- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: One World (Mar 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0345455339
- ISBN-13: 978-0345455338
- Product Dimensions: 22 x 14.7 x 2.6 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,224,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Grace: A Novel
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Justin Peters is a Harvard-educated professor of British and classic literature who reads Shakespeare to his four-year-old daughter, Giselle. A native of Trinidad and the product of a strict, English-style education, Justin and his focus on the works of “Dead White Men” receive little professional respect at the public Brooklyn college where he teaches. But whatever troubles he might have at work are eclipsed when he realizes his wife, Sally, has begun to pull away from him, both physically and emotionally.
Harlem-born Sally Peters, a mother on the verge of turning forty, is a primary school teacher who believes that joy is a learned skill, and that it takes strength to be happy. After a life of tragic losses, Sally thought she had finally found that strength when she met Justin.
But now, Sally wants something more. And Justin is angered by her uncertainty about their life and frightened by the thought that perhaps Sally never stopped loving the ex-boyfriend for whom she wrote fierce poems. Is he, Justin wonders, responsible for helping Sally find meaning in her life—a life that seems to him most fortunate? If Sally and Justin’s union is to survive, both must face the crippling echoes of their own pasts before those memories forever cloud and alter their future.
Set in a snow-covered Brooklyn, Grace is a thoughtful and lovely meditation on trust, redemption, and family. Elizabeth Nunez’s delicate prose brings the struggles, aches, and tender moments of this contemporary urban love story into vivid focus.
Harlem-born Sally Peters, a mother on the verge of turning forty, is a primary school teacher who believes that joy is a learned skill, and that it takes strength to be happy. After a life of tragic losses, Sally thought she had finally found that strength when she met Justin.
But now, Sally wants something more. And Justin is angered by her uncertainty about their life and frightened by the thought that perhaps Sally never stopped loving the ex-boyfriend for whom she wrote fierce poems. Is he, Justin wonders, responsible for helping Sally find meaning in her life—a life that seems to him most fortunate? If Sally and Justin’s union is to survive, both must face the crippling echoes of their own pasts before those memories forever cloud and alter their future.
Set in a snow-covered Brooklyn, Grace is a thoughtful and lovely meditation on trust, redemption, and family. Elizabeth Nunez’s delicate prose brings the struggles, aches, and tender moments of this contemporary urban love story into vivid focus.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
His saving grace
4 Mar 2003
Format:Hardcover
A story of a marriage. A story of growth. A story of sacrifice. A story of heart. A love story. Elizabeth Nunez encapsulates all of these in her latest novel about the Trinidad-born Justin and Harlemite Sally, who are teetering on the edge of their once marital bliss. Justin, a British literary scholar, is convinced that his wife is seeing someone else. Sally has become despondent, turned from him in bed, and seems to just be going through the motions. She no longer takes pride in reading the great works, instead turning to self-help books and talk shows for enlightenment. In short, things have changed. Determined to hold the family together, Justin refuses to accept the fact that Sally may be leaving him. He endures other trials outside of his marriage in his workplace that get him thinking about what he must do to prevent the ties that bind his family from severing.
Nunez has a beautiful way with language, comforting the reader with her lilting prose. With this language, she brings a vibrance to her characters that is rarely paralleled. Don't expect a highly-charged dramatic plotline. Nunez instead relies on realistic human situations, emotions, and personas to captivate her readers. This book is titled appropriately, as Nunez handles the trying times of her characters with an abundance of grace.
Reviewed by CandaceK
The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
An observation of a marriage
11 July 2003
Format:Hardcover
What happens when you learn the "big T Truth" about your marriage and your spouse? What happens when a husband learns that the "more" a wife is looking for does not necessarily include him, that her search is not about him? Elizabeth Nunez, with all the deftness of the master storyteller that she is, has crafted a tale of a woman searching for her truth and her husband learning his. Sally wants more; Justin thinks she has enough. Sally is blinded by fear; Justin can only see her through his eyes. "Grace" is a commentary on the truth that a marriage is comprised of two individuals, that despite the oneness society places on a couple, the fact remains that the couple is made of two. Sally and Justin, like some couples, approached the point when one part of the couple begins the fight for her individuality. Some people never make the necessary waves in a marriage in order to grab a better hold onto one's individuality; Justin's mother didn't . Sally did. Justin's turning point came when he realized that his mother was surfing those same waves internally.
In this quilt of Sally and Justin's marriage, Nunez also threaded in other patches that either blinded Justin to his big T Truth or opened his eyes to it. Maybe his wife has taken a lover, just not the man he envisioned. Maybe it is jealousy spurring him to say his wife isn't a poet. Maybe he holds back complimenting his student because of his own lack of success in his dream.
Thank you, Elizabeth Nunzez, for doing it again: giving me a story of a man so focused on himself that he thinks those people in his life are just bit players in his Grecian Tragedy, people on the periphery of his drama.
In this quilt of Sally and Justin's marriage, Nunez also threaded in other patches that either blinded Justin to his big T Truth or opened his eyes to it. Maybe his wife has taken a lover, just not the man he envisioned. Maybe it is jealousy spurring him to say his wife isn't a poet. Maybe he holds back complimenting his student because of his own lack of success in his dream.
Thank you, Elizabeth Nunzez, for doing it again: giving me a story of a man so focused on himself that he thinks those people in his life are just bit players in his Grecian Tragedy, people on the periphery of his drama.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Elizabeth does it again!
29 May 2003
Format:Hardcover
The above reviews cover this book great so I'll just add a few...
Sally, a primary school teacher on the verge of turning 40 finds herself wanting more. She finds herself feeling like she just exist, a mother, a wife, a friend,a teacher. She struggles with some serious wounds of the past that haunt her. Feeling unfulfilled she wants more, to feel like her life has meaning. Justin starts to open his eyes to his wife once she says" she needs space" he fears her leaving,Justin loves his wife and he also has issues from the past. Sally attends a retreat where can think, find her meaning, her worth. She discovers what it is she needs and where she wants to be..she already has the things she needs and she is the woman that she wants to be.
This was a moving, realistic family drama about love,marriage,finding yourself, letting go and having peace of mind and heart.
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