Blessings
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Blessings, the bestselling novel by the author of Black and Blue, One True Thing, Object Lessons, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life, begins when, late at night, a teenage couple drives up to the estate owned by Lydia Blessing and leaves a box. In this instant, the world of the estate called Blessings is changed forever. The story of Skip Cuddy, the Blessings caretaker, who finds a baby asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep her, and of matriarch Lydia Blessing, who, for her own reasons, decides to help him, Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present; what makes a person, a life, legitimate or illegitimate, and who decides; the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about whom The Washington Post Book World said, “Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family.”Book MagazineIn her elegant, compassionate, but not always plausible new novel, Quindlen takes readers to an estate in a town called Mount Mason. The estate is named Blessings, and its eighty-year-old owner, Lydia, has been living the staid and brittle life of remorse and "self-imposed exile" for as long as she can remember. Things change when a baby mysteriously shows up in a box on the steps of the garage and the handyman, Skip Cuddy, decides to raise the child as his own. His attempt to keep the baby a secret fails miserably, and soon Lydia and Skip, the unlikeliest of friends, develop a binding affection for the child, whom Skip names Faith. The writing is lovely, and some of the insights into human nature are breathtaking. But when the real world does finally intrude and the tranquillity of Blessings is broken, Quindlen sends her characters down improbable paths; suddenly they are acting, reacting and speaking in ways that seem oddly out of sync with the personalities she has developed. Still, there are great pleasures to be had in reading this novel, particularly its lambent prose.
