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: Vermont living
Reading Harry Potter
Like in-laws who have overstayed their welcome, winter lingers. While you might be wanting to mop mud from the in-laws’ boots off your kitchen floor, they keep coming and going, anticipating lunch and then dinner. So, too, winter. Sunday afternoon, … Continue reading
Library Afternoon Snapshot
A woman stops in my library — new to town and looking for basic info about an internet connection and where to buy food. She’s getting the lay of this corner of Vermont’s territory. Early afternoon, the school kids are … Continue reading
Our November Rose
So long, arrivederci, to green grass. Snow day for the school kids. My 13-year-old cut up paint swatches from the hardware store — a variety of rose and crimson and pink peony — and I had taped last week on … Continue reading
Kidness
I’m at a restaurant in town with my parents, expecting to meet my daughters. My older daughter walks in alone, and I ask, What’s up? Where’s your sister? She’s busy apparently, in a kid kind of way, hiding in the back of … Continue reading
Cat’s Heart
My daughter’s cat lies on the gray-painted floor at the top of the stairs, just outside her room, looking in. She’s away with friends in Maine. Over email, her sister and I see pictures of her swimming in a lake … Continue reading
Early July A.M.
Midsummer, we’re at the numberless place in July where we might commence to take swimming at dusk as a given, to be exasperated by heat, to seek solace in a cool living room from the day’s sharp light. As summer … Continue reading
Define Our Life Thus
Walking home through the cemetery fields, I noticed how brown the grass is — pretty much withered. That’s a particularly beautiful walk, high enough up above the village that I can see how Hardwick lies in a narrow valley along … Continue reading
