Remembering the Bones: A Novel - Hardcover

Itani, Frances

3.62

1,315 ratings by Goodreads

9780871139771: Remembering the Bones: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871139774 ISBN 13: 9780871139771

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007

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Itani’s writing is merely breathtaking.” Newsday

The new novel from the award-winning author of Deafening is a poignant exploration of one eighty-year-old life, as its heroine lies at the bottom of a ravine where she has crashed en route to visit the queen. Born the same day as Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Canadian Georgina Danforth Witley is one of ninety-nine privileged Commonwealth subjects invited to an eightieth birthday lunch at Buckingham Palace. All she has to do is drive to the airport and board the plane for London. Except that Georgie drives off the road, her car plunging into a thickly wooded ravine. Thrown from the car and unable to move, she must rely on her no-nonsense wit, her full store of family memories, and a recitation of the bones in her body a childhood exercise that reminds her she is still alive. As Georgina lies helpless, she reflects on her role as a daughter, mother, sister, wife, and widow on lost loves and painful secrets offering a whimsical and profound insight into the life of one ordinary woman who, while drawing on her instincts to survive, asks herself: what has it all amounted to?

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About the Author:

Frances Itani is the author of #1 best seller Deafening, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Caribbean and Canada region), and the Drummer General's Award for Fiction. It was a finalist for the IMPAC Award and for Canada Reads 2006; movie rights have been optioned. Her other books include two collections of short fiction: Leaning, Leaning Over Water and Poached Egg on Toast.

Review:

"In unpretentious, quietly penetrating prose, Itani exposes the richness and depth beneath the surface of one ordinary life." -- The New Yorker

"With this book, Itani joins a group of novelists who have chronicled quiet lives from start to finish, uncovering treasure in their dark corners: Carol Shields with The Stone Diaries, Marilynne Robinson with Gilead . . . Apparently small moments assume lyrical dimensions and significance, and here is where Itani's true gift lies. . . . [Itani] dips into the past to illuminate the present moment, building such emotional complexity that the novel's ending--both inevitable and surprising--is as subtle as it is wrenching." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Similiarly to Alice Munro, Itani eschews pyrotechnics of language in favor of building psychologically toward realization. . . . Itani treats her memorable characters with gentle humor and compassion; in Remembering the Bones, people ache to do their best in a physically and emotionally dangerous world. . . . Beautifully paced . . . [this novel] is, in its every moment, an argument for life." -- The Globe & Mail

"[An] exquisite new novel . . . Itani is a spectacularly sensitive writer, and I could not put this book down, except for the moments when tears clouded my vision. . . . What lifts the book into the realm of the truly special is Itani's remarkable language. . . . Remembering the Bones is a novel not to be missed." -- The Edmonton Journal

"[Itani] crafts a beautiful novel filled with unbearable tension. Highly recommended." -- Library Journal

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