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    The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel
    Ebook317 pages4 hours

    The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel

    By Heather Barbieri

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “The Cottage at Glass Beach, an enchanting novel about mothers and daughters on an isolated island, is a romantic, delicious read. Barbieri’s beautiful writing and beguiling world view revel in the realities and the mysteries of the sea and of life itself.” — Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Heat Wave

    Heather Barbieri follows her acclaimed Gaelic-tinged drama The Lace Makers of Glenmara with the resonant tale of a woman who, in the wake of scandal, flees to a remote Maine island to reconnect with her past—and to come to terms with the childhood tragedy that has haunted her for a lifetime.

    Married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts history, Nora Cunningham is a picture-perfect political wife and mother. But her life falls to pieces when she, along with the rest of the world, learns of the infidelity of her husband, Malcolm.

    Humiliated and hounded by the press, Nora packs up her young daughters and takes refuge on Burke's Island, a craggy spit of land off the coast of Maine. Settled by Irish immigrants, the island is a place where superstition and magic are carried on the ocean winds, and wishes and dreams wash ashore with the changing tides.

    Nora has not been back to the remote community for decades—not since the summer her mother disappeared at sea. One night while sitting alone on Glass Beach below the cottage where she spent her childhood, Nora succumbs to grief, her tears flowing into the ocean. Days later she finds an enigmatic fisherman named Owen Kavanagh shipwrecked on the rocks nearby. Is he, as her friend Polly suggests, a selkie—a mythical being of island legend—summoned by her heartbreak, or simply someone else trying to find his way in the wake of his own personal struggles?

    Just as she begins to regain her balance, her daughters embark on a reckless odyssey of their own—a journey that will force Nora to find the courage to chart her own course and finally face the truth about her marriage, her mother, and her long-buried past.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 15, 2012
    ISBN9780062107985
    Unavailable
    The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel
    Author

    Heather Barbieri

    The author of two previous novels, The Lace Makers of Glenmara and Snow in July, Heather Barbieri has won international prizes for her short fiction. She lives in Seattle with her family.

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    Reviews for The Cottage at Glass Beach

    3.5/5

    9 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Very coastal Maine. About a woman who retreats to her family's cottage with her daughters after her philandering charming politician husband puts them in the media's eye. She learns some secrets about her family, bonds with an aunt, and possibly gets romantic with marine life. Not quite sure. The Celtic supernatural element was rather mystically vague and the ending felt unfinished. By the author of The Lacemakers of Glenmara. For those who like a little Celtic supernatural with their beach read.
    • 3/5
      Book had an awesome beginning but went , actually didn't go far enough, nowhere until the end and then left me hanging with too many unanswered questions and too cutesy an ending.
    • 4/5
      Nora Keane has a troubled past and a troubled present. Her mother disappeared when Nora was five, and her marriage has been rocked by an affair. To get away from the scandal of her husband's affair, Nora packs up her two daughters and retreats to the small Maine Island where she was born. At the island Nora tries to sort out her marriage and find out what, exactly, happened to her mother. The island is deeply steeped in Celtic mythology, and residents believe in the magical qualities of the sea. They believe that the sea brings creatures like selkies to aid mortals, and certainly some of the characters on the island have other-worldly qualities. This book is hardly fantasy, but it deals with how mythology functions in people's lives. These beliefs are particularly salient on a small island reliant on a tempestuous ocean for its safety and its livelihood. Though Nora has clearly suffered, she is not always an especially likable character. She doesn't seem to take her older daughter's feelings about her home and father very seriously. I also found the resolution of the final series of events to be entirely unbelievable. In sum, not a bad book, and definitely well-suited to summer reading.
    • 4/5
      When Nora needed a place to escape the spotlight shining on her husband's infidelity, she retreated with her daughters to the island where she was born, the island she and her father left when she was just five years old after her mother disappeared. There Nora finds an aunt who loves her, a cottage that was once a home, and the still unanswered questions about her mother's disappearance. Woven through the story is Irish mythology and a deep and abiding love of the sea.This was a book that once I started, I couldn't put down. The writing style is wonderful, as is the way the author weaves in old fairy stories with ease. Maire and Nora are great characters, and the Annie and Ella are precocious and intelligent children trying to deal with a crumbling family and a new-found love of the sea. I would have given it five stars if more of the questions about Maeve's disappearance has been answered- at the end I still had too many questions about that to be fully satisfied with the narrative. That said, this was a truly enjoyable read; I will certainly pick up other books by the author.
    • 4/5
      Oh the women of the McGann family! Strong minded and strong willed.Ella, one of the youngest not the least by any means. Nora, mother of two daughtersElla and Annie, was the daughter of Maeve. Maeve who had vanished one day when Norawas only a small child of five. She had to memory of what had happened that day.They lived on an island, Maeve and her family. It was the island where she hadgrown up along with her sister Maire. Their father was a fisherman, and the girls,the whole family seemed to have the sea running through their veins. Live lived nextto it and they swam in it, and depended on it to sustain their lives.After Nora's mother disappeared, her father could not remain there with thememories and the doubts, so he took his daughter away. They went to the mainlandand made anew life. He let nothing of the old life touch his daughter. Even whenMaire tried, for years, to reach out to the child, he put a stop to it.Years passed and Nora married and had two daughters of her own. As it can happen,the path she chose had many bumps and turns and when her husband was unfaithful, itwas too much for Nora to take in. But Maire had never given up and a letter arrived.The timing could not have been better. All of the pain and loss that Nara was feelingin her life seemed too much to bear. A trip to her childhood home seemed to be what sheneeded. A place to meet up with long forgotten family, clear her head and decide whatwould come next.History has a way of affecting the present, especially family history. What wouldthe island hold? Would the secrets of her past be revealed? Would Nora find the peaceshe so desperately sought?Recommended for a nice comfortable read, for the beach or a chilly afternoon.