The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
A Novel
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4.5 • 21 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award
Longlisted for 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
Kirkus Reviews’s Best Fiction of 2017
Kirkus Reviews’s Best Debut Novels of 2017
Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels: 2017
The New York Times Book Review’s Editors’ Choice
Indie Next Pick for September 2017
Kirkus Reviews’s 13 Fiction Debuts & Breakthroughs That Live Up to the Hype
Bustle’s 9 Fall Book Debuts By Women You’re Going To Want To Read Immediately
Nantucket Magazine’s 7 for September 2017
Kirkus Reviews’s 9 Excellent Reads for Labor Day Weekend
Entertainment Weekly’s Thirteen Books to Read in August
San Diego Magazine’s Your Book Shelf: 5 Books to Read in August
“[A] stunning debut...reminds me of my most favorite authors: J.D. Salinger, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Joan Didion.” —A.M. Homes
I viewed the consumptive nature of love as a threat to serious women. But the wonderful man I just married believes as I do—work is paramount, absolutely no children—and now love seems to me quite marvelous.
These words are spoken to a rapturous audience by Joan Ashby, a brilliant and intense literary sensation acclaimed for her explosively dark and singular stories.
When Joan finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she is stunned by Martin’s delight, his instant betrayal of their pact. She makes a fateful, selfless decision then, to embrace her unintentional family.
Challenged by raising two precocious sons, it is decades before she finally completes her masterpiece novel. Poised to reclaim the spotlight, to resume the intended life she gave up for love, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportion forces her to question every choice she has made.
Epic, propulsive, incredibly ambitious, and dazzlingly written, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is a story about sacrifice and motherhood, the burdens of expectation and genius. Cherise Wolas’s gorgeous debut introduces an indelible heroine candid about her struggles and unapologetic in her ambition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This long-winded debut saga takes place over three decades in the life of a writer. By age 13, Joan Ashby, a writer to her core, has vowed never to allow marriage or offspring to get in the way of her authorial life. By her early 20s she has published two dark, prize-winning short story collections. Beautiful and poised, Joan travels the world on book tours and the literary world awaits with bated breath her first novel. But she falls for a brilliant, dashing young eye doctor, marries him, and her plans change. Their beloved son, Daniel, is Joan's doppelganger and loves the written word from an early age, but she never lets on to him that she is a famous writer. As Daniel grows, Joan writes stories, which she reads to him, and also novels, which she keeps secret from both her son and her husband, believing she must keep this self separate from her self as mother and wife. Eventually, she has another son and decides not to publish the novel she has secretly completed, because she believes she must devote her time to keeping her troubled but brilliant second son from the brink of despair. In the meantime, Daniel discovers his mother is an author. Joan finally flees to Dharamsala for 200 pages of meditation, recovering her identity, forgiving her son, falling in love again, coming to terms with her marriage and writing another novel. The novel, in addition to overextending itself both in scope and actual page count is frustrating, shallowly addressing its central theme of artistic pursuit versus family, and eventually turns into more of an inspirational primer on Buddhism than character study.
