Losing Charlotte /
by Clay, Heather,
| Item type | Location | Collection | Call Number | Status | Date Due |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Circulating | Wells (Albany) | Adult Fiction | AF Clay (Browse Shelf) | Available | |
| Circulating | Athens | Adult Fiction | AF Clay (Browse Shelf) | Available | |
| Circulating | Nelsonville | Adult Fiction | AF Clay (Browse Shelf) | Available | |
| Circulating | The Plains | Adult Fiction | AF Clay (Browse Shelf) | Available |
From Product Description:
When Charlotte leaves Four Corners Farm, marries Bruce, and moves to Manhattan’s West Village, the sisters’ feelings for each other remain as intense and contradictory as ever, despite the distance between them. But nothing will solder their lives more fatefully than Charlotte’s pregnancy and the day on which she delivers twin boys, then dies of complications following their birth.
Together, Knox and Bruce—sister- and brother-in-law in name, but strangers in every other respect—take up the work of caring for Charlotte’s two motherless boys. In their mourning, and in the joy and desolation that flood in as their love for the children deepens, Bruce and Knox confront the ways in which their bonds to Charlotte have shaped them and struggle to define the tentative bond they are forming with each other as they navigate their exhausting, emotional daily rounds. A gripping, powerfully affecting debut novel from a stunning new writer.
From Amazon.com Review:
Question: This is your first novel. What was your inspiration for writing Losing Charlotte?
Heather Clay: I had heard of maternal deaths like the one that occurs in Losing Charlotte, and I suppose the inspiration for a book came at the point my imagination took over after the bare facts of such accounts had been related to me. These deaths are rare, but they do happen, and the idea of something so Victorian happening in a modern hospital setting led me to wonder how such an event would affect the modern family--in which, for example, the old-fashioned expectation that a widower might court his wife’s surviving sister has ceased to exist, but might be rattling around subconsciously somewhere in the mind of one or more of the characters. The plot and questions that coalesced around such an event brought much that I wanted to explore about family ties, place, and the gaps siblings are asked to fill in for one another to the surface, and the writing took off from there.
Question: The story unfolds in two locations: a horse farm in Kentucky and the West Village in New York City. You live in New York now. Did you grow up on a farm?
Heather Clay: I did. The setting of Four Corners Farm is almost completely autobiographical; my family runs a Thoroughbred horse farm in central Kentucky, which functions as its own little universe, and had always been a seminal place in my life and writing. The contrast between the two places where I spend the majority of my time--Kentucky and New York--and between the notions of North and South, as well as the community life that a family farm necessitates versus the isolation and independence possible in a large city, seemed fertile ground to plow as I told the story of two sisters with very distinct personalities and lives.
Question: The story is told from the perspectives of two characters--Charlotte’s sister Knox and Charlotte’s husband Bruce. Did you always know that Charlotte’s character would come to be shaped through Knox and Bruce? Who was more difficult to write?
Heather Clay: The novel went through more populous incarnations; at one point, every character in it had a voice. But as the book began to take shape in part as the story around an absence, a lacuna which each of Charlotte’s family members would describe somewhat differently and mourn differently, it made sense to me to focus in on the two characters who had the most to lose when she died: Bruce, for obvious reasons, and Knox, because she has so much unfinished business with Charlotte, and because she defines herself by the ways in which she is different from Charlotte, and has no practice existing without her sister to measure herself against.
I knew I wanted Knox and Bruce in the same house, bumping up against each other and caring for babies, but throughout, I found Bruce’s voice much easier to write in. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I chafed at times against Knox’s regressive tendencies, her desire to arrest herself in an idealized past. Or simply that Bruce’s story falls more outside my own experience, so I felt freer to imagine it.
Question: The relationship that grows between Knox and Bruce, who are virtually strangers brought together after Charlotte’s death, is fascinating. How did you approach developing this dynamic?
Heather Clay: I was afraid to go there, at first, which was part of why I kept writing chapter upon chapter in different voices. I was circling the scenes I needed to create between the two of them very warily, because I didn’t want to descend into cliché, and yet I knew that, in some form, whether verbally, sexually, or otherwise, they needed to confront each other. At once point, I kept sending Bruce out for long, meandering walks, just to keep from diving in to the dynamic you describe! Finally, there was nothing left but to write those scenes, as halting and awkward and difficult to render as they were.
Question: You have two daughters and have written for Parenting Magazine. Were you already a mother when you started writing Losing Charlotte? The atmospheric way you write about the babies in their surroundings is very striking.
Heather Clay: One of the fantastic and unexpected boons of having stewed over the book so long was the experience I gained in the meantime: becoming a mother to two baby girls! Certainly, becoming steeped in infant care, physically, emotionally, and every-which-way, made my rendering of the day-to-day tasks Bruce and Knox face more accurate, and hopefully their responses to Ethan and Ben deeper and richer on the page. Sometimes I wonder if I could only have started a book about a mother’s death in childbirth before I had children, and only finished it--and sounded halfway knowledgeable--once my daughters were here.
Question: Whom do you read who inspires you? What are you reading now?
Heather Clay: I just finished Penelope Lively’s Family Album, which I found very interesting, and am in the middle of Mary Carr’s Lit right now. I’ve been lucky enough this year to discover Elizabeth Bowen. I can’t wait to read the new Alice Munro! Anything about that family ache, about what’s unsaid, misunderstood, the simple and tragic passage of time... am I describing all fiction right now? I guess all fiction inspires me, then. If it’s good.
(Photo © Elena Seibert)
Knox Bolling has always resented her beautiful sister, Charlotte, and blames Charlotte for her situation. She's 34, living on her parents' Kentucky horse farm and unable to commit to her boyfriend's repeated marriage proposals. Charlotte, on the other hand, has moved to New York City, where she dabbles in acting and holds a series of dead-end jobs before meeting money manager Bruce Tavert, who, after a brief courtship, proposes. Their intention to start a family, however, proves deadly for Charlotte, who dies in childbirth, leaving Bruce with premature twin boys and providing Knox with an opportunity to explore life outside of Kentucky by coming to New York to help Bruce.
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Heather Clay meant well but....
I found Losing Charlotte extremely difficult to read. I tried desperately to find something identifiable with each character but found it hard to get passed the coldness of not only the characters but with the writing itself. Ms Clay seemed intent on impressing us with her wealth of verbal skills that I feel an injustice was done with fleshing out Knox, Bruce, and Charlotte. She could have used simpler words which would have more than likely been much more profound and powerful than (as my kids would say) for the need to use Big Words. I just finished the book and am left wanting. Not another novel but to start over and be introduce to much more human characters. Sorry Heather I was really rooting for you but have to give a thumbs down on this one.
Horrible Writing and Horrible Editing!
I was really looking forward to reading this book when I first purchased it, which I'm so mad at myself for spending the $20!!! I found the story at times hard to follow and very jumpy. The author would start talking about something and all of a sudden jump to something else without warning or lead in. I thought the book was horribly edited and at the end of some sentences, I would wonder what they were saying and that the sentence was not complete. The story went nowhere. A big disappointment.
Life within a family complicated and terribly torn by a death
Losing Charlotte is an extraordinary work by a debut novelist and would merit exceptional reviews for one more mature. There are some portions which might have been cleaned up by her editor, but they were not carelessly left in the book - she wrote each word, phrase, and sentence deliberately and with exactness. That we find fault with any small portions of the book and its characters is because we are uncomfortable with the book's subjects: death and dying within the family, the relationship which develops between Knox and Bruce which borders on incestuous to them and the people in their lives, but which was a dead solid bet to happen, and lastly, the handling of the children and whose mother are they? will also serve to complicate the inextricable winding together of their lives. <br />Ms. Clay, in an interview, reveals how difficult it was for her to approach the sexual and physical attraction which had to occur and ultimately, would both complicate and resolve into a relationship which no one doubted, but which made everyone itch with discomfort like the bite of a no-see-um. <br /> <br />The author is as handy with the bluegrass as a thoroughbred, but remains somewhat uncomfortable in The City where her descriptions and dialogue lag behind the brisk familiarity with farm country and people whose lives revolve around horses. Nonetheless, she carries it well enough to cause us to take it at face value, and to understand that the author may indeed be less comfortable with the city setting and on less stable ground. I do not however, find that she lost her her way; instead, the reader will find that every situation was handled by her as she wished it to be. This is not a loosely constructed book; it is deliberate and purposeful although it may cause the reader some discomfort demanded by the situation. <br /> <br />This book should be savored like good Kentucky bourbon - it is not a fly-through beach read with sunscreen on the pages. The situation of Knox and Bruce, and the relationships with the deceased sister, wife and mother, is not an easy construct. That this young author can handle such a complex emotional minefield with grace and truth is this book's strongest recommendation. <br /> <br />A wonderful book from an author whose future work is much anticipated. .[ASIN:0595170315 One Brief Shining Moment]]
A coming-of-age story about a confused 34 year old
Heather Clay's first novel follows thirty four year old Knox's struggles with her family via first-person and narrative chapters and flashbacks as she comes to grips with her identity. All her life Knox has maintained an internal caretaker role, as though her sister, brother, and parents all needed her to support them to keep some semblance of peace in the family. <br />When her sister Charlotte dies after birthing her twin boys (via Caesarean section), Knox determines that she should visit Charlotte's husband Ben and help him raise the two boys through their early weeks. She takes on the same caretaker role she has felt all her life, performing Charlotte's motherly duties side-by-side with Ben, while maintaining a sisterly role with him. <br />Ms. Clay does a good job of displaying Knox's mental confusion; she doesn't know her real identity, having lived most of her life subjugating herself to her perceived role of caring for the rest of the family. This confusion rubs off on the reader; portions of Knox's mental struggles are difficult to follow and much too detailed. As a result, the reader may also find themselves struggling - to continue reading. <br />I didn't get a feeling for the characters in this story. Knox's confusion and mental gymnastics translated into a feeling that she was still 15 years old, albeit she is a 34 year-old experienced teacher. I couldn't relate to her. None of the other players are really developed into people you want to know. <br />
Coming of Age at 34!
Heather Clay's LOSING CHARLOTTE is true to the setting. I knew where the story took place before Lexington was mentioned near the end and she has a profound knowledge of the breeding of horses for the track. <br />I never could find any place to identify with the characters, they were disjointed like puppets that never make the stage. Going over and over the same material made for a slow moving story. It was somewhere near page 125 before Charlotte died, which makes for a drudging backstory. I was never sure if she suffered from mental illness or was stone for most of her life. <br />A book that has Kentucky as a background always makes me sit up and take notice, but a good story must have some substance to fill out the details. <br />Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.
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