A Year and a Day: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "MAMA came back three days after her funeral..." (more)
Key Phrases: swing like thunder, pork queen, male rows, Aunt Aggy, Joe Fry, Dotty King (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this heartfelt if familiar coming-of-age novel set in smalltown Shelby, Iowa, in 1975, Pietrzyk (Pears on a Willow Tree) chronicles a year in the life of 15-year-old Alice Martin after her mother's suicide. "Once you get through this first year, you're fine," the high school principal promises her, reading from a manual. But Alice isn't so sure. Three days after her mother's death, as Alice tries to fill her place by preparing Sunday morning pancakes, her mother speaks to her, providing advice on cooking, makeup and driving, but rarely answering the questions Alice really wants answered: Who is my father? What happened to him? How could you leave me? All Alice and her older brother, Will, know is what their great-aunt Aggy tells them: their mother moved away at age 17 and came back pregnant, with a baby in her arms. Over the course of the year, Alice uncovers secrets, unravels mysteries and finds that nothing and no one are what they seem. Her baseball-star brother runs away to see the Red Sox, Alice herself dallies with the school's bad boy and Pietrzyk allows the reader hints of why Alice's mother might have killed herself. Eccentric mothers and long-suffering daughters are a dime a dozen in recent fiction, but Pietrzyk paints a rich picture of life in rural Iowa, from summer jobs detassling corn to the suffocating force of conformity. As one Shelby housewife advises Alice, "Fitting in is so important. Everything is simpler that way."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Annette kills herself, and no one knows why, not the aunt she had lived with, not the two teenage children she leaves behind. There is no note, no sudden revelation that the doctor had diagnosed a painful and deadly disease. For the family there is just the unalterable knowledge that the woman at the center of their lives drove her car onto the railroad track, lowered the window and tossed away the keys.

Alice, Annette's 15-year-old daughter and the narrator of A Year and a Day, is determined to uncover the mystery behind her mother's abrupt departure. Her grief-stricken efforts are at the center of the novel, Leslie Pietrzyk's second.

The high school principal calls to comfort Alice. He tells her, "The guidance counselor showed me in a book that after someone dies, you go through stages: denial, anger, depression, acceptance. . . . But once you get through this first year, you're fine. Mrs. Flesner photocopied the chapter." In addition to photocopied reassurances of the duration of grief, Annette's sudden absence is marked by neighborly offerings of Jell-O -- green with canned pear halves, pineapple chunks and marshmallows, orange with mandarin oranges, yellow with pineapple and walnuts. " 'Now it's official. We have a death in the family,' " says Aunt Aggy, entering the kitchen with yet another dish. Aunt Aggy, who had been threatening for years to fall apart, does. "No one could compete with Aunt Aggy on being the Crazy One," Alice thinks. "If I said I was hearing voices, she'd hear more voices, louder voices, voices offering stock-market tips, whatever it took. So who was I supposed to be?"

Aunt Aggy may act crazy, announce she's become an artist and wander around town wearing a beret, but Alice is the one who hears a voice no one else can hear. It belongs to Mama and it is constantly in her ear, offering a stream of advice. In the bedroom it's cosmetic: "I've worn a lot of mascara and this is one thing I know. Stroke upward; take your time. Lower lashes are harder. Gently draw the brush across them like you're holding a feather. . . . Women who take care of their eyelashes are noticed." In the kitchen it's culinary: "Never wash a sifter. It will rust." But the information it delivers is never what Alice wants to know: What happened to the man who fathered her and her brother, what happened to the folder of special recipes her mother had used each Thanksgiving? And it never provides an answer to Alice's biggest question: If you loved us, why did you leave us?

With impressive attention to detail, Pietrzyk successfully recreates life in the '70s in a small Iowa town. These include summer jobs de-tasseling the corn and the radio advice of "Dotty King's Neighborly Visit," "coming at you live on KXIC-800" with tips on ridding the garden of slugs or a listener's request for "beef stew made with Coca-Cola." There is even a school square dance, "such an organized dance, with the rules and calls and the right way to do things," a progression so delicately balanced that one mistake, "one tiny thing messed up the whole dance until we were just a tangle of partners looking at each other across the square instead of promenading home." The square dance, like life, has rules. And Alice knows without a doubt that one of life's first rules has to be that a mother doesn't kill herself.

Writing about a child's attempt to cope with the ultimate betrayal would have produced a sensitive and moving book if Pietrzyk had provided some ballast for all that grief. There is nothing solid at the center of her novel to put things in perspective, only a variety of wobbling characters, all defined and directed by sadness. Because Pietrzyk relies on a single emotion to tell us who people are and why they do what they do, what they feel never seems real. Will, Alice's older brother, is good at sports, a responsible and respected young man who is sent off track not by lust or liquor but by grief. Alice is a good student, willing to memorize the periodic table of the elements for extra credit, but grief sends her into the arms of the school's sexiest bad boy. The most potentially interesting character, Aunt Aggy, with her history of dead-end romances and her monochromatic paintings of "the feelings I don't understand, the thoughts I didn't know I had," only occasionally pops out from under her beret to become a real person.

Gradually, the voice that haunts Alice reveals a past of lost love and betrayal. Unfortunately, the facts emerge encased in the kind of advice found in glossy magazines for teenage girls. It's not just that they seem an inadequate explanation of why Alice's mother chose to take her life; they contradict the image that Alice has of her as a dramatic and charismatic person. To the reader, Annette seems a little bit whiny, a bit of a bore.

One strong character standing above the flood of grief might have given the novel some valuable perspective. Alice, not ready for the role, ultimately proves the guidance counselor wrong. The alchemy that turns pain into wisdom takes more than a year and a day.

Reviewed by Susan Dooley

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (February 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060554657
• ISBN-13: 978-0060554651
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,976,646 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and wonderful!!, March 27, 2004

By	N. Gargano "nokegchris" (Waynesville NC and Bradenton, Fl) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wish I could give this book more than five stars. I loved it!
I started reading it and couldn't put it down. After I finished it, I couldn't get the characters out of my mind. I know at a future date, this will be a book I will want to read again. I can't really say what about the book grabbed me so quick and so hard, but it won't let go! I do know that I laughed out loud and cried more than once. Give it a try, I don't think you will be sorry.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful read, March 24, 2004

By A Customer

I really loved "A Year and A Day". It was a wonderfully moving novel that really took me back in time to a kinder world. Who wouldn't have wanted to grow up in a small mid-western town? I found the charecters to be interesting and well developed. I enjoyed the rich details of the life Alice and her family lead - both happy and sad. I was glad that Mama didn't tell her everything she wanted to know. I wished that the book would have taken a year and a day to read because I really enjoyed being part of Alice's life. I liked this book better than the Lovely Bones.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intensely Moving, March 18, 2004

By	FictionAddiction.NET - See all my reviews

Death is inevitable.

It will come whether people want it to or not. What happens, though, when it's your own mother and not only did she want it to happen but she parked her car on a set of railroad tracks to ensure it?

Without a word. Without any clear indication that she was even contemplating such an action.

She always seemed so happy...didn't she? Loved to cook, made plans for the summer, played games and dressed up.

Why?

Why becomes a larger-than-life word when fifteen-year-old Alice Martin tries to understand and cope with her mother's suicide. Her outlook on life, as well as that of her brother's, changes dramatically with that one event.

Lacking maternal guidance, they are forced to make choices, explore life and love on their own. Run away or stay...give up or go on. A constant internal battle.

Hearing her mother's voice does not help the situation any. Alice expects her mother to answer her questions, explain things, give her advice. But a mother who barely understood how to cope with things herself is in no position to provide just the right words for an emotionally overloaded daughter.

So Alice deals in any way she can, which sometimes is by not dealing at all. Her life has become a quest for answers, for a truth that may not even exist and may not matter anyway.

Denial, desolation, sparks of hope and heartfelt longing are experienced by the reader as much as by the protagonist. Leslie Pietrzyk's research into suicide and its aftereffects breeds credibility and ignites an inner contemplation even for those who have not been touched by it personally.