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Summary
Summary
Bruno proviene de una familia de famosos lobos. A su hermana y a él les encanta escuchar las historias que les cuenta mamá loba pobre sus antepasados. Y, claro, ambos lobitos desean llegar a ser tan feroces como sus abuelos, bisabuelos y tatarabuelos. Aunque, para Bruno, convertirse en lobo feroz ¡resulta un poco complicado!
Summary
When Colt and Francie Hart stumble upon an empty 150-year-old house during a weekend drive in the country, they each fall in love with it and want to buy it -- for entirely different reasons. For Colt, the house will become a trophy representing his enormous success at trading stocks. For Francie, a blocked poet, the house seems to whisper hints for reawakening her creativity.
Picking up the house for a song, the couple begins the transition from city dwelling to country life and find for the first time in too long that they have something to work on together. Yet the more the Harts learn about the house, its history, and its previous inhabitants, the more it drives them apart. And when Francie discovers an old family cemetery hidden on the property, it somehow brings out qualities in each of them that come as a total surprise to the other.
Events that conspire to destroy their marriage could just as easily bring the couple together again in this story of two people who, in looking for a place to call home, find themselves instead.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Better living through chemistry. That's what Francie Hart, the Stepford wife-like protagonist of this melodramatic novel by Kowalski (Eddie's Bastard, etc.), thought she was getting by taking Benedor to treat her manic depression. But on a trip with her husband, Colt, from their home in Manhattan to visit their newly purchased country house, she runs out of pills. As the drug's effects wear off, Francie realizes that the chemicals had been stifling her natural creative powers as a poet, and that the life she was leading as a bored, wealthy urban housewife was unfulfilling. That shift in clarity is the linchpin of the novel, which chronicles the tense, awkward unraveling of the Harts' nearly 10-year marriage. Kowalski pumps up the plot by adding a parallel series of intense, often violent flashbacks focusing on the Musgroves, the family that built the Hart's country home 150 years earlier. Not even a whirlwind of outlandish developments-from grave desecration and fratricide to space travel and kidnapping-are enough to make up for the novel's one-dimensional characters, however. Colt is a comically arrogant stock broker, while Francie is the stereotypical tortured artiste who just wasn't made for this cruel world. Kowalski's vigorous storytelling will keep the pages turning, but it's hard to muster much sympathy for Francie and Colt's struggles and redemption. Agent, Anne Hawkins at John Hawkins & Assoc. (Dec. 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In his fourth novel, Kowalski ( Eddie's Bastard0 , 1999) offers a modern morality tale with a surprisingly powerful emotional wallop. High-flying Manhattan stockbroker Colt Hart and his beautiful but emotionally fragile wife, Francie, both fall in love with a 150-year-old house in rural Pennsylvania. As the two make plans to furnish the lovely old home, it becomes apparent that they have entirely different agendas, not only about the house but also about their life together. Colt sees the rural retreat as a chance to impress clients with his wealth, while Francie, a once promising poet, goes off the antidepressant medication she has been on for years and starts to observe her surroundings with renewed clarity. Suddenly, the simmering tensions in their 10-year-old marriage come to a boil, especially after Colt engages in a nasty confrontation with their new neighbor. At first, Kowalski seems to be ranging far and wide, with heavy background material on the original owners of the house and many meandering conversations, but he meticulously brings the strands of his narrative together, building toward a credible, moving conclusion. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2004 Booklist
Kirkus Review
An engaging if overwritten tale about a Manhattan couple changed by a house in the country. On a Sunday drive, Coltrane and Francie Hart, a severely mismatched pair (she's a medicated manic-depressive and lapsed poet; he's a Type-A stock trader) stumble on their dream house. Francie sees it as a place to resume writing poetry; Colt as a weekend spot for entertaining colleagues. On moving day, Francie realizes she's forgotten her medication and decides to try life without it. Implausibly, the only result is that her judgment is clearer--and she begins to see Colt for the unfeeling monster he is. When Francie discovers the diary of Marly Musgrove, the mid-19th-century woman of the house, she realizes there's a cemetery in back filled with Musgrove bodies. The result: Colt insists they be removed, angering a next-door neighbor who's a relative of the buried family. The neighbor kidnaps Colt and forces him to collect the displaced remains from a junkyard. Colt ends up in the hospital, where morphine-induced dreams about his own judgment day lead him to an extreme and unlikely turn. He helps his dying father get out of prison (after spending the last several years pretending he was dead); drops the charges against the neighbor; and apologizes to Francie. Colt is the novel's weakest link, and, unfortunately, gets the most attention; by the time he turns over a new leaf, he's already been portrayed as so emotionally detached that it's difficult to believe (or care about) his new self. Throughout, the Musgroves' tragedy-laden family history, including a well-paced revelation about a murder in the family, is skillfully woven into the story, and serves as an interesting backdrop to Francie and Colt's domestic trials. But Kowalski's eye for detail and character is so much stronger in the Musgrove passages that one wishes the Harts were nearly as believable and compelling. An uneven fourth outing by Kowalski (The Adventures of Flash Jackson, 2003, etc.), with a unique and nicely textured historical subplot that's outweighed by the plodding tone and somewhat convoluted main story. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In his fourth novel (after The Adventures of Flash Jackson), Kowalski tells the story of Francie and Coltrane Hart, who buy a large, 150-year-old house in rural Pennsylvania, initially as a retreat from their life in Manhattan. The new environment appeals greatly to Francie, an intelligent woman longing to revive a talent for poetry that's been dormant since she began taking psychotropic medication. For Colt, a successful stock trader whose main pleasure in life is work, the house is a way to impress his co-workers. The history of their new abode's original tenants is revealed in physical remnants and via nearby neighbor Randy Flebberman, who has looked after the place for the 25 years that it has been uninhabited. While Francie and Flebberman work to befriend each another, Colt remains difficult and insensitive. Ultimately, a clash of values occurs, with dramatic and enlightening results. Kowalski, a gifted storyteller, pulls the reader in, making this book hard to put down. His use of historical digressions also creates a compelling story-within-a-story. While the dialog at times seems mundane and clich?d, the characters do rise above stereotypes, and Kowalski succeeds in creating a novel that flows effortlessly. Recommended for all public libraries.-Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Good Neighbor A Novel Chapter One In the morning, the river seemed flat and still. At this early hour, there was no depth to it; it was as if one could bend down and pinch the water between thumb and forefinger and just peel it away, like a bandage, and underneath, the earth would be dry. There would be bones down there, and other secrets, too, whispering of the things that had already happened in that place, as well as things that were to come -- but they wouldn't have known any of this, not yet. They came around that last bend in the road, where the bluff ends and the river plain begins, and the valley opened up before them like a drawing from a long-forgotten children's book. There was the house on one side of the road, and the thin, silent river on the other. Growing along the river were trees in profusion -- Francie saw wise sycamores, tentative birches, and weeping willows, as well as several sprightly young oaks and one stately old one. In their brilliant headdresses, they seemed to her like torches that had been stuck in the earth and left there to glower against the ragged gray belly of the sky. It was fall, the best time of the year in that part of the world. Later, like jealous explorers, they would argue about who had seen the house first, Francine or Coltrane. It was difficult to determine, because the house wasn't the only thing to come to the eye once one had swung around the bend. There was too much else to look at. There were the rumpled mountains in the distance, for example, unstriking in either height or appearance, but lending a softening distraction to the scene, as if they were not real but a background image done in paint or chalk. They looked like something you could jump into, Francie thought, like the park scene in Mary Poppins. Also, there was the river, and all around them, the broad, fecund fields, whose varying greenness was still defiant and bright, so early was it still in this new season of dying. There was the road, which unspooled over the hilltop in the foreground like a runaway ribbon. But, really, it was the trees that got you first, with their colors of priestly saffron and Martian red. Francie would later tell Colt that he could not possibly have seen the house first, because he was driving, and it was tucked away on her side of the car. She let him have credit for discovering the river, because she didn't care about the river. She only cared about the house, and from the moment she saw it -- it really was she who saw it first, though they both exclaimed about it at the same time -- it was as if she'd never cared about any other place in her life until now. "Pull over!" said Francie, although Colt was already doing it. They parked at the side of the road, not daring the driveway, just looking up at the house. Then, after they'd sat in silence for several moments, she said to her husband, "I'd love to live here someday." She expected him to make fun of her for this, but instead, to her astonishment, he said: "Yeah, so would I." One could see that this house was old, cut patiently by hand from living hardwood and frozen stone. There was a wraparound porch, ornamented with Victorian-style gingerbread cutouts and a swing on a chain, but the gingerbread was new and pretentious, clearly out of place. Whoever had put it there was trying too hard, Francie thought. If it was up to her, she'd take it down. There were three stories, plus what looked to be an attic, or a half-story of some sort. A small round window hinted that it might be interesting up there. "That's where they kept the demonic stepchild," said Colt. "Until it killed all of them in their sleep." "Shut up," said Francie. "Don't ruin it." Like you ruin everything else, she thought. "Can a place like this actually be empty?" Colt wondered. Timidly, they got out of the car and headed across the vast front lawn. Nobody came out to see what they wanted. No dogs barked. They went up the steps, Francie first, fearless now, and she pounded on the door. Without waiting for an answer, she went to one of the windows and put her face up to it, shading her eyes from the glare on the wrinkled old glass. She already knew that everyone was gone. "Don't be so nosy," said Colt. "Maw and Paw will come after us with a shotgun." "It's vacant," said Francie. "Nobody lives here." She showed Colt the sitting room. Clean outlines on the walls and floor proved that it had been occupied in exactly the same way for a long time, and then had suddenly been emptied all at once, like a sink whose plug had been pulled. "They were all murdered," Colt said darkly. "I can tell." "They were not," said Francie. Normally it worked when Colt was trying to scare her, but this time she knew he was lying. "It's got a ... a feel to it. Alive. They liked it here." "They? They who?" "Everyone. Right down to the cats," she said. "Even the mice were happy." "I wonder if it has termites," said Colt. "Probably does." Without bothering to stop and ask each other what they were doing, they wandered around to the back. The Good Neighbor A Novel . Copyright © by William Kowalski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Good Neighbor: A Novel by William Kowalski All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
