In case you missed it, last January I read and reviewed A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison.
My Review, in short:
I loved it. I couldn't put it down. (It's not often I devour a book in four days.) And I highly recommend it to you if you're looking for an engrossing, multifaceted story that combines drama, mystery, and romance with beautiful, graceful, and believable writing. It's the story of a woman's past secrets coming back to haunt her. And there's nothing cliche about it.
Reading this involved going a little off the beaten path. I usually read historical fiction, but I'm so glad I tried something different. I gave it 5 stars over at Goodreads.(You can read my full review here.)
I'm really happy to just get this novel into the hands of two lucky winners – and psyched that the copies will be signed by the lovely author!
Since Jan's book was released this year, it's been an Oprah's Book Club pick, San Francisco Chronicle Book Club pick, and has received wonderful reviews from USA Today, FlavorWire, The Rumpus and others. I enjoyed the book so much and I've enjoyed seeing the great reviews and excitement shared across social media.
“Delicious lazy day reading…just don’t underestimate the writing.”
Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 Editor’s Pick
“Ellison is a tantalizing storyteller…moving her story forward with cinematic verve.”
USA Today
“Ellison’s debut novel is both juicy and beautifully-written.”
Flavorwire
“Ellison writes gracefully, with moments of startling insight.”
The Rumpus
About the Book
A Small Indiscretion fixes an unflinching eye on the power of desire and the danger of obsession as it unfolds the story of one woman's reckoning with a youthful mistake.
At nineteen, Annie Black trades a bleak future in her washed-out hometown for a London winter of drinking to oblivion and yearning for deliverance. Some two decades later, she is married to a good man and settled in San Francisco, with a son and two daughters and a successful career designing artistic interior lights. One June morning, a photograph arrives in her mailbox, igniting an old longing and setting off a chain of events that rock the foundations of her marriage and threaten to overturn her family's hard-won happiness.
The novel moves back and forth across time between San Francisco in the present and that distant winter in Europe. The two worlds converge and explode when the adult Annie returns to London seeking answers, her indiscretions come to light, and the phone rings with shocking news about her son. Now Annie must fight to save her family by piecing together the mystery of her past -- the fateful collision of liberation and abandon and sexual desire that drew an invisible map of her future.
A Small Indiscretion is a riveting debut novel about a woman's search for understanding and forgiveness, a taut exploration of a modern marriage, and of love -- the kind that destroys, and the kind that redeems.
About the Author
Jan Ellison is a mother of four and a novelist, essayist and short-story writer. Her first book, A Small Indiscretion (Random House 2015) is a literary suspense novel about a harrowing coming-of-age, a marriage under siege, and a mother who must excavate the truth of her past. It was an Oprah Editor's Pick and a San Francisco Chronicle Book Club Pick.
Jan's essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Narrative Magazine and elsewhere, and she received an O. Henry Prize for her first short story to appear in print.
Jan is a graduate of Stanford and San Francisco State University, where she spent seven years earning an MFA when her children were small. Jan had a brief career at a Silicon Valley startup, marketing risk management software to derivatives traders. The company went public, Jan became a mother, and instead of leaning in she leaned out, became a stay-at-home mom, and began to write.
Jan's experiences living and traveling abroad after college continue to fuel much of her writing. She also left Stanford for a year at nineteen to live and work on a shoe-string in Paris and London. She took notes on yellow legal pads, and years later, those notes provided the inspiration for her first novel.
Jan grew up in Los Angeles and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband of twenty years and their children.
For more information please visit http://www.janellison.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.
ENTER THE GIVEAWAY!
Use the widget below. Comment to enter, then earn bonus entries via social media. Good luck!
6 comments:
I have sooo been wanting to read this every since I read your review of it last year! It sounds so intriguing. Thanks for the wonderful giveaway! :-)
Oh I've been wanting to read that since I saw you read it last year!
Intriguing! I'd love to read it! Thank you for the opportunity!
This sounds like a wonderful read. ..thank you for this opportunity.
It is on my TBR list. Would love to win a signed copy.
Thank you both for the giveaway.
This was Ellison's first novel, but I'm pretty sure A Small Indiscretion won't be the last we hear from her. Her writing is impeccable; the kind of prose that makes you want to bookmark every page so you can revisit later.
Post a Comment