Mourning Ruby

Title:

Mourning Ruby

Author:

Dunmore, Helen, 1952-2017, author.

Summary:

"Abandoned as a baby, with no ties to her parents, Rebecca grows up to create her own unique and unorthodox family consisting of Joe, a historian and loyal friend; her husband Adam, Joe's friend; and Ruby, her beloved daughter, until a terrible blow threatens to destroy everything she loves." -- Amazon.com.

Physical Description:

278 p. ; 24 cm.

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Subject Term:

Children -- Death -- Fiction.

Friendship -- Fiction.

Grief -- Fiction.

Publisher:

G.P. Putnam's Sons,

Publication Date:

2004

ISBN:

9780399151484

Publication Information:

New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, c2004.

Call Number:

DUNMORE

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607001710139	Adult Fiction	DUNMORE Helen	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

Abandoned as a baby, Rebecca has no tie to her parents other than the men's size-eleven shoebox in which she was found. Yet she grows from a child of no one and nowhere into a woman who creates her own unorthodox but tender family. First, there is Joe-a brilliant historian and loyal friend who longs for more than Rebecca can give him, but whose devotion sustains her. Adam, Joe's friend, is the man who becomes her husband. And Ruby is the daughter whom Rebecca loves with almost unbearable intensity. Then this hopeful life is dealt a blow that could shatter the strongest ties. Rebecca flees her marriage, and Adam sinks into a life numbed by routine and isolation. In the end, it is Joe who enables them to find the way back to understanding, and offers Rebecca a history that she can call her own. Illuminated by both sorrow and vivid joy, Mourning Rubyis ultimately about the transcendent power of storytelling itself.

Author Notes

Helen Dunmore was born in Beverley, England on December 12, 1952. She received a degree in English from the University of York in 1973. She taught English in Finland before moving to Bristol, England, where she taught literature and creative writing. She was a poet, novelist, and children's author. Her collections of poetry include The Apple Fall, The Raw Garden, and Inside the Wave. Her books include Talking to the Dead, Your Blue-Eyed Boy, House of Orphans, The Greatcoat, The Siege, The Betrayal, The Lie, and Birdcage Walk. She won the McKitterick Prize for debut novelists in 1994 for Zennor in Darkness, the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996 for A Spell of Winter, and the Costa Award for Poetry in 2017 for Inside the Wave. She died of cancer on June 5, 2017 at the age of 64.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

When Rebecca, the narrator of most of Dunmore's fine, almost unbearably sad eighth novel (after 2003's Ice Cream), shares a flat with Joe in London, she begins to enjoy the pleasures of friendship and family for the first time in her life: she was abandoned as a baby and adopted by a couple remarkably unsuitable for parenting. Joe, a historian interested in Stalin, introduces her to simple pleasures and shows her that loneliness need not be permanent. And it's through Joe that she meets Adam, a neonatologist who becomes her husband and the father of their daughter, Ruby ("For the first time, I was tied to someone by blood"). Given the book's title, Ruby's death is no surprise (though it's still heartbreaking without being melodramatic), and Dunmore plumbs the consequences of loss: How does one mourn, and then accept, the unacceptable? Numbed by Ruby's death, Rebecca drifts away from Adam, finding diversion in a job as an assistant to a hotelier, Mr. Damiano; Adam buries himself in his work with premature babies. Ambitiously, Dunmore complements this tragic narrative with two other stories, one autobiographical, told by Mr. Damiano, about growing up in a circus where his parents were trapeze artists, and one told by Joe, a work of fiction set during WWI about a man and a woman who could be his and Rebecca's ancestors. Rebecca's own story isn't told linearly, so these narrative asides aren't as distracting as they sound. And they are critical to the author's main theme: that narrative is a key to understanding and to acceptance. This is that rare novel, an intensely emotional, fiercely intelligent story, fiction with the power to offer redemption. Author tour. (Mar.) FYI: Dunmore has won Britain's Orange Prize for Fiction. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

In this tale by Orange Prize winner Dunmore, a woman discarded by her parents at birth finally finds joy in her own marriage, only to have tragedy intervene. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.