Life Estates [Hardcover]

Shelby Hearon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 1994

In Her Most Searching and most accomplished novel to date, the author of Owning Jolene and Hug Dancing explores friendship and loss -- and what binds two women together and what separates them. Sarah and Harriet, now in their mid-fifties, have been friends since boarding school. Their lives -- Sarah in the Blue Ridge mountains of South Carolina and Harriet in the piney woods of East Texas -- have run parallel courses: marriage, babies, even opting for separate bedrooms from their husbands at about the same time.

Or are their paths really so similar? Now they find themselves, within the same year, widowed -- and deep-rooted differences surface. For Sarah, marriage was a destructive snare; she finds freedom in nature, reward in a wallpaper business she has created (so women can make rooms of their own), and sexual satisfaction with a man in his late sixties who understands her needs. Harriet is lost, no longer employed as a wife; to protect herself she gets a gun; to bolster herself, a young man's attention.

A life-and-death crisis brings the two women together. In the course of their visit the disharmonies they have never before acknowledged are revealed and their friendship is profoundly changed.

Telling Sarah and Harriet's story, Shelby Hearon has given us a witty, disturbing, and moving novel about the way we see -- and fail to see -- our friends and ourselves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's always a pleasure to watch a writer mature, and in her 13th novel (after Hug Dancing ), Hearon offers plenty of satisfaction to the discriminating reader. Here she explores the mysteries and ironies of marriage, friendship, parentage and love with a frank, searching and compassionate eye. Friends since boarding school days, Sarah Rankin and Harriet Calhoun have lived synchronous lives in South Carolina and Texas: both married bankers, had two children and were widowed in their 50s, within a few months of each other. The way they deal with widowhood and, indeed, with their own mortality is the starting point of this engrossing novel. To Sarah, who never enjoyed the "bondage" of marriage and chafed over the societal biases against married women (the inability to get one's own credit card, etc.), it's a relief to live singly again. She runs a thriving custom wallpaper business, pursues a relationship with her late husband's physician. Though Harriet's marriage was little better than Sarah's, she is devastated: "I feel like I've lost my job: wife." While Sarah's daughter seems obsessed with having children in quick succession, Harriet's offspring seems determined to be barren, and the younger man Harriet wants to take to bed has yet to succumb to her blandishments; but suddenly a new development wipes away all thoughts but survival. Hearon writes with energy and acuity; her wit takes the form of sharp apercus about human nature and society. If her themes are darker here than in previous books, her voice is stronger, more outspoken, and she wisely eschews easy answers to life issues. The narrative speaks instead of grace under pressure, of carrying on after loss and grief, of affirming the day and looking bravely at the future. It's a thoughtful and honest book, with real relevance to our lives.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Although the compromises and tribulations of marriage constitute the subject of Hearon's 13th book (after Hug Dancing , LJ 10/15/91), it transcends popular women's fiction in its sensitive exploration of the long-term friendship between Sarah from the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina and Harriet from East Texas, both recent widows. Their characters spring into focus as the author considers whether the differences in their lives were determined by time, place, and family. Domestic details regarding food and decoration serve to emphasize the work involved in daily existence, while descriptions of where and how each of the women lives enhance the story: Sarah's daily routine shows her resourcefulness and inherent happiness; Harriet's mirrors emptiness and lack of purpose. An asset for general collections.
- Patricia C. Heaney, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 231 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (February 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679415394
• ISBN-13: 978-0679415398
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,917,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is what this book is about, July 7, 2002

By 

"cathysbooks2" (Blacksburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life Estates (Vintage) (Paperback)

Sarah and Harriet have led parallel lives ever since they went to boarding school together. Now, in their mid-fifties, they are widowed within three months of each other. For Sarah, who has her own business and soon finds an attentive older lover, widowhood is a release from the sterile snare of marriage. But beautiful, flirtatious Harriet feels like nothing more than an unemployed wife, a woman alone in a dangerous world, a woman no man will ever love again. As Sarah and Harriet gradually, painfully, come to terms with each other and with the men they buried, Shelby Hearon gives us a novel that is at once compassionate and wry, sorrowful and deeply warm.