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: Rebecca Solnit
And A High Today of -10º
We’re surrounded by cold. Two days of school this week. The air cuts. The cats have wholly given themselves over to this season, indolently lying on blankets, nestled in cardboard boxes and the laundry basket, wrapped in each other, luxurious … Continue reading
October, Vermont
This has been a terrible week in Vermont news, involving brutal violence against young women, their mothers, and their children. I don’t usually write about violence and domesticity, for a very raw reason: I am one of those women who … 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
A Sharp-Edged Sword
In my novel, I’ve taken a line from my daughter and woven it into a teenager’s dialogue: “What the flip?” the adolescent says, over and over, a tepid variation of an obscenity. At a tense junction, the girl uses obscenities, … Continue reading
Revision, Again and Again – Or, Happiness
One of my first introductions to my daughter’s elementary school was the all-school hike, all 51 kids on an extended walk through the woods behind the 100-year-old schoolhouse. Of all the school activities, this is one of my very favorite, a … Continue reading
Hope Springs
Some unexpected events in our thawing patch of Vermont: dinner guests of chatting children eating grilled eggplant and chicken wings, with gusto exquisitely beautiful poems read at the Galaxy Bookshop last night – and adult companionship, too clouds of frog eggs, … Continue reading
May the Road Glaze Up to Meet Us….
No school today, due not so much to snow but to ice. While I was gone most of the day, literally sliding on Barre’s sidewalks, the kids were home. With great gusto, the teenager plowed the driveway, while the ten-year-old … Continue reading
Cold – And Warm Communities
January’s always cold in Vermont. Sure, we may have a few thaws here and there, but generally, January is dependably cold, in any number of permutations. Today, conserving my less-than-ample woodpile, I opted to work at the public library. While … Continue reading
December Solstice
Having kids means, in part, passing through childhood again, but with an entirely different lens, a perspective deeply entrenched in childhood, yet wholly beyond childhood. One slight thing I’ve learned over these decades is that our world, as still and … Continue reading
