Bride Island

by Alexandra Enders

Beautifully written and emotionally complex, Bride Island offers a poignant debut novel about love, motherhood, and the haunting and sometimes conflicting pulls of family and place. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452288347
• ISBN13: 9780452288348
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

great easy read

I was going on vacation and picked this book from the reviews I was glad I purchased it. It was a easy read and interesting to boot.

Fantastic!

I wasn't really sure about this book just based on the description, but it was chosen by our book club. Honestly, once I got through the first chapter I was hooked and couldn't put it down. I loved the book and the characters probably because I relate to their life issues. Some of the people in our book club weren't as enamoured by this book, but I simply loved it and have read it again since. I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever had hurdles in their life to get over and not necessarily had anybody in their corner. Great book!

Perfect summer read that also has heft

Bride Island is the kind of book I love to find, evoking a place so real I want to go there. Set in the state of Maine, it features narrator Polly, a single mother who doesn't have custody of her daughter, but is beginning to want to. Her troubled past and difficult family hamper her attempts to mature and emancipate, but Polly hangs in with the occasional slip that turns into a slide, and then back out again. Very gently, Enders slips myth and legend into the underpinnings, never enough to scream out but rather to tease out the notion that we humans, like the Greek gods, are flawed and learn slowly if at all. She also kindles that deep fascination some of us have with islands as well. And I loved the cover! Good book, one I will buy for friends. Looking forward to her next offering.

For Mothers and Daughters...and fathers like me...

This is a beautiful story about how flawed people...flawed families...move forward. The best kinds of books for me are ones that elicit the full range of emotion. Bride Island certainly achieved this. I read an interview the author gave where she talked about confronting the things (through writing) that frightened her the most. In facing her personal fears, Ms. Enders has created a veracious and provocative piece of fiction. I really liked this book.