Photo de l'auteur

Joanna Goodman

Auteur de The Home for Unwanted Girls

12 oeuvres 1,055 utilisateurs 64 critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Joanna Goodman is a Canadian author, born in 1969 in Montreal. Her stories have been published in The Fiddlehead, The Ottawa Citizen, B&A Fiction, Event, The New Quarterly, and White Wall Review. Excerpts of her writing have been published in, A Room at the Heart of Things, a fiction anthology by afficher plus Elisabeth Harvor. She is the author of five novels, The Finishing School, The Home for Unwanted Girls, Harmony, You Made Me Love You, and Belle of the Bayou. (Bowker Author Biography) afficher moins

Comprend les noms: Joanna Goodman

Séries

Œuvres de Joanna Goodman

The Home for Unwanted Girls (2018) 672 exemplaires
The Finishing School (2017) 176 exemplaires
The Forgotten Daughter: A Novel (2020) 129 exemplaires
You Made Me Love You (2005) 29 exemplaires
Harmony (2007) 20 exemplaires
The Inheritance (2024) 13 exemplaires
Trace of One: Poems (2002) 5 exemplaires
Belle of the Bayou (1998) 3 exemplaires
She's Got Baggage 1 exemplaire
E-mail Management (2006) 1 exemplaire

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Nom canonique
Goodman, Joanna
Date de naissance
20th century
Sexe
female
Pays (pour la carte)
Canada
Lieux de résidence
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Membres

Critiques

I just finished this "unputdownable" book---I'm so glad I read it! After recently confirming my ancestry roots through DNA, I've been looking for books that tell the story of the French Canadians---my people. Though the events in this story took place about 40 years after my family immigrated, I imagine the social divisions hadn't changed much.

The story of Maggie and Elodie is a heartbreaking one. I found myself angry at Maggie's parents, angry at her... I have known girls who gave in to their parents wishes about what to do with their teen pregnancies---and the heartbreak they still deal with. I can't imagine going through it myself. I think the saddest part of this story is the change in Elodie from the spunky, curious, intelligent little girl to the broken, cautious, wasted young woman. It's sick what happened to her. Sicker still that it's a true story.

I want to say something about the way this book was written. This was more of a tell book and less of a show book. Settings and characters weren't painstakingly described---years were skipped from paragraph to paragraph. Normally this kind of writing makes me crazy and I end up not finishing the book. For this story, however, it totally worked---for a couple reasons. I was so emotionally sucked in right from the beginning that I was glad the pace was moving quickly---I didn't feel that desperation of wanting to know what was going to happen next but having to wait 75 pages to find out. Secondly, she crams over 25 years of events into less than 400 pages. It kind of has to be this way.

Even if they're not all that into French Canadian culture, I think most women would really enjoy this story. Be aware that there are parts with some strong language---some of it in French---though, if it were me in some of those situations, I might find myself letting loose an expletive or two, as well.
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Signalé
classyhomemaker | 50 autres critiques | Dec 11, 2023 |
4.5 stars. Wow, I was not expecting those twists. I think it helps that I didn't read the synopsis of this book before going into it. All I knew was that it was a mystery set at a boarding school, and a former client of mine recommended it to me. I did read the synopsis after I finished, and I think it gives a little too much away. I would have seen one of the twists coming if I had read the synopsis first, so I'm glad I didn't. I recommend going into this blind.

We follow the POV of Kersti, the main character, during 2 different times in her life. One when she was a teenager, living at a boarding school, and the other almost two decades later when she's married and trying to start a family. When Kersti was a teen at the Lycee boarding school, there was an accident involving her best friend, Cressida. Cressida fell off a fourth story balcony and suffered permanent injuries. Now years later, Kersti gets a letter from another friend of theirs that makes her question what she knows about that night. Did Cressida try to commit suicide? Was she pushed? Was it really an accident? Kersti decides it time for her to find out the truth.

This was really good, and I did not want to put it down. Like I said, I was not expecting this book to go where it did. The mystery was great and kept me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what happened. Kersti kind of annoyed me at times, especially when she kept acting like a stupid teenage girl, even though she's a grown adult now. She did grow a lot towards the end, however, so that's good. I didn't like Cressida's character either at first, but the more I found out about her past and understood her, the more I felt bad for her. The ending felt just a little too quick, and I wanted more from the end, but overall, I enjoyed this one a lot.


CW: sexual abuse and suicidal characters
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Signalé
VanessaMarieBooks | 6 autres critiques | Dec 10, 2023 |
This is a sad, tragic tale of abuse of young girls who were placed in a struggling impoverished Quebec orphanage system. When Maggie Hughes's parents learn she is pregnant at 15 years old, her parents gave the baby away and she was raised for a large part of her life in a terrible system of neglect and abuse. In the 1950's, Maggie's daughter Elodie was declared meltally ill, even though her iq was not any where near that category.

Then, at the age of 17 she was allowed to be freed from the instituion due to a new law that took a hard look at what happened at the instituion. Elodie has no skills and after years of terrible, tragic treatment she is living in a world she hardly understands.

In the meantime, Maggie is married to a businessman who wants to begin a family, but Maggie cannot forget Elodie. When Maggie seeks to find her daughter, she realizes that all those lost years she was decevied by her father. Excellently written, this is a tear jearker.

Based on a real life experience, I couldn't put this book down. I highly recommend it for both the story line and the author's excellent grasp of the terrible treatment of children, who were abused by nuns and then released without a place to stay and no skills to help her learn how to adapt.
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Signalé
Whisper1 | 50 autres critiques | Dec 4, 2023 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
12
Membres
1,055
Popularité
#24,420
Évaluation
4.0
Critiques
64
ISBN
57
Langues
4

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