My Book
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“With vivid and richly textured prose, Brett Ann Stanciu offers unsparing portraits of northern New England life well beyond sight of the ski lodges and postcard views. The work the land demands, the blood ties of family to the land, and to each other, the profound solitude that such hard-bitten lives thrusts upon the people, are here in true measure. A moving and evocative tale that will stay with you, Hidden View also provides one of the most compelling and honest rural woman’s viewpoint to come along in years. A novel of singular accomplishment.” – Jeffrey Lent
“Early in the book, I was swept by a certainty of truths in Hidden View: that Stanciu knew the bizarre and fragile construction that people’s self-deceptions can frame. And that she was telling, out in public, against all the rules, the heartbreaking story of far too many women I’ve known, at one time or another, who struggled to make their dreams come to reality in situations…. …(In Hidden View) the questions of loyalty to person, commitment to dreams, and betrayal of the helpless are as vivid as the flames in the sugarhouse, as sweet and dangerous as the hot boiling maple sap on its way to becoming valuable syrup. There’s so much truth in this book that at some point, it stops being “fiction” and stands instead as a portrait, layered, complex, and wise. The Vermont that we love, the farms that we treasure, the children we nurture are fully present.” – Kingdom Books, Beth Kanell
“Stanciu is a Vermonter’s writer. Anyone who loves the landscape and language of Vermont will be drawn into this story, but her writing holds a universal appeal, too, and rings true with the language and landscape of the human heart and mind as well. The characters in Hidden View are people you’re going to think about, and care about, long after the book is read.” – Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, AS LONG AS THERE ARE MOUNTAINS
Category Archives: book
Daughters
When I was a young woman, I immersed myself in experiences — live in a tipi, race an old Saab on an interstate, travel around the country sleeping in the back of a diesel Rabbit — but all as experience, … Continue reading
Playing
When I was in college, one of the houses I cleaned was for an older woman who usually had me set up a square table for mahjong. Three of her also-elderly friends arrived around that time — one hobbling in … Continue reading
Icy Reminiscences
This February reminds me, yet again, of how rapidly our world changes: nearly 70º degrees yesterday, with my daughter reading on the back porch and eating a turkey sandwich, to this nearly colorless day, where the younger daughter and I … Continue reading
Teaser of Spring
Home early from work, I walked to the post office with my daughter, in what Vermonters know as sugaring weather. Streams ran down hillside streets. Birds sang in bare-branched treetops. This is the first winter I have lived in town … Continue reading
Tales from Library Land
When I was vacuuming tiny gold stars from the library’s rug yesterday, in the hour when the tired after school kids were getting picked up and before the adult readers appeared, I noticed the carpet, hard-worn when I arrived as … Continue reading
In a Darkened Theater
This week, I interviewed an author who had written what seemed to me the odd choice of a childhood memoir-in-verse, but she explained she chose that form because memory comes and goes in bits, not separated into blocky and linear … Continue reading
Let the Road Rise Up to Meet You
Spring in all its urgency: the Vermont winter finally (at long last!) has been slayed by the face of the earth turning round to the sun. Almost a few days ago, hard-edged filth-ridden glaciers of snow hunkered beneath the roof … Continue reading
