involved ... I didn't find it very enjoyable and had to skim through a lot of parts of this book to get it finished.
If you haven't read her before, start with "Follow the Stars Home,"
"Home Fires" or "Summer Light." She is a great writer, but don't start with this one.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great read about the emotional life of a couple, February 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Crazy in Love (Mass Market Paperback)

This novel reads like a letter from your best girlfriend: it describes the ins and outs of one couple's life as they navigate marriage and their respective needs.The narrator, a woman whose purpose in life might be defined as mastering the art of the relationship, is in love with her own husband--but must find a way to balance that love with the realities of his (and her) life.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anatomy of a Marriage/Family/Woman, June 28, 2004

By 

Theresa W (mi, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crazy in Love (Hardcover)

Let me start off by saying that I would recommend this book only to hard-core Luanne Rice readers. If you're like me and have read every one of her newer books, and enjoyed them all tremendously and you're looking for more...her earlier works are worth reading. Obviously with the knowledge in your mind that usually an author's earlier works are not as polished. Now that I have read ALL of her books, I can say I did enjoy her earlier works, although not as much as her newer.

This book is almost like an anatomy of a marriage. We see the things that can drive people crazy, the feelings they don't talk about, the things they keep inside. It's also an anatomy of a family, it's structure and the roles each person fufills. While the marriage of Georgie and Nick is at the center of this book and we watch the two try to keep their marriage close while Nick works ungodly hours- it's about so much more. It's about Georgie trying to find a bit of her own independence and her beginning to examine what is it that drives her to be a jealous, worrysome person. It's about the tight-knit relationships she has with her sister, mother and senile grandmother. At the heart of the book you have a woman searching to find peace and happiness within herself.

Again, I did enjoy this book. The beginning was a bit slow, however the story and the character development really picked up about half way through the novel. I am glad that I've had a chance to read all of Rice's books, seeing how she really polished her writing ability into the dynamite author she is now. If you haven't read anything by her before, I would recommend starting at one of her newer books like Dream Country, Perfect Summer or True Blue.