If ever we needed a novel capable of healing our troubled, world-weary souls, that time is now. But where, oh where, is the book? Actually, it has arrived: Joyce Maynard’s new novel, How the Light Gets In. And what a gift it is.”
— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls and the North Bath Trilogy of Fool novels
“Joyce Maynard has stitched together a warm, rich patchwork quilt of a novel that reminds us history is made up simply of our stories; and that even in broken, imperfect things one finds beauty and strength.” — Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"Joyce Maynard’s How the Light Gets In grabbed ahold of me in the first chapter and didn’t let go until I’d finished the epilogue. A master storyteller at the top of her game, Maynard populates her story with characters I worried about, rooted for, and related to. I LOVED this book!" — Wally Lamb, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“In How the Light Gets In, Joyce Maynard casts her clear eye over all we have endured thus far in our still-young century, illustrating as she does just how we have endured it: through bumbling luck and enduring love, hope, persistence, the consolations of nature, the comfort of daily work. A novel that understands how grace accrues over time in families, making the past bearable, the future possible. A wise and lovely book.” — Alice McDermott, National Book Award-winning author
“In turns joyful and heartbreaking, How the Light Gets In is a wise and bittersweet portrait of a complicated family. Joyce Maynard writes the kind of books that readers adore – bighearted, beautifully crafted, propulsively readable, and full of flawed and fickle characters who make difficult decisions and big mistakes, stumbling through life and love, trying to do their best. A word of advice: clear your calendar before you start reading!”
— Adrienne Brodeur, nationally bestselling author of Little Monsters and Wild Game
“How the Light Gets In feels like a conversation with a trusted sister about a wide circle of family members in order to discover their secrets and hopes. The story of Eleanor and her family is told in marvelous loops that fill in the gaps between the past and the present, the personal and the news of the day, difficult challenges and their remedies. Joyce Maynard has given us another generous, satisfying novel: she is a wonder.” — Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point and In the Gloaming
“Readers will appreciate this sweeping and heart-wrenching family story in the mode of Elizabeth Berg and Anna Quindlen.” — Booklist
“[A] heartwarming chronicle of a woman coping with changes in her life and in the country. . . . Maynard’s punchy chapters highlight pivotal moments in her characters’ lives, and she holds readers’ interest by showing how their relationships evolve.” — Publishers Weekly
“A stirring, satisfying sequel to Count the Ways . . . . This ample narrative is arranged into tasty vignettes with appealing, sometimes funny subtitles, making it a pleasure to digest. Everything this great American author’s fans are looking for.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Wonderfully absorbing, precise and emotionally astute . . .I was moved by the characters' ambivalences, their misgivings, their anger, but most of all by their complex and fascinating love." — Marisa Silver, New York Times bestselling author of The Mysteries, on Count the Ways
“A fearlessly candid, heartrendingly forthright examination of the joys and terrors of family life from the perspective of a woman of unusual sensitivity and empathy, Count the Ways takes us on a memorable journey.” — Joyce Carol Oates
“Joyce Maynard is the queen of the family saga, and Count the Ways is the best! Instantly addicting, the story of Eleanor, Cam, and their children pulls you in and wraps itself around you like an heirloom quilt made of familiarity, intimacy, and the orchestral complexity of loving the people closest to us. This is the novel you’ll be longing to return to at the end of every day and one you will re-read for years to come.” — Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Lost Family
“Cut[s] across moments of national and personal upheaval to examine the complex web of family against the backdrop of history.” — New York Times Book Review on Count the Ways
"The novel bites off a lot—a Brett Kavanaugh–inspired storyline, a domestic abuse situation, a trans child, Eleanor's career—and manages to resolve them all. . . Maynard creates a world rich and real enough to hold the pain she fills it with." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on Count the Ways
“How did Maynard know that this is exactly the book we all need now? This exhilaratingly brilliant novel isn’t just an indelible story of the falling dominoes of a family struggling through crisis and through generations, it’s also about the times we live through. . . . This gorgeous story reminds us that love is always, always worth it.” — Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You
“Count the Ways is an extraordinarily generous invitation into a woman’s intimate life, from the loneliness of her youth to the earned wisdom of middle age. In this richly imagined novel, Maynard never flinches as she portrays both quiet successes and heartbreaking failures at love, marriage, and motherhood. This is the work of one of our great storytellers.” — Meredith Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Beneficence
"Sensitively plumbing the complexity of human emotions, of love and forgiveness, [Maynard] draws readers into a deep, aching attachment to her characters, creating an ultimately hopeful tale just right for this moment." — Booklist (starred review)
“Readers will sink into Maynard’s masterful portrait of one woman’s life in this decades-spanning family saga.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Joyce Maynard has, again, managed to tap flawlessly into the voice of a teenage girl: part hope, part fiction, and all heart. After Her is page-turning mystery, wrapped in a beautifully rendered story of sisterhood; and reading it is a journey through one’s own memory of what it meant to be thirteen, when the world was equally terrifying and fascinating. Books this compelling just don’t come around very often.” — Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author on After Her
★ 2024-04-20
The long second act of a New England writer’s life, rich in family, laced with troubles personal and public.
Maynard’s 18th book is a stirring, satisfying sequel to Count the Ways (2021), continuing the story of New England children’s book author Eleanor through the years 2010 to 2024, including the Trump election, Covid-19, the Jan. 6 insurrection, school shootings, and lots and lots of great American music playing in the background. The book’s title comes from a Leonard Cohen song, and John Prine, who died of Covid in 2020, presides over the story. As the author puts it in a note, “I never met him, but in these pages, I honor his musical legacy of humor, wisdom, passion, and tenderness.” As in all Maynard’s best work, those qualities are in evidence throughout. A prologue recaps an event central to the first book—an accident that resulted in a brain injury to Eleanor’s youngest child, in the wake of which Eleanor’s marriage to Cam slowly but surely crumbled. In Part 1, called The Death of Cam, the babysitter he left her for is history, and when Cam falls ill, none of their other children is available to care for him and their brain-damaged brother, so Eleanor moves back from Brookline to the family farm to do the job. Oldest child Al lives on the West Coast and is now fully transitioned, married to a woman, enjoying career success, and hoping to adopt. Middle child Ursula is a mother of three, lives in Vermont, and is married to a high school friend named Jake who morphs into a scary Proud Boy–type in the Trump years. Ursula is deeply estranged from her mother and treats her cruelly; one of the numerous plot threads traces the evolution of this painful situation. Others follow Eleanor’s jet-setting romance with a famous climate change warrior; various projects to commercialize and Hollywood-ize her books; a sexual abuse scandal; and most centrally, this question: “A good mother. Who even knows what that is?” This ample narrative is arranged into tasty vignettes with appealing, sometimes funny subtitles, making it a pleasure to digest.
Everything this great American author’s fans are looking for.
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