Clara's Heart

by Joseph Olshan

Overview

Originally published to international acclaim and the basis for the beloved film starring Whoopi Goldberg, Joseph Olshan’s prize-winning novel charts the profound, rare friendship between a wise Jamaican woman named Clara and David, a twelve-year-old boy adrift in the wake of his parents’ broken marriage. As the two grow closer, she brings him into her special world of patois and Jamaican beauty parlors and shadowy alliances, and he comes to realize that in her native country Clara has left behind a mystery, which he grows determined to unveil. Heralded as a classic, Clara’s Heart is at once a moving and comical tribute to unconventional love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781883285579
Publisher:	Delphinium
Publication date:	07/09/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	0.00(w) x 0.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Joseph Olshan is the award-winning author of nine novels, the most recent of which, Cloudland (2012) was hailed by the New York Times: “Joseph Olshan has stepped up and hit one for the home team. The bracing clarity of his prose…observes the destructive impact [the] killings have on this isolated region.”

Editorial Reviews

"An impressive novel… Clara’s Heart is notable precisely because of the risks Joseph Olshan has taken that do succeed, not the least of which is its sensitive and often comical treatment of the unique love between a precocious American boy and a wise if tormented Jamaican woman."

The New York Times Book Review

"Terrific. Joseph Olshan is clearly enormously talented. He has an almost extra-sensory understanding of the characters he writes about, and he writes magnificently well. He is funny, too."

The Daily Telegraph

"An impressive novel… Clara’s Heart is notable precisely because of the risks Joseph Olshan has taken that do succeed, not the least of which is its sensitive and often comical treatment of the unique love between a precocious American boy and a wise if tormented Jamaican woman."

"With its intricate characterization, a plot that weaves together two very different cultures, and a narrative enriched by fresh, often poignant dialogue, this is an extraordinary first novel."

"Terrific. Joseph Olshan is clearly enormously talented. He has an almost extra-sensory understanding of the characters he writes about, and he writes magnificently well. He is funny, too."

From the Publisher

Clara is a triumphant creation, with all her provocative richness and scariness. This gently perceptive novel about coming of age in suburbia maintains a high level of narration in unfolding a relationship that is as delicious as it is fleeting. After the book is closed its fragrant intensity lingers.

Newsday

It's terrific. Joseph Olshan is clearly enormously talented. He has an almost extrasensory understanding of the characters he writes about, and he writes magnificently well. He is funny, too.
—Daily Telegraph

Selina Hastings

Olshan's achievement is to have created a separate and entirely believable world, carefully, comically and humanely drawn. It is held together by much tension and contains many excellent recognizable scenes and embarrassments...A fine debut.
—Times Literary Supplement

Hanif Kureishi

Joseph Olshan skillfully juxtaposes two very different cultures, the financially successful but emotionally deficient Harts, the products or victims of a modern age, and the relatively poor in money, but rich in warmth and spirit, Jamaicans.

Washington Post

An impressive novel...Clara's Heart is notable precisely because of the risks Joseph Olshan has taken that do succeed, not the least of which is its sensitive and often comical treatment of the unique love between a precocious American boy and a wise, if tormented, Jamaican woman.

NYT Book Review

Intelligently conceived and psychologically convincing. Someone to read and watch.
—Financial Times

Martin Seymour Smith