The Matter of Grace (Nal Accent Novels) [Paperback]

Jessica Barksdale Inclan (Author)

Book Description

Series: Nal Accent Novels | Publication Date: May 1, 2002

Booklist praised Her Daughter's Eyes as "a modern-day depiction of familial disintegration with offbeat twists and luminous sparks of hope." Now, Jessica Barksdale Inclán reveals the closely intertwined lives of four women-their struggles to be good wives, mothers, friends-and the troubled secrets they hide.

Every summer, Felice, Helen, Stella, and Grace meet at Oakland View Swim and Tennis Club, watching their children learn to swim, slowly becoming friends. After seven years, there is no reason to think things will ever change-until the summer Grace's illness returns. On the brink of crisis, as the women try to help Grace confront a trauma that begins to seem quite different from what she claims, they are forced to examine their own lives...and face a painful truth. That they don't really know Grace-or themselves-at all...

"Inclán never condescends and never judges, preferring to let her subtly drawn people speak for themselves." (Kirkus Reviews)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Four Oakland women who meet every week at a local swim club find the limits of their friendship tested in Incl n's engaging, down-to-earth second novel. Grace White is the beautiful, stoic redhead who survived her initial bout with skin cancer, but the disease has returned after a lengthy remission, forcing her to break the news to her three best friends. The other members of the 30-something quartet do their best to help out and support Grace, but they have their own personal problems: Felice Gaitreaux's marriage to her college sweetheart, James, is in serious trouble, while Helen Jordan is having an affair with a younger man and Stella Steinberg is about to have her life turned upside down by a surprise pregnancy. Incl n's writing about the dizzyingly twirls of the marital merry-go-round occasionally veers toward soap opera, but the novel turns compelling during a series of revelations that lead Grace's friends to suspect her of going to incredible lengths to conceal an eating disorder. Incl n (Her Daughter's Eyes) has a sharp, compassionate feel for how women look at relationships, sex and marital issues; her female characters are strong and well drawn, although their male counterparts often seem a bit incomplete. The twists and turns of Grace's story will keep readers guessing until the final chapters, and Incl n's laudable decision to steer around the usual happy ending is both honest and realistic without being overly grim.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

On the surface, Felice, Helen, Stella, and Grace appear to have everything they could want out of life. Basking in the sun and watching their children romp in the pool at the Oakland Swim and Tennis Club have been the central scenario of their seven-year friendship. It's hard to believe that after so many intimate conversations about life's triumphs and troubles, there could be anything they don't know about each other, but there are things that they conceal from one another and perhaps even themselves. Felice's husband is rarely home and is indifferent to his family; Helen's wandering eye has gotten the best of her, and she's involved with a man half her age; and Stella longs for a second child more than she'd like to admit. Grace has had a cancer relapse, except she's still jogging and working out. Inclan's novel roots itself in the cryptic messages we give friends and family in lieu of exposing the deeper troubles brewing within. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: NAL Trade (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451205758
• ISBN-13: 978-0451205759
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.6 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,550,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jessica Barksdale Inclan's debut novel Her Daughter's Eyes, published in 2001, was the premier novel published under New American Library's new imprint Accent. Her Daughter's Eyes was a final nominee for the YALSA Award for the best books of 2001 and best paperbacks for 2001 and has been published in Dutch and Spanish. Her next novel The Matter of Grace was published in May 2002 and was re-released in a mass market version in May 2004. Her third, When You Go Away, came out April 1, 2003. Her fourth, One Small Thing, was published April 2004, and has been published in Dutch and Spanish. Her fifth, Walking With Her Daughter, was published in April 2005. The Instant When Everything is Perfect was published in February 2006. In June 2006, she published the first in a trilogy from Kensington Books. When You Believe was followed by Reason to Believe and Believe in Me. Being with Him, Intimate Beings, and The Beautiful Being (October 2009) are the novels in her second trilogy. She is a 2002 recipient of the CAC Artist's Fellowship in Literature. Incl'n teaches composition, creative writing, mythology, and women's literature at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California, and on-line creative writing courses for UCLA extension. She has studied with Sharon Olds, Anne Lamott, Kate Braverman, Grace Paley, Marjorie Sandor, and Cristina Garcia. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Rockhurst Review, Hotwired, The Salt Hill Journal, Free Lunch, The West Wind Review, The Prairie Star, Gargoyle and many other journals and newspapers. Her short story Open Eyes was given first prize by Sandra Cisneros for El Andar magazine's 2000 writing contest. She co-edited a women's literature/studies textbook Diverse Voices of Women (Mayfield Publishing, 1995). Ms. Inclan has degrees in sociology and English literature from CSU Stanislaus and a Master's degree in English literature from SFSU. Ms. Inclan lives in Oakland, California and is currently at work on her next novel. Find her Kindle books on Amazon, starting with The Wolf at the Window.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Matter of Grace (Jessica Barksdale Inclan), June 29, 2003

By 

Louise Jolly (Omemee, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Matter of Grace (Nal Accent Novels) (Paperback)

Felice, Stella, Helen and Grace are four women who have been friends for about 7 years. Each week they gather and meet at a local swimming club where they involve themselves in conversation while their children learn to swim. Ms. Barksdale Inclan allows us a look at the closely intertwined friendship these four women share. Women who are struggling with motherhood, friendship, being a wife and the adversity that comes with each of these roles. The writing is so vividly clear that you feel as though you are the fifth friend in this group of four women silently listening to their conversations from a lounge chair at the side of the pool. Each of these women brings to the story a peek into their lives of the troubles and feelings they deal with on a day to day basis. Lives that many of us who are married and have friends can relate to. Their struggles are real, wrought with emotion and written with such clarity that you can feel, understand and appreciate the internal turmoil these women deal with. From a failed marriage, to a wandering eye to a serious illness. When Grace becomes ill the women gather to help their friend with her illness. Along this journey of comfort and compassion they each discover something about themselves and their lives. What they discover about Grace, is that you don't always know people, even your closest friends, as well as you think you do. The bond of friendship and motherhood is a strong and powerful thread throughout this novel.

Ms. Inclan has a true gift for writing that is rare to find. She writes with such clarity and emotion and is able to convey to and invoke in the reader, a feeling and sense of unity. Of being in the story with the characters and feeling as though you are experiencing their lives, their emotions, their hopes, their dreams, their friendship and the bond between them. The story draws you in from the beginning and keeps you warmly embraced until the end.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Matter of Grace, July 12, 2002

By 

Kim Beury, AWARE e-news (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Matter of Grace (Nal Accent Novels) (Paperback)

In her second novel, the Matter of Grace, Jessica Barksdale Inclan again draws us into contemporary California suburbia, where daily life is emotionally complicated despite outward appearances for four women who find themselves striving (often struggling) to be good mothers, wives and friends while reflecting on and acceppting where childhood-family influences and choices have lead them.

Through well-developed characters, Inclan offers compassionate, intricate and deep insight into women's introspective look at marriage, sex, motherhood, intellectual and spiritual fulfillment, friendship and one's own childhood -- an extensive list of issues, but all she covers well.

The Matter of Grace focuses on the gift of friendship four women share, a friendship that started simply as mothers talking daily by the community poolside while their children swam. The bond these women develop through friendship -- unconditional love and support they don't feel elsewhere, even in marriage -- is revealed and then challenged in a story centered around Grace's new struggle with cancer.

The plot thickens with the mystery and depth of Grace's sickness. We learn about the fragility of a person who can't feel love and accepted because she can't love herself. And we are forced to consider how one's childhood family life and mother relationship affect her self-image, decision making, and abilities throughout life, even in abilities to mother her own child. As Grace's friends try to help her through illness they are forced to examine their own lives.

Published by New American Library (NAL), a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., The Matter of Grace has been named a NAL Accent novel -- a label awarded to new women's literature focused on "subjects close to a woman's heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world." NAL Accent novels include, at the close of each story, interviews with the author on what she hoped to convey through her writing and conversation guides intended to enrich the reading experience as well as encourage women to discuss issues together.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Obvious Matter, February 1, 2004

By 

Janice M. Hansen (California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Matter of Grace (Nal Accent Novels) (Paperback)

This novel is about a woman who tries to conceal her eating disorder and her very close friends that basically allow her to do so for quite a long time.

In Oakland, Grace and 3 of her local swim club buddies make a strong friendship over the years. Nearly every day they see each other and share each other's sorrows and happiness. In the beginning of their friendship Grace divulges a story of surviving cancer. When her weight begins to plummet and she appears to be a walking cadaver, she reluctantly admits the cancer is raging nearly out of control. Her friends, without question, accept her story. There is little reason not to, until, as time goes on, things just do not seem to make sense.

However, it is a subject which is difficult to deal with. Each of the other women have their own problems, some worse than the other. While trying to do the best they can with their problems (divorce, pregnancy, etc) the matter of Grace becomes more convoluted.

In truth, such a problem can get pretty complicated before it is dealt with. Finally accepting warnings from others that Grace may be suffering from an eating disorder, the group of women plan an intervention. Without a solid structure, commitment and professional intervention, the attempt falls apart, leaving the group impotent to furthur confrontation.

The reality of Grace is that the disease is a process that continues unmercifully. It is also understood that eating disorder patients may also have drug, alcohol and self-mutilation addictions. The matter of Grace is beyond this clique of 4. The matter of Grace is beyond Grace.

I welcome and applaud the efforts of Jessica Barksdale Inclan to bring forth the issue of eating disorders. As a nurse and personally involved with a close relative with the eating disorder, I appreciate any and all efforts to educate the public about this problem. The book holds the worthy NAL accent and will enhance the understanding of eating disorders, recognition and treatment. It is up to all of us not to turn away and explore the possiblility of eating disorders. We may not be able to cure, but we can understand, accept , love and be supportive for those that suffer in the same problems such as the matter of Grace.