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Bittersweet: A Novel
Author:
Beverly-Whittemore, Miranda
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3602.E
Print Run: 50000
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ISBN-13: 9780804138567
LCCN: 2013031473
Imprint: Crown
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Pub Date: 05/13/2014
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $25.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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385 pages ; 25 cm
H 9.6",
W 6.6",
D 1.34",
1.41 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Kirkus Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Kirkus Reviews
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TIPS Subjects:
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Suspense/Thriller
Psychological Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Coming of Age
FICTION / Psychological
FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
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LC Subjects:
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Female friendship, Fiction
Roommates, Fiction
Summer, Fiction
Suspense fiction
Upper class, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Adventure fiction
Female friendship, Fiction
Roommates, Fiction
Summer, Fiction
Upper class, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 01/01/2014 |
| Life seems to be getting better and better for Mabel when she lands a scholarship to an East Coast village and joins her roommate, Genevra, on a trip to Genevra's lakeside estate cottage. When dark truths threaten Mabel's bright disposition, she must choose between exposing these people's wicked ways...or throwing herself into their morally ambiguous world, herself. 400pp., 50K, Auth res: Brooklyn |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Kirkus Reviews | 03/15/2014 |
| As a young woman struggles to read Paradise Lost, she faces her own temptation. Is she brave enough to choose good over evil? Mabel Dagmar, a scholarship student at an East Coast college, is mismatched as roommate to the glamorous, privileged Genevra "Ev" Winslow. For months they lead separate lives, until Ev's mother invites Mabel to Ev's 18th birthday party--held at the school's museum, where Ev has just donated a Degas. Despite their seemingly insurmountable social differences, Ev and Mabel become friends, and Mabel is invited to spend the summer at the Winslows' summer estate on Lake Champlain, made up of cabins ranging from rustic to luxurious and a communal dining hall. She's eager to go, especially given that the alternative is working at her parents' dry cleaners, silently observing her mother's bruises and enduring her disapproval. Mabel and Ev keep house together in Bittersweet cottage, while Ev's domineering parents, Birch and Tilde, rule from Trillium House. Ev's oldest brother, Athol, arrives with his tall, athletic, refined family. Second son Banning is close behind with his more disheveled brood. The third son, Galway, is an enigma. Up only on weekends, he keeps his distance, but his eyes rest on Mabel. After a chance meeting with Ev's eccentric aunt Indo, Mabel is plunged into mysteries. What does Indo think she can find amid the old Winslow documents? Why did Ev's cousin Jackson kill himself? Why is Ev hiding her romance with John, who works on the estate? And why are so many doors locked with heavy bolts? As she uncovers evidence of dastardly deeds--some deliciously improbable--Mabel comes face to face with her own secrets. Beverly-Whittemore (Set Me Free, 2007, etc.) has crafted a page-turner riddled with stubborn clues, a twisty plot and beguiling characters. 400pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 05/20/2014 |
| Miranda Beverly-Whittemore's intriguing third novel, Bittersweet, takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface. The narrator is Mabel Dagmar, a scholarship student at an unnamed but prestigious East Coast college, who is surprised when her decidedly upper-crust roommate, Genevra "Ev" Winslow, invites her to spend the summer at Winloch, a secluded group of "cottages" nestled along the shores of Lake Champlain. Like her siblings, Ev was given a wildflower-named cottage of her own when she turned 18, Bittersweet. Mabel describes this rustic yet luxurious retreat as "a place of baguettes and fruit and spreadable honeycomb, idyllic and sun-drenched in a way I had never known." Ev's great-great-grandfather, who died in 1931, bought Winloch, which multiplied along with the family over the generations into 30 cottages occupying the two miles of Lake Champlain shoreline. By the third week in June the Winslow tribe--Ev's father, Birch, mother Tilde, siblings and a bevy of aunts, uncles and cousins--descend on Winloch "like bees to the hive." Two of Ev's older brothers are married with children; the third, Galway, is the family misfit--he works for an immigration advocacy group in Boston rather than immersing himself in the Winslow finances. Mabel slips easily into this life of cocktails on the lawn of Trillium, the "manor house" occupied by Birch and Tilde. She skinny-dips off the shore's secluded rocks and launches a romantic relationship with the mysterious Galway. But gradually Mabel detects some weaknesses beneath the Winslow veneer, eventually leading her to question how the family managed to accumulate such wealth while the rest of the country was mired in the Depression. And she ferrets out some shocking secrets about Birch as well--secrets which sever the strands keeping this apparently unshakable family together. Beverly-Whittemore's saga delves into soap-opera territory at times, but its strength lies in its elements of mystery. The result is a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the end. BookPageXTRA Online Review. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Booklist | 03/15/2014 |
| Out of place at her elite East Coast college, Mabel Dagmar falls into an unlikely friendship with her blue-blooded roommate, Genevra Ev Winslow, and is invited to spend the summer at Ev's family estate in Vermont. Jumping at the chance to escape her working-class family in Oregon, Mabel enters the world of madras shorts and cocktails on the veranda. The enchantment of a lakeside retreat, steeped in tradition, sweeps Mabel (who now goes by May) off her feet, as does Ev's older brother, Galway. But May has secrets, as do the Winslows, and as May unravels the family's litany of misdeeds, she puts herself in serious danger. Beverly-Whittemore's novel is suspenseful and intriguing, filled with characters who both fit the blue-blood mold and break the stereotypes we all associate with the upper class. Her short chapters, with their cliff-hanger endings, will keep readers turning pages late into the night. Paulson, Heather. 400p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Library Journal | 04/01/2014 |
| Beverly-Whittemore captures both the idyllic beauty of a Vermont summer and its dark shadows in her third novel (after The Effects of Light; Set Me Free). Plain featured and plainly named scholarship student Mabel Dagmar catches the intermittent interest of her wealthy college roommate, Genevra "Ev" Winslow. In one moment of weakness, Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at the Winslow family estate, Winloch. Intended as a distraction to allow Ev more freedom, Mabel takes to Winloch immediately, befriending Ev's sister and eccentric aunt, and developing a romance with Ev's brother, Galway, after an unfortunate first encounter. But at Winloch, reality is not always what it first appears to be, and gothic tangles wind the plot more and more tightly. Mabel, an inveterate secret keeper herself, uncovers the truth behind the Winslow fortune. But should she share what she knows, or adjust her moral center and keep it "in the family" so that she can take her place there as well? VERDICT A slightly wordy but suspenseful tale of corruption and bad behavior among wealthy New Englanders. Readers who enjoy coming-of-age stories featuring dark secrets that affect generations will find much that appeals here. Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont. 400p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 11/11/2013 |
| Modest Mabel is thrilled when class-act roommate Genevra Winslow invites her to summer at the WASPy Winslow family's lakeside Vermont cottage. Soon, though, she realizes that a dark secret is casting a shadow on the family's golden glow. Lots of international interest and pitches to the postgraduate and Hampton Jitney crowds. 400p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 03/03/2014 |
| The theme of paradise lost courses through this coming-of-age tale tinged with mystery--Beverly-Whittemore's solid, if not particularly inspired, third novel, after 2007's Set Me Free. Self-conscious college scholarship student Mabel Dagmar feels as if she has won the golden ticket when her freshman roommate, Genevra "Ev" Winslow, an impossibly glamorous scion of the gilded Winslow clan, invites her to spend the summer at Winloch, the family's sprawling estate in Vermont on Lake Champlain. But she soon starts to discover how wrong she is, as with so very much about the Winslows. For all their lean, blond beauty and their designer names, the Winslows--including Birch and Tilde, Ev's parents; and Ev's brother Galway, whose attentions encourage Mabel to fantasize about becoming part of the blue-blooded tribe--have more squalid secrets than her own, with theft, rape, and incest the tip of the viceberg. As the increasingly tragic story unfolds, the taste left in the reader's mouth is more likely to be sour than bittersweet. Agent: Anne Hawkins, John Hawkins & Associates. (May). 400p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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9780804138567,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 06/01/2014 |
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