Such Good People [Mass Market Paperback]

Martha Whitmore Hickman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997

Into the everyday life of a picture-perfect, middle class family comes a tragedy both unexpected and inexplicable when the youngest daughter dies in an accident. Now this once stable family, their lives forever changed by unimaginable loss, must learn how to cope, share, grieve, and grow in order to ever approach normalcy again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing from her own experience, Hickman, author of the nonfiction Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working through Grief, has written an earnest first novel about how a family copes with the accidental death of a child. The central character is Laura Randall, a full-time housewife who gave up her career as a graphic artist to raise her children. Her husband, Trace, is a kindly, if dry, philosophy professor so consumed by his work that Laura often feels he isn't listening when she recounts her admittedly mundane daily tasks. Their sons, Bart and Philip, are both nice college-age kids. Their youngest child, Annie, is a bright, beautiful and slightly rebellious 16-year-old, who may or may not be having sex with her new boyfriend, but who is definitely tired of her father being so distant and her mother being so prying. When the family goes on summer vacation, Annie is killed in a horseback-riding mishap. The rest of the novel shows Laura and Trace grieving in their different ways (unsurprisingly, she's emotional and he's not). They grow apart and even seek emotional solace?though never sinfully?in the arms of others. This is an example of the novel as a therapeutic tool. The emotions are never false, but they're rarely dramatic, either, and the rather stiff dialogue is spoken by characters who are never more than the sum of their situations.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Trace and Laura Randall have had a good life together, he as local college professor and she as a housewife and mother to their two grown sons and their teenaged daughter, Annie. Annie's violent death while they are all on vacation leaves the family in shock and then in a state of limbo as each member must deal separately with the loss. Characters are well delineated, and the story draws to an acceptable conclusion. Popular fiction collections where Judith Guest's Ordinary People (LJ 5/1/96) circulated well should consider purchasing this book; however, missing here is the raw angst that made Anna Quindlen's One True Thing (LJ 9/15/94) such a brilliant novel about death. Nice work, however, and the Christian overtones will not offend the general reader.?Alice DiNizo, Raritan P.L. N.J.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446604674
• ISBN-13: 978-0446604673
• Product Dimensions: 4.1 x 1 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,449,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How We Grieve, August 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Such Good People (Mass Market Paperback)

Though, at first, the book felt ponderous & slow-moving, I remembered from my own experience that grieving is like depression--one feels heavy, slowed, fatigued, as though weighted down or underwater. The author captures that feeling well in her narrative of a family grieving. For those going through (or who have gone through) a grief experience, this novel will feel very familiar. The author is skillful at creating events & descriptions that evoke an "aha" response of familiarity & recognition in the reader. My favorite authors can provide for me a sense of seeing myself in a character or a situation, a sense of identification. Ms. Hickman does this well in this sensitive novel.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True life wrapped up in fiction, January 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Such Good People (Mass Market Paperback)

Even though it is fiction, I thought this book was very accuate.Annie seems to be your typical teenager,wrapped up in sex and rebellion.The parents are like most parents of today -refusing to put their foot down for fear they will lose her.Then like that in a freak accident she is gone.The rest of the book describing the familys grieving and adjustment to life after her death is really rich and truthful.