Field Guide [Paperback]

Gwendolen Gross (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest Book | Publication Date: July 1, 2002

Pursuing graduate study of spectacled fruit bats in Queensland, Australia, Annabel Mendelssohn spends her free time picking leeches from her eyes, discovering waterfalls, and writing to her sister, Alice, whose life, by contrast, is domestic and settled. Aside from occasional fears that loggers will terrorize her camp, all is going according to plan; that is until Annabel's mentor, Professor John Goode, suddenly disappears. Haunted by the ambiguous circumstances surrounding her own brother's death two years earlier, Annabel becomes determined to find her missing professor-but she is not alone in her search. Leon, Professor Goode's son, has left his teaching job in a Boston museum to conduct his own rescue efforts. Soon Annabel and Leon cross paths and together, in the vibrant and unruly rain forest, they try to unravel the mystery of the professor's disappearance. As their search progresses, they soon come to realize that sometimes the truth reveals itself in more ways than one.

This is a graceful debut novel of love and adventure.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The certitudes of scientific research yield to the unsolvable mysteries of emotional connection in this accomplished debut. Annabel Mendelssohn, 28, opts to do her graduate work on spectacled fruit bats far from home, at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. True, she is impassioned by her studies, but she also needs to process the death of her marine biologist brother, Robert, who was killed in a diving accident two years before. Robert suffered from clinical depression; his death looked suspiciously like suicide. Annabel relies on her married sister, Alice, who works in grant administration in Connecticut and has her own secrets, to be her link to home and family while she adjusts to her new surroundings, e-mailing disavowals of her growing attraction to her charming, absentminded professor, John Goode, who is undergoing a divorce. When Professor Goode disappears abruptly, his intimates wait a while before they become concerned, since he's known for "forgetting everything important for long enough to lose it." But eventually his 28-year-old son, Leon, comes home to Australia from Boston, where he works at a museum, to help look for the wayward professor. When his search through the jungle intersects with Annabel's derailed bat research, they join forces, and Annabel's longing for her brother is displaced somewhat by her anxiety about Leon's father: their bond, she thinks, is enhanced by her "expertise in being left." Gross's deceptively spare style glistens with pungent language and precise aper?us. Annabel's keenly observed evocation of the fecund rain forest is counterpointed by her wry insights about herself and her family. Though the book settles to a comfortable, obvious close, Annabel's double quest to discover the meaning of absence, set against the mysterious tropical world teeming with life, has a satisfying symmetry. (Apr. 4)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

American graduate student Annabel Mendelssohn is still grieving the loss of her brother in a diving accident when she embarks on a scheduled journey to study spectacled fruit bats in the rain forest of Queensland, Australia. In e-mail messages home to her concerned older sister, she details her impressions of these curious creatures and of the various human specimens she encounters along the way. Assigned as her project director is the attractive and eccentric Professor John Goode. He proves to be an enthusiastic and supportive mentor but then mysteriously disappears before she can complete her work. When the professor's son, Leon, also a scientist, is called home from Boston to look for his father, Annabel abandons her project to join him in the search. Predictably, over shared chasms of loss, they connect. Although somewhat scattered in focus, this beautifully written debut novel offers appealing characters and provides a unique view into the sensuous scientific world of field study with all of its attendant hardships and marvels. Recommended for all public libraries. Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156007665
• ISBN-13: 978-0156007665
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,219,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gwendolen Gross Talks Sisterhood and The Orphan Sister
BY RT BOOK REVIEWS, JULY 25, 2011 | PERMALINK

Today author Gwendolen Gross shares a behind the scenes look at her new novel, The Orphan Sister. Learn how this author's experiences and the love she shares with her siblings influenced her latest novel. And don't be surprised when this guest blog post brings tears to your eyes!

In one of my graduate school workshops, a terrific fellow from Brooklyn kept telling me, "You are clearly obsessed with da fatha, da son, da holy ghost. Always one in three!" His accent made me giggle, but he was wrong. Yes--I write quite a lot about threes, but I'm one of three sisters. And I'm Jewish.

Writing The Orphan Sister was easy, in some ways--the truths of sisterhood run like arteries through life, whether you have one sister, three sisters, no sisters. In fact, I have two sisters from one family, and another who is technically my half-sister, and a step-brother, though he may not be ushered to the fore at the flock of girls, but we used to run down mountains holding hands, so he's very much a part of my fictional narrative, and personal history, too.

There are many ideas about birth order--and I suppose I'm technically the middle child, the peace-maker, the one who wants everything to be alright. But who doesn't want everything to be alright? Let me know if first children are war-mongers or last children prefer bickering, because I haven't seen it like that. But I'm also an oldest in some ways, having lived with that step-brother for a while as a fourteen year old to his four. And then there's the youngest, Samantha, who is twenty years younger than I am. In many ways, she was the model for my character Clementine's feelings about Adam, her first nephew (and she caught that right away when she read the book). The first baby with whom I fell in love. I carried her in a snuggly and people asked whether she was my first--I was twenty, after all. I said no, I have two other sisters. But in some ways, she was a first--first chance to love a baby so much it hurt my body, arms bruised with the longing to hold, when I left to return to college, and then to fly cross-country when she was older. I missed her physically, the way you miss your own babies. But also the way you miss sisters.

My oldest sister, Claudia, taught me to read. I think she taught me to knit (though I'm sure Mom helped) because I have a weird combination style born of my sister's left-handedness. Apparently, we tried to off each other during the youngest years, but I don't remember that, I just remember that she was respite during parental storms, that I wanted to be like her, that I loved being her voice when she was too shy to ask the ice cream man for a fudgesicle. That my son smells like her in the mornings--that sometimes when I'm looking at him I see her, my first guide. My younger sister, Rebecca, was a wild thing when she was little--all frenetic naked energy and bright blue eyes. But as adults we've bonded over the mothering of boys.

Children have so little power, despite having much freedom. Everyone adult tells us what to do, what we can eat, where we are allowed to go. Sisters (and I mean this both specifically and metaphorically) can hold our hands to cross the street.

- Gwendolen Gross

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Review of Field Guide, March 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Field Guide: A Novel (Hardcover)

A fluid, beautiful book. The reader is instantly mesmerized by the author's sharp perception into humanity. Gross easily takes on large conflicts such as independence vs. dependence, freedom vs. obligation, and love vs. loss, and treats them with subtle insight and grace. The details are stunning and the characters have an unpredictable depth that twists and turns deliciously as the reader travels deeper into the rain forest. Readers will find themselves in Annabel Mendelssohn even if they've never been to the Australian rain forest to study bats! A wonderful combination of poetic prose and page-turning urgency. I couldn't stop thinking about it long after I finished. I'm so excited that I've discovered a new favorite author. An absorbing, rich read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unusual, enjoyable read, April 20, 2001

By 

Lynn Adler - See all my reviews

This review is from: Field Guide: A Novel (Hardcover)

An unusual setting and an unlikely subject form the backdrop to this first novel by Gwendolen Gross. American, Annabel Mendelssohn, has come to the wilds of Australia to do graduate field work on her favorite subject, spectacled fruit bats. Despite uncomfortable conditions, it is a life's dream come true, as well as an escape from haunting memories of her beloved brother's death two years before; that is, until her strange professor, for whom she harbors a vague attraction, goes missing. Her research is further disrupted by anti-environmentalist loggers as well as the appearance of the professor's son, Leon Goode, newly arrived from his student and work stints in America. Eventually the two meet and go in search of the professor, along the way discovering their own mutual attraction and the similarity of family circumstances that invisibly bind them.

Interspersed with the Australian segments are glimpses of Leon's life in Boston and that of Annabel's sister's in Connecticut, flashbacks of memory, as well as E-mails and imaginary letters that travel between the two sisters, that contribute to our understanding of the characters' inner lives. These devices bring balance and the exotic Australian outback enlivens the plot to what might otherwise be a ho-hum story.

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite enough, May 14, 2010

By 

Bibliophile "The Z's North" (North Eastern Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Field Guide: A Novel (Hardcover)

I always enjoy learning about nature, cultures, etc., but this novel seemed to end when it was just beginning. It left me flat. The author only touched on each subject she included rather that really delving into each of them. It seemed to me a great draft of what could have been a great story.