Precious: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novack's lyrical and finely crafted first novel is set in a small, idyllic Pennsylvania town circa 1978 and charts the crumbling of two families. At the center of the novel is the Kisch family, sisters Sissy and Eva and parents Frank and Natalia. Nine-year-old Sissy is introverted and impressionable, while older Eva is having an affair with Peter, her high school English teacher. Her parents' marriage, too, is rapidly deteriorating, and soon Natalia takes off for Italy with her lover, leaving Frank to try to deal with the remnants of their family. A few houses away, 10-year-old Vicki Anderson (whose relationship to Sissy is troubled), has gone missing, leaving her mother, Ginny, panicked and grief-stricken. Unhappiness, it seems, dwells everywhere, though there may be a dash of hard-won hope as Natalia returns home and the Kisches recalibrate. Ginny, meanwhile, fails to receive any good news about her missing daughter. The graceful prose and bleak atmosphere underscore the loneliness of each character. Novack takes the massive distance between friends, husbands and wives, and makes it her home. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Trouble simmers beneath the surface of a bucolic Pennsylvania town in Novack’s dramatic, elegantly rendered debut. The novel opens in the mid-1970s, with beleaguered housewife Natalia Kisch about to run away to Italy with a neighborhood doctor, leaving her husband, Frank, and daughters Sissy and Eva behind. The girls are both at precarious stages in their lives: 9-year-old Sissy spends her days in a dream world, and 17-year-old Eva talks back, bares her body in skimpy clothes, and beds local boys. At a loss as to how to deal with them, Frank leaves the girls home alone much too much. Then, shortly after Natalia leaves, Sissy’s onetime best friend, Vicki, disappears from the local playground. Hope dwindles after months of futile searching. Smaller dramas occur in the shadow of the larger one, as Eva begins an affair with a local high-school English teacher, and Frank loses his job. Then Natalia reappears, hoping to redeem herself and repair her broken family. But she returns to a town worn down by worry and grief. Short story writer Novack has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. In this accomplished first novel, she writes tellingly of the complex relationships among families, lovers, and friends. --Allison Block

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House (February 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400066808
• ISBN-13: 978-1400066803
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #41,206 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "There were only resolutions and a love that persisted over time.", February 17, 2009

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

When Natalia Kisch does the unthinkable, leaving husband and two daughters behind to run off with her boss to Italy, she sets off a chain of events that unleashes the fury of the fates. Left behind in their small 1970s Pennsylvania town are husband, Frank, and two daughters, Sissy, nine, and Eve, seventeen. Consumed by their own pain and confusion, each member of the family retreats inward, Frank to his rage, Eve to a consuming, anger-fueled rebellion and Sissy retreating to world of fantasy. Soon after, when ten-year-old Vicki disappears from a local playground, the town is stunned by a sudden violence they have never experienced, thought meant for other people, other towns. Charging their children to stay away from the park where Vicki went missing, the neighbors withdraw, watchful, as winter yields to summer. Through the long months since Natalia carried her suitcase out the door, from a joyless Christmas to the heat-drenched days of July and August, the family drifts into a weary routine, Eva resenting the need to care for Sissy, Frank unable to reach his oldest daughter.

Novack travels this shattered landscape with a sensitivity to things lost and found, the fragile wings of childhood trampled by one woman's fateful decision in a moment when her life seems unbearable. The lesson is painful: There are consequences for our actions. Of Romany descent, Natalia has always fed Sissy's insatiable curiosity with stories, tales that haunt the child during her mother's absence. Eve, on the cusp of adulthood, has nearly left behind the cares of youth; now she is confused, unsure, her provocative, blooming beauty a temptation to a man who should know better. And the silent Frank, unable to cope either before or after his wife leaves, retreats to his classic Chevy, spending endless hours avoiding the realities of his life. With a critical part of the family missing, there is no safe harbor, no rest, not even for Natalia, who realizes the enormity of her mistake, worrying if there will still be a place for her in a home where the rooms are crowded with anger.

Once begun, the story accelerates with the ferocity of a runaway train, unstoppable, each character tenderly brought to a precipice, their fears, needs and hopes in suspension, unable to mend what has been broken. This subtle indictment of self-absorbed parents is written in prose that is at times stunning, others weighted with raw emotion as Natalia's children struggle to define their changed world. As the neighbors gossip about the grieving woman whose child has disappeared and who drinks to excess, the air in the Kisch's house trembles with crisis, rage and unpredictability. Even Natalia's return cannot save her family, caught in a roiling emotional conflict with no focus, each character desperate to survive a wash of feelings grown out of control. In the end, the world will have its way, Novack's powerful, stinging novel a reminder of the frailty of all we take for granted and the terrible price of lies and betrayal, forgiveness just out of reach. Luan Gaines/2009.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant and honest; a great read, March 25, 2009

By	Mitzi McMahon (Racine, WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found this to be rich with layers and exquisite details. It was so moving, so thoroughly engaging that I feel as though these characters are a part of me now. I felt haunted by the ending; the sadness and the loss, the potential never realized: these have stayed with me.

The prose is superbly crafted: fresh, charming, inspired, honest. It was a wonderful read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "like falling glass", March 23, 2009

By	J. Capone (philadelphia, pa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I love good metaphors, and here were so many. I don't read often enough, but this book took me 2 days to finish. I had to know what happened. And the characters were so honest, that at the end, I had the overwhelming desire to search for them on Facebook to see what they were doing now and to see if they were ok.