by Gail Godwin
First published 1986
Jane Clifford teaches at a midwestern college and everyone thinks she has it made. She's smart, attractive, popular with students, and still in her early thirties. Jane sees things differently. She has spent years turning to literature for guidance, but books only give her more questions instead of answers. When her grandmother dies unexpectedly, Jane travels home for the funeral. There she confronts family stories that don't quite add up and memories that clash with the versions she's been told. Meanwhile, she weighs ending her long distance relationship, an affair that has dragged on for years without resolution. Jane tries to piece together the truth about her family's past while struggling to understand why she cannot commit to her own future. She remains caught between the life others expect her to live and the one she might choose for herself.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, family-drama, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Midwest
Period: 20th-Century
429 pages · Paperback · MACMILLAN