In the beginning they were three. Joanna and Ted Kramer, and four-year-old Billy -- his big brown eyes bright with curiosity and wonder. A perfect family. Then on day the mother abandons them. Divorce. And now they are two. Father and son. Caring and cared for, learning what loving and belonging are all about, until there is a bond between them that nothing can break. Nothing and nobody -- except maybe a mother who, almost two years later, changes her mind and wants her little boy back. This book was made into a movie by the same title.
Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreKramer versus Kramer Lead Character
"Although Web Scott had tried to live a good and honest life, the brand of his father was upon him. For Mort Scott had been in prison for ten years for rustling and murder, and everywhere Web went he was pointed out as a jailbird's son. But now Mort, about to die, was protesting his innocence. Furthermore, he was laying the blame on Cole Tillotson, Web's uncle, who owned a big spread in Tomahawk Valley and who had brought Web up when the youngster had been left without a father to raise him. And Web did not know whether to believe the parent he had grown to resent and to hate for ruining his life, or the relative who had taken him in and had taught him to live by the gun in his hand."--Publisher description.
"Newly divorced Dana Stellgarten has always been unfailingly nice--even to telemarketers--but now her temper is wearing thin. Money is tight, her kids are reeling from their dad's departure, and her Goth teenage niece has just landed on her doorstep. As she enters the slipstream of post-divorce romance and is befriended by the town queen bee, Dana finds that the tension between being true to yourself and being liked doesn't end in middle school...and that sometimes it takes a real friend to help you embrace adulthood in all its flawed complexity."--from cover p. 4.
The pain of Lucile, my mother, was part of our childhood and later adult life for my sister and me, but any attempt at an explanation was doomed to failure. Writing about it cannot heal it, but at least it allows me to ask questions and query memory. This is about family memory, where moments of brightness and joy can live side-by-side with grief, wounds and the most hidden of family secrets. "La douleur de Lucile, ma mère, a fait partie de notre enfance et plus tard de notre vie d'adulte, la douleur de Lucile sans doute nous constitue, ma sœur et moi, mais toute tentative d'explication est vouée à l'échec. L'écriture n'y peut rien, tout au plus me permet-elle de poser les questions et d'interroger la mémoire. La famille de Lucile, la nôtre par conséquent, a suscité tout au long de son histoire de nombreux hypothèses et commentaires. Les gens que j'ai croisés au cours de mes recherches parlent de fascination ; je l'ai souvent entendu dire dans mon enfance. Ma famille incarne ce que la joie a de plus bruyant, de plus spectaculaire, l'écho inlassable des morts, et le retentissement du désastre. Aujourd'hui je sais aussi qu'elle illustre, comme tant d'autres familles, le pouvoir de destruction du Verbe, et celui du silence. Le livre, peut-être, ne serait rien d'autre que ça, le récit de cette quête, contiendrait en lui-même sa propre genèse, ses errances narratives, ses tentatives inachevées. Mais il serait cet élan, de moi vers elle, hésitant et inabouti. Dans cette enquête éblouissante au cœur de la mémoire familiale, où les souvenirs les plus lumineux côtoient les secrets les plus enfouis, ce sont toutes nos vies, nos failles et nos propres blessures que Delphine de Vigan déroule avec force"--Amazon.com, viewed January 12, 2012.
From the author of the international number one bestseller 'I Know This Much is True' comes a novel which explores the consequence of violent events, and the chaos that ensues, for human lives blown irrevocably of course.
Kramer versus Kramer by Avery Corman | Literally Just Books
