West of Venus

by Judy Troy

Book Overview

There are 4,000 friends, lovers, relatives, and neighbors in Venus, Kansas. Holly Parker lives just west of there. Holly Parker knows that people almost always make the wrong choices. Like her sixteen... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679451536
• ISBN13: 9780679451532
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 237 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

terrific characters search and discover love

Those who encounter "West of Venus" will immediately recognize either people they know or themselves, expanded and enlarged by their humor, sadness, or loneliness. Without doubt destined for women's reading groups' book lists and ultimately the silver screen (though a weekly series would be heavenly), this novel is one which will have you calling your best friend in the middle of the night comparing which paragraphy (or sentence) most delighted you. I would love to meet the author and personally thank her for this liberating, joyous book.

A funny, profound, poetic book.

A New York Times "notable book of the year," Judy Troy's West of Venus brings the concision of her New Yorker stories to a larger canvas: the heart and heartland of America. This smart novel is filled with laughter and tears. Although West of Venus begins with a suicide and ends with a funeral, it is joy to read throughout: one of those rare fictions that show the ups and downs of life simultaneously and poignantly. I loved this book.

Small-Town Kansas Life

Having come from La Crosse, Kansas myself, I read West of Venus with a great deal of pleasure. Although Venus is more than twice the size of La Crosse, Troy has captured just what it is like to live in the middle of nowhere and to have daily contact with people who never read books. Although Tom Drury's The Age of Vandalism was better to my way of thinking, I still enjoyed this book very much.