[MJX]≡ Descargar Free The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire A Novel Sandra Hutchison 9780991186938 Books

The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire A Novel Sandra Hutchison 9780991186938 Books

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The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire A Novel Sandra Hutchison 9780991186938 Books

The author's successful first novel, "The Awful Mess," gave us a modern take on the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel "The Scarlet Letter," centering on a young woman's ill-advised affair with a man of the cloth. This time Ms. Hutchison focuses on another unlikely relationship, between a thirty-something college physics professor and his family's teenage babysitter.
David Asken, the academic, recently survived an airplane crash that claimed his wife and young daughter, leaving him physically and emotionally devastated. The sitter, Molly Carmichael, becomes his housekeeper and protector while coping with her own trials. She is faced with two equally unappealing living situations -- either with her remarried father and two obnoxious stepsisters, or with her mother, an artist infamous for her representations of human genitalia and birth control paraphernalia. Molly leaves one school after she's labeled the Tampon Girl.
This is a coming of age novel for both principal characters. Molly is uncomfortable with the idea of sex but can't seem to avoid it. If not listening to her best friend describing her goal of getting pregnant as a means of escape, she's contending with a mother who uses men both as objects of desire and as subjects for her over-the-top art projects.
David, the professor, attempts suicide, only to be saved by Molly's chance intervention. He is wracked by survivor's guilt and unsettled by learning from his late wife's diary how much he lacked both as husband and as father.
Molly becomes his lifeline, in part because she makes his recovery a personal project, but also by virtue of proximity. The first sign that David is starting the long climb from depression is the moment he notices how nicely Molly fills out her jeans while bending over the dishwasher.
Their roles reverse after Molly is brutally assaulted and David takes on the caretaker's mantle.
The relationship might push the limits of credulity were it not for the author's convincing characterizations. David and Molly are pulled together less by romantic inclinations than by mutual need. That, the author seems to imply, sometimes is enough.
Because sex -much of it soft porn - proliferates in popular culture, if this novel were merely about sex, it would hardly merit an arched eyebrow. On a deeper level, the author conveys the idea that sexuality is as essential to the human condition as is breathing or eating. Whether we laugh about it, cry about it or shrink from it, desire drives much of what people do to one other.
Ms. Hutchison has been described as a feminist writer, but she is adept at creating characters of either gender. The message her fiction conveys is that life, more often than not, can be difficult but we are in it together, and that makes it bearable.

Terry Plumb,
Rock Hill SC.


Tags : The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire: A Novel [Sandra Hutchison] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. It’s the summer of 1977 in a small town in Western Massachusetts. Physics professor David Asken has just lost his young family in a plane crash he somehow survived. Sixteen-year-old neighbor Molly Carmichael used to be the babysitter,Sandra Hutchison,The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire: A Novel,Sheer Hubris Press,0991186931,Coming of Age,FICTION Coming of Age,Fiction - General,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire A Novel Sandra Hutchison 9780991186938 Books Reviews

This is the second book I've read by Sandra Hutchison, but it's the not the second book I expected from this author. Her first book, The Awful Mess, was a romance and THIS was not THAT. Her first book was funny and irreverent. This book did not indulge in anything as mundane as irreverence. Her first book wrapped up tidily. This book ended in full-throttle ambiguity.

But don't let that dissuade you from reading it! Just make sure you have a minimum of two days to devote to nothing but reading because like everything I've read by Hutchison, once you start reading, you can't put it down. Hutchison has a way of mixing word and story into her very own heady cocktail that you can't stop ingesting, and is sure to leave your head spinning. (What was IN that drink?)

The weight of this book is dense indeed. I won't put any specific spoilers in, however I will say that while the story and writing are compelling, it's not exactly comfortable reading. The story is honest and messy, but in ways that mirror real life. This book will challenge readers morally and ethically. It wrestles with, among other things human sexuality; tensions between familial autonomy and communal interactions; and sexual and artistic freedoms and/or abuses. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. It is absolutely a book for people with hearts big enough to allow for the breadth and depth of the human condition.

The book got points off for a few historical inaccuracies (i.e., set in 1977, references a mall that didn't open until 1979, mentions boomboxes which didn't come into existence until the 1980s). These inaccuracies don't affect the story. They jumped out at me since I grew up in the area where the book is set, and I'm roughly contemporary to the teen protagonist.

One of the things I value about this author is that she includes discussion questions at the end of her books. This book would make an excellent book club read; all the more-so for those thoughtful and thought-provoking questions provided at the end.
Given this novel’s central premise, a relationship that springs up between a professor who’s lost his family in an airplane crash and a 16-year-old girl at odds with her divorced mother and her neighbors, there are opportunities for narrative missteps aplenty here. I’m happy to report, however, that author Sandra Hutchison deftly and gracefully evades them all in telling their unusual stories. Hutchison is content to let the main characters’ obsessions, misgivings and eventual romantic feelings build slowly over time, enabling the reader to form attachments to these two unique personalities before the fireworks start flying in the novel’s second half.

Indeed, Hutchison seems more willing than the reader might be to cast a critical eye on her characters. No one gets easy affirmation in this book, and that includes several distinctly unpleasant minor characters (an unsympathetic cop, a distant father, several unsavory classmates, and at least one brutal predator). It’s a testament to Hutchison’s talent that she weaves all of these characters into a story of small-town 1970s New England life that still rings true. (I grew up in smalltown late-70s New Jersey and I can attest that Hutchison gets all the details (everything from the TV shows to the vanished day-to-day reality of school-age kids living their lives virtually unsupervised) exactly right. In the end, the author resists the urge to tie up every loose end neatly, and yet, you still feel the main characters have grown and learned from their experiences. You wish them well.

This is the first book I’ve read from Hutchison, and I will definitely keep an eye out for more. She’s a writer to watch.
The author's successful first novel, "The Awful Mess," gave us a modern take on the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel "The Scarlet Letter," centering on a young woman's ill-advised affair with a man of the cloth. This time Ms. Hutchison focuses on another unlikely relationship, between a thirty-something college physics professor and his family's teenage babysitter.
David Asken, the academic, recently survived an airplane crash that claimed his wife and young daughter, leaving him physically and emotionally devastated. The sitter, Molly Carmichael, becomes his housekeeper and protector while coping with her own trials. She is faced with two equally unappealing living situations -- either with her remarried father and two obnoxious stepsisters, or with her mother, an artist infamous for her representations of human genitalia and birth control paraphernalia. Molly leaves one school after she's labeled the Tampon Girl.
This is a coming of age novel for both principal characters. Molly is uncomfortable with the idea of sex but can't seem to avoid it. If not listening to her best friend describing her goal of getting pregnant as a means of escape, she's contending with a mother who uses men both as objects of desire and as subjects for her over-the-top art projects.
David, the professor, attempts suicide, only to be saved by Molly's chance intervention. He is wracked by survivor's guilt and unsettled by learning from his late wife's diary how much he lacked both as husband and as father.
Molly becomes his lifeline, in part because she makes his recovery a personal project, but also by virtue of proximity. The first sign that David is starting the long climb from depression is the moment he notices how nicely Molly fills out her jeans while bending over the dishwasher.
Their roles reverse after Molly is brutally assaulted and David takes on the caretaker's mantle.
The relationship might push the limits of credulity were it not for the author's convincing characterizations. David and Molly are pulled together less by romantic inclinations than by mutual need. That, the author seems to imply, sometimes is enough.
Because sex -much of it soft porn - proliferates in popular culture, if this novel were merely about sex, it would hardly merit an arched eyebrow. On a deeper level, the author conveys the idea that sexuality is as essential to the human condition as is breathing or eating. Whether we laugh about it, cry about it or shrink from it, desire drives much of what people do to one other.
Ms. Hutchison has been described as a feminist writer, but she is adept at creating characters of either gender. The message her fiction conveys is that life, more often than not, can be difficult but we are in it together, and that makes it bearable.

Terry Plumb,
Rock Hill SC.