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Hannah Lillith Assadi
Hardcover
The Stars Are Not Yet Bells -- Hannah Lillith Assadi
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Hardcover
Named a Most Anticipated book of the year by The Washington Post, Good Morning America, Bustle, Lit Hub, Hey Alma, and The Millions Through the scrim of fading memory, an elderly woman confronts a lifetime of secrets and betrayal, under the mysterious skies of her island home
Off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah, generations have been tempted by strange blue lights in the sky near an island called Lyra. At the height of WWII, impressionable young Elle Ranier leaves New York City to forge a new life together on the island with her new husband, Simon. There they will live for decades, raising a family while waging a quixotic campaign to find the source of the mysterious blue offshore light--and the elusive minerals rumored to lurk beneath the surface. Fifty years later, Elle looks back at her life on the mysterious island--and at a secret she herself has guarded for decades. As her memory recedes into the mists of Alzheimer's disease, her life seems a tangle of questions: How did her husband's business, now shuttered, survive so long without ever finding the legendary Lyra stones? How did her own life crumble under treatment for depression? And what became of Gabriel--the handsome, raffish other man who came to the island with them and risked everything to follow the lights? Darkly romantic and deeply haunting, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells pulls us into a story of the tantalizing, faithless relationship between ourselves and the lives and souls we leave behind.
Author: Hannah Lillith Assadi
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 01/11/2022
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.77lbs
Size: 8.62h x 5.80w x 0.93d
ISBN: 9780593084366
Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 08/01/2021 pg. 7
Publishers Weekly 10/18/2021
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2021
Booklist 12/15/2021 pg. 88
Off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah, generations have been tempted by strange blue lights in the sky near an island called Lyra. At the height of WWII, impressionable young Elle Ranier leaves New York City to forge a new life together on the island with her new husband, Simon. There they will live for decades, raising a family while waging a quixotic campaign to find the source of the mysterious blue offshore light--and the elusive minerals rumored to lurk beneath the surface. Fifty years later, Elle looks back at her life on the mysterious island--and at a secret she herself has guarded for decades. As her memory recedes into the mists of Alzheimer's disease, her life seems a tangle of questions: How did her husband's business, now shuttered, survive so long without ever finding the legendary Lyra stones? How did her own life crumble under treatment for depression? And what became of Gabriel--the handsome, raffish other man who came to the island with them and risked everything to follow the lights? Darkly romantic and deeply haunting, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells pulls us into a story of the tantalizing, faithless relationship between ourselves and the lives and souls we leave behind.
Author: Hannah Lillith Assadi
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 01/11/2022
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.77lbs
Size: 8.62h x 5.80w x 0.93d
ISBN: 9780593084366
Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 08/01/2021 pg. 7
Publishers Weekly 10/18/2021
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2021
Booklist 12/15/2021 pg. 88
About the Author
Hannah Lillith Assadi teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts. Her first novel, Sonora, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2018, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
9780593084366