Home Repair [Paperback]

Liz Rosenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2009

Can lighting really strike twice? Just ask Eve, whose husband walks out on her in the middle of a garage sale.

Eve's beloved Ivan died thirteen years ago in an automobile accident. Her charming, boyish Chuck has taken a different exit out of her life: hopping into his car in the middle of a garage sale with no forewarning and departing their formerly happy upstate New York home for points unknown. Now Eve's a boat adrift, subsisting on a heartbreak diet of rue, disappointment, and woe-left alone to care for Ivan's brilliant teenaged son, Marcus, and Chuck's precocious, pragmatic nine-year-old daughter, Noni, while contending with Charlotte, Eve's acerbic mother, who's come north to "help" but hinders instead.

But life ultimately must go on, with its highs and lows, its traumas and holidays, and well-meaning, if eccentric, friends. A house and a heart in disrepair are painful burdens for a passionate woman who's still in her prime. And while learning to cope with the large and small tragedies that each passing day brings, Eve might end up discovering that she's gained much more than she's lost.

A poignant, lovely, funny, and ultimately uplifting story of love, family, and survival, Liz Rosenberg's Home Repair is an unforgettable introduction to a lyrical, wise, and wonderfully vibrant new literary voice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rosenberg, a poet and children's book author, makes a clean break into adult fiction with the story of a middle-aged woman whose journey to independence begins at a garage sale. Forty-six-year-old Eve's garage sale takes an unexpected turn when her husband, Chuck, goes on an errand and never comes back, leaving Eve to raise teenage son Marcus and nine-year-old daughter Noni. Drawing support from her sometimes helpful mother, old friends at the university where she works and new friends—such as the man she meets in the park and a Korean graduate student and his non–English-speaking wife—Eve discovers the locals offer all she needs in her life. Rosenberg achieves remarkable emotional range—comic to tragic, dysfunction to triumph, irony to wisdom—for an engaging, often touching story of survival on a heartbreak diet. (May)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Original edition (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006173456X
• ISBN-13: 978-0061734564
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,145,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Liz Rosenberg is the author of 3 novels, 5 books of poems and more than 20 award winning books for children. She has edited five prize winning poetry anthologies (including THE INVISIBLE LADDER and LIGHT GATHERING POEMS) and her picture book, THE CAROUSEL was featured on PBS' Reading Rainbow. Her newest picture book, TYRANNOSAURUS DAD, illustrated by brilliant newcomer Matthew Myers, is a Children's Book of the Month Club bestseller, has garnered praise from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal and elsewhere, and was an Amazon top 10 children's book on dinosaurs, sports and family.

Her first novel for adults, HOME REPAIR was a Target Breakout book and voted top ten for Book Clubs and Most Likely to be Next Oprah Pick on Goodreads.

Liz Rosenberg was born and raised on Long Island. She met her husband, David, when they were 7 and 8 years old respectively, at summer camp. They became friends in high school, each married other people, and ten years after they had reconnected in high school, finally got married. They have been married 3 times to each other because they are both terrible at keeping track of paperwork. They have an actor son, Eli, and an 8 year old daughter, Lily.

Liz Rosenberg's first husband was the late great American novelist John Gardner, author of Grendel, Nickel Mountain, How to Become a Novelist and more than 25 other works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and scholarship. Together they taught at the State University of Binghamton till his untimely death in l982 in a motorcycle accident. She continues as a full professor at Binghamton University's English Department and has guest taught all over the world, from Russia to Austria to Singapore, and at colleges throughout the United States. Ms. Rosenberg spends her time reading and writing. Her hobbies are reading and writing and her passions are-- right, reading and writing.