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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: photography
First Train Tickets
My daughter entered nursery school at three-and-a-half, in a sunlit-filled Waldorf school, with a teacher she had known her entire life. Her teacher tied an apron around her back, and she happily sat at a table, with a wide brush … Continue reading
Wedding Dress
As little girls, my sister and I played pretend in a pink polyester dress and musty-smelling man’s dinner jacket and clomped around the house in my mother’s high heeled wedding shoes, with the implicit expectation someday our small feet would … Continue reading
No Boundaries
Annie Dillard in The Writing Life has these lines: One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time…. give it, give it all, give it now…. … Continue reading
Craigslist Adventure, Again
After 10 pm last night, in the rain and profuse dark, a stranger with one eye appears, wanting a military truck I’d posted on Craigslist. My teenager grabs a flashlight and insists on coming, too. By his car headlights, he … Continue reading
Oh, Joy!
Coltsfoot sighting today: a whole wide hillside of the gorgeous tiny blossoms. This Good Friday emanates the radiance of these persistent blossoms. In Montpelier, everyone is smiling. I buy too much Easter candy, chatting with the proprietor at Delish about … Continue reading
Primordial Ooze
If there’s one overarching image for springtime in rural Vermont, mud might be it. With this rain, we’re deep in the season now, rutted roads and marshes of mud surrounding the house, bleeding up through melting snow. Come, come, bring … Continue reading
Love Poem
Driving to work yesterday, I listened to the radio, about Derek Walcott, this poet who found himself in the sea and in the light of this world. Where I am now, spring rampages in with a fierce rush of lengthening … Continue reading
