Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento: 1964-07-02
Sexo: Female
Nacionalidade: USA
Local de nascimento: Los Angeles, California, USA
Educação: Wesleyan University
Washington University in St. Louis
Ocupações: professor
Organizações: Boston College
Prémios e menções honrosas: Guggeheim Fellowship (1999)
Agente: Richard Parks Agency
Fatal error: Call to undefined function isLitsy() in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 425: Elizabeth Graver’s new novel, The End of the Point, is set in a summer community on Buzzard’s Bay from 1942 to 1999. She is the author of three other novels: Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her short story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories (1991, 2001); Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards (1994, 1996, 2001), The Pushcart Prize Anthology (2001), and Best American Essays (1998). Her story “The Mourning Door” was award the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares Magazine. The mother of two daughters, she teaches English and Creative Writing at Boston College.

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Críticas

The Honey Thief por Elizabeth Graver

Month of November 2022 - The Thief Books

The Honey Thief by Elizabeth Graver (1999; 2000 ed.) 264 pages.

Setting: Ithaca, New York

2.5 stars rounded up. I simply didn’t find the story very interesting and was left with an incomplete feeling at the end.

This is about an 11-year-old girl, Eva, who was trying to cope in life from losing her father when she was only 6-years old. He had psychological problems and was bipolar, and he had committed suicide. It was possible she may have inherited this gene as well. After stealing a few jars of honey and getting caught, this little girl befriends the single 42-year-old man, a beekeeper named Burl, and begins to spend her days down at his house, while her mother worked, learning about bees.

I have to say, I was just a little creeped out that the author set the little girls age so young. Thank God this was written by a woman because, at times, I wasn’t so sure where the story was going. Seriously, with today being different times, and with child sex trafficking a big issue in the news, this story just didn’t set well with me.

But, it never lead to that. It really didn’t lead to anything, not even a love interest between Eva’s mom, Miriam, and the beekeeper.… (mais)

Assinalado

MissysBookshelf | 11 outras críticas | Aug 27, 2023 |

Kantika: A Novel por Elizabeth Graver

A dazzling Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home.

Assinalado

HandelmanLibraryTINR | May 17, 2023 |

The Honey Thief por Elizabeth Graver

At first this is a story about a mother moving with her pre-teen daughter from New York City to the countryside where she hopes for a fresh start. The daughter, Eva, has been caught shoplifting a number of times, she’s definitely got an attitude and maybe something else is going on. Her mother Miriam has to work long hours to support them, so Eva is left to her own devices- there’s a babysitter but she goes out bike riding and exploring alone. Finds a small farm nearby where a man puts out honey jars by the road for sale, on the honor system. You can guess what happens. Then Eva sneaks into the field where the hives are kept, and meets the beekeeper. She finds his work fascinating, starts pestering him with questions, hanging around, wanting to know more. He shows her things when he opens a hive, in spite of feeling uneasy about it. Meanwhile there’s chapters showing the mother’s point of view, and they weave into the past, telling what happened when Miriam first met Eva’s father. At first I thought this part so dull in comparison- personally I much preferred reading about how the bees were tended, and I related a lot more to the reclusive beekeeper, his reasons for settling on his grandmother’s farm leaving behind a lucrative desk job. . . but I soon found how relevant the backstory of Eva’s parents was.

SKIP this paragraph to avoid SPOILERS: her father had a mental illness, which he failed to disclose to Miriam when they first met, fell in love quickly and had a baby without much planning. He hadn’t had a bad episode in a long time and wanting to be better, thought he’d put it all behind him, until things slowly started unraveling. When Miriam finally realized something was seriously wrong, they were at a crisis point. This all felt way too familiar to me, as a reader- someone in my family has bipolar disorder, so I knew exactly what they were talking about it and a lot of it rang true to me. How the symptoms sneak up on you, subtly getting worse, but you don’t want it to be the mental illness so you don’t see it for what it is at first.. And after you’re always questioning: is my teen just being a teenager? is this normal mood swings? or is it a manic episode.

So I found the book really compelling, even though some of it was uneven, sometimes the dialog a bit awkward, the accident at the end a bit predictable. However then it dropped off abruptly. I expected a bit more resolution- I was glad that Miriam finally told Eva more about her father, but she didn’t really explain the illness, and there was no hint of them finding out the answer to the big question: does Eva have it too. I suppose that’s realistic after all- you wouldn’t immediately tell an eleven-year-old who’s ready to find reasons to distrust you already, that you suspect she could have a serious mental health issue- but still I wanted to know more.

I liked this well enough I’ll look out for more by the same author.

from the Dogear Diary… (mais)

Assinalado

jeane | 11 outras críticas | Jul 31, 2021 |

The End of the Point por Elizabeth Graver

I thought this book was wonderful. It captured and held my attention and had good flow and a good plot. It also made me cry which is how I know it was good because not every book can do that. I will definitely read more of this author.

Assinalado

SWade0126 | 15 outras críticas | Jan 11, 2019 |

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