The Great Wide Open

Author(s): Douglas Kennedy

No Category

'Accomplished...a strangely mesmerising effect...absolutely excellent'
New Statesman


New York, 1980s


Alice Burns - a young book editor - is deep into a manuscript about the morass of family life. The observations within resonate, perhaps, because she has just watched her own family implode.


As she reads she wonders: When did the sadness start? And could it be that unhappiness is a choice?


Thus begins a great American epic which follows Alice as she navigates high school, first love and sexism at an elite college, a spell in 1970s Ireland, and a tragedy that sends her stateside as the US embraces a cowboy actor named Reagan.


But it is also the tale of her endlessly complex parents and brothers - how their destinies are written by the lies they tell themselves and others.


The Great Wide Open is an immensely ambitious and compulsive saga; a novel which will speak volumes to anyone who has marvelled at that pain that can only be caused by family itself.

$26.00 NZD


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Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780099585213
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Arrow
  • : 0.405
  • : July 2019
  • : 3.5 Centimeters X 12.9 Centimeters X 19.8 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Douglas Kennedy
  • : Paperback
  • : Oct-19
  • : English
  • : 813.6
  • : 592