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
Tag Archives: childhood
One Large Step
The first tooth my daughter lost she threw into the woods. She had been eating a wild apple in our sugarhouse driveway, and the tooth pulled free into the fruit, frightening her. She spit the mouthful into the forest and … Continue reading
Where Are Those Bracelets?
When I was a kid, my aunt from New York City gave my sister and me bracelets she had bought at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gift shop that had been handmade in Africa with unique and somewhat mysterious beads. … Continue reading
Launching, Laughing (and Learning)
Stronger than espresso, spring roars into Vermont this Sunday afternoon. Busy, busy, those singing robins building their nests. Busy me, emptying ash buckets and raising mud-soaked pallets from a wood pile burned to cinders back in January. But it’s the … Continue reading
The Pleasures of Parenting
Standing in line at the DMV this afternoon, I recognized a local poet in the waiting room reading The New York Review of Books. As the line was long, I stood watching the poet and his teenage daughter converse about something … Continue reading
Here In Kid World
My daughter sends me a photo via email with the subject line “Awesomeness.” How cool is that? Yesterday, home after work, with dinner not yet made, and the house messy with potential buyers expected the next morning, a litany of … Continue reading
Squishy Season
‘Tis the season of mud in Vermont. I once had a neighbor (now relocated back to an enormous city) who hated mud. Her daughter and my daughter were both little then, with rubber boots and pink raincoats decorated with kitties, … Continue reading
