Douglas Kennedy

Pour son célbre agitateur de pre, pour son artiste de mre, Hannah Buchan est une vraie déception. A vingt ans, au lieu de se fondre dans l'ébullition sociale des années soixante-dix, elle n'a d'autre ambition que d'épouser son petit ami médecin et de fonder une famille. Installée dans une ville du Maine, Hannah gote aux charmes trs, trs discrets de la vie conjugale. C'est alors que le hasard lui offre l'occasion d'échapper son quotidien : malgré elle, Hannah va se rendre complice d'un grave délit. Trente ans plus tard survient le 11 Septembre, et avec lui le temps du doute, de la remise en question, de la suspicion. Le passé d'Hannah va resurgir inopinément. Et du jour au lendemain, son petit monde soigneusement protégé va s'écrouler...

Harry Ricks is a man who has lost everything. A romantic mistake at the small American college where he used to teach has cost him his job and his marriage. And when the ensuing scandal threatens to completely destroy him, he flees to Paris. He arrives in the French capital in the bleak midwinter, and ends up having to work as a night guard to make ends meet. Then Margit, a beautiful, mysterious stranger, walks into his life. But their passionate and intense relationship triggers a string of inexplicable events, and soon Harry finds himself in a nightmare from which there is no easy escape.

`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.