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The Goodbye Summer: A Novel (Gaffney, Patricia)
 
 
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The Goodbye Summer: A Novel (Gaffney, Patricia) [Hardcover]

Patricia Gaffney (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)


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Book Description

Gaffney, Patricia April 13, 2004

The New York Times bestselling author of the much-beloved The Saving Graces is back with a warm, winning new novel about daring to love, braving a loss, and setting yourself free.

How much change can one summer bring? If you're Caddie Winger -- thirty-two years old, still living with her grandmother, and giving piano lessons to neighborhood children -- one summer can make the whole world look different.

Caddie's mother died when she was nine, and Caddie was raised by her grandmother. Now their roles are reversed, and it's Caddie who takes care of Nana. When her grandmother breaks a leg and insists on going into a convalescent home, Caddie finds herself being pulled out of her comfy, self-made nest. Living alone for the first time since college, she uncovers some startling truths from her past.

Jolted, she looks at the world with new eyes and begins to take charge of her future. As she makes a new best friend, takes risks she never dreamed she could, and navigates the depths and shallows of true love and devastating heartbreak, Caddie learns how to trust other people and, ultimately, how to trust herself.

Wise, moving, and reassuringly real, The Goodbye Summer offers us a deeper understanding of the perplexing and invigorating magic that is life itself.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

No one can accuse Gaffney of shying away from mortality. Against the genteel backdrop of Wake House, a Maryland home for the elderly, Caddie Winger, a music teacher, endures a string of losses the summer she turns 33. In a way, it comes as no surprise, since most of her friends are nearly half a century older than she is. Caddie has always lived with her determinedly wacky grandmother, Nana, who moves into Wake House after she breaks a leg while working on one of her embarrassing lawn sculptures. Soon, Caddie is spending all her time at the small convalescent home and growing especially close to Thea, a firecracker who convinces Caddie to smoke pot and dance in the rain. Despite the fun they have together, the sober realities of old age are never far off, and Caddie's affair with a man her own age-disappearing slick-o Christopher-doesn't do much to cheer her up. The novel has its larkier moments, especially in the spirited, pitch-perfect conversations between Caddie and Nana and the sniping among Nana's fellow Wake House residents. But mostly Caddie suffers and struggles as Nana's ditziness looks more like dementia, money grows scarce, and she is plagued by crippling self-doubt. The redemptive romance, with 30-something Wake House resident Henry Magill, convalescing from a sky-diving accident that killed his fiancée, echoes the core love story in Gaffney's last novel, Flight Lessons Here, too, a damaged hero offers a profound attractiveness the reader recognizes ages ahead of the heroine. Caddie is endearing, and while some fans will cherish her fealty to her sorrows, others may feel more bummed than uplifted.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gaffney, author of The Saving Graces (1999), offers a tale about a woman facing changes in her quiet life. At 32, Caddie Winger is perfectly happy to be living with her grandmother, Frances, who raised her, and giving music lessons. But after Frances takes a fall and breaks her leg, she insists on moving to Wake House, a convalescent home. There, Frances meets a diverse group of older folks: a pair of sisters, two women who used to be married to the same man (at different times), and a cranky but lovable curmudgeon. She also meets Magill, a young man whose sense of balance has been thrown off by a tragic skydiving accident. Meanwhile, Caddie gradually adjusts to living alone, then, when she meets sexy Christopher, the director of the Creative Animal Therapy School, she is genuinely surprised by his interest in her. Slightly predictable and somewhat slow at first, Gaffney's novel picks up the pace once Caddie gets involved with Christopher, and by the end, the reader is thoroughly drawn into Caddie's world. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (April 13, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0060185295
  • ISBN-13: 978-0060185299
  • Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,919,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Patricia Gaffney began her writing career with the publication of Sweet Treason, a historical romance set in revolutionary Scotland. Eleven romance novels later, she tried something different--The Saving Graces, a story of women's friendships, that ended up spending 17 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers List.

Circle of Three, Flight Lessons, and The Goodbye Summer followed, all bestsellers that established Gaffney as a premier mainstream fiction writer.

Her new book is Mad Dash, the story of a happy marriage in trouble. It's due out in Spring 2008.

Gaffney, who lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, is currently at work on a novel about a man who changes his life when he finds out he's dying--then finds out he isn't. Working title: On Second Thought.

 

Customer Reviews

25 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A lovely read with fun and interesting "elder" characters!, July 19, 2004
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This review is from: The Goodbye Summer: A Novel (Gaffney, Patricia) (Hardcover)
This book was such a nice read. The main character is Caddie, a 32 year old music teacher who has always lived with her grandmother (since Caddie's mother died when Caddie was very young). Caddie's grandmother decides to go live at the local pseudo nursing home while she heals a broken leg. The home is called Wake House and the inhabitants all are quite distinctive! This story is written through Caddie's eyes. Since she is no longer living with her grandmother, she starts to get out more and eventually falls in love. In addition, she visits often with the Wake House folks and gets to learn a lot about them as she write their bios for a Wake House project.

There are not many books that have so many "elder" characters written with such flair! You want to know more about them and their sometimes boring, sometimes exciting, but always REAL experiences. Just a nice, feel good book that will make you cry and laugh. I can't wait to read another by this author!

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A favorite author, June 4, 2004
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This review is from: The Goodbye Summer: A Novel (Gaffney, Patricia) (Hardcover)
I agree with the reviewer who said Gaffney could write about a trip to the grocery store and she'd read it and love it. I feel the same way. I, too, love Gaffney's wry sense of humor and her ability to show me the world in a different way. That said, it doesn't really surprise me that some readers were bored, because this IS a quiet, character-driven story that develops slowly, and some readers just don't have the patience for that. One last comment: I liked this book so much I used it as an example of great writing at a talk I recently gave to a group of writers here in the Houston area. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for anyone who loves women's fiction or who aspires to write women's fiction.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Really enjoyed, June 8, 2005
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this the Goodbye Summer. It was different than the other chick lit books that i've read with somewhat of a surprising ending. The relationships were unique in that the main character did not seem to have best friends, just the ones she befriended at the home where her grandmother was. I will definitely look into Patricia Gaffney's other books after reading this one.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
The first Caddie Winger ever heard of Wake House was when she was helping her grandmother get her drawers on over the cast on her leg. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Wake House, Blue Room, Caddie Winger, Cape May, Early Street, Red Room, Red Sky, Christopher Fox, New York, Calvert Street, Angela Ann, Bobby Haywood, Billie Holiday, Frances Winger, Maple Leaf Rag, Miss Michaelstown, Chick Buckman, Christopher Dalton Fox, Dorothea Barnes, Eastern Shore, Ernest Holly, Maxine Harris, Susan Cohen, Bank of Michaelstown, Caddie Ann
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