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Bailey Beads [Stonewall Book Award Finalist] edition by Terry Wolverton Literature Fiction eBooks

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"Who makes us what we are? Our mothers, our lovers, our fictions? Terry Wolverton’s inquiries into these issues of identity makes Bailey’s Beads a compelling, disturbing, provoking book."
—Rebecca Brown, author of The Gifts of the Body

"With diamond-cutter precision, Terry Wolverton explores the interweaving of families both real and created. In content and in form, Bailey’s Beads challenges, troubles, and redeems a haunting, delicately sparkling debut."
—Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin

"Poet Wolverton wears many hats—her ambitious debut as a novelist features several poems that could stand alone, a story-within-a-story that gives some needed distance from her characters…and a stark but melodious prose style. She has created a woman-centered story to which any mother, daughter, friend, or lover can relate."
— Kirkus Reviews


Do we truly know the ones we love or do we invent them, turning them into fictions, projections of our own desires?

When a chance car accident sends author Bryn Redding into a deep coma, a whole luminous life is eclipsed, plunged into a state of darkness. The only glimmers that remain appear through the perceptions of those who love her, but contradictions between these views render them suspect.

These images of Bryn conflict acutely for Djuna, Bryn's lover of four years, and Vera, Bryn's mother. Gathered at her hospital bedside, each stakes a claim to Bryn's identity, her past and future. Who is Bryn Redding? Is she the difficult, angry girl her mother remembers, or the vibrant iconoclast her lover adores? To Vera, it seems the child she once thought she knew has grown into a stranger, someone she can scarcely recognize. For Djuna, the possibility of loss moves her to cling even more ferociously to her idealized vision of Bryn.

As friends from the present and past—the community Bryn has built to supplant her family of origin—gather at her side, a many-faceted picture emerges of a woman whose inner life is a mystery. When one of these friends presents Vera with copies of Bryn's published works, Vera comes to understand that her memories of the past contrast irreconcilably with her daughter's. Bryn's tough, spare writing provides yet another picture of Bryn Redding, the manufactured layers of personae and the history that lurks beneath, all the while cautioning the reader that fiction is never a reliable mirror of reality.

As Bryn hovers between life and death, the antagonism between Vera and Djuna ebbs, each coming to recognize that the Bryn of their imaginations will never be restored to them, and that her recovery, if achieved at all, will yield further mysteries.

BAILEY'S BEADS is a beautifully written, perceptive and sexy novel that explores the very nature of identity and the possibility of ever really knowing another person.

Bailey Beads [Stonewall Book Award Finalist] edition by Terry Wolverton Literature Fiction eBooks

"Bailey's Beads" is a masterpiece. Authentic. Original. Brave. This outspoken novel takes you to places both inevitable and unexpected. Beautifully written. Searingly honest. It exposes and makes visible the urges and longings we may want to hide from others as well as from ourselves. The handful of poems, which grace this novel, are occasions of such depth as to be utterly breath-taking.

Having read "Bailey's Beads" -- I now feel more compassion for the characters it portrays, as well as for more myself as a result. There is something so recognizably human in this tale of (possible) loss, love, longing, lust and unrequited expectations. A humanizing read.

Product details File Size 566 KB Print Length 196 pages Page Numbers Source ISBN 1492336920 Publication Date March 5, 2014 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B00IU19W32

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Bailey Beads [Stonewall Book Award Finalist] edition by Terry Wolverton Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews

This book was a delight. Terry Wolverton is a poet whose prose is clean and beautiful. She effectively communicates nuance in human relationships (not an easy trick).
A very thought provoking story. It made me wonder do I really know anything about anyone I know and what do they really know about me? A book that is easy to read but rich in depth.
Terry Wolverton is an exceptionally skilled, socially conscious, writer and poet. This novel is amongst my favorite of her oeuvre. The novel is beautifully constructed and written with an humanistic approach that gathers momentum throughout. I have loaned my copy to many friends over the years and its frayed pages are beloved.
-Heidi
I loved this book. The complex characters are beautifully drawn, and their relationships, no less complicated, tell a moving story of very different people rallying around a person they love. They do this in very human and even dysfunctional ways. Bailey's Beads is a story that is rich in detail and quietly powerful.
I enjoyed the story of Djuna, Brynn and Vera, and I appreciated the fact that all three sides of the story were told. It's especially useful to present the poetry and novel of a character who can't speak for herself; this is very clever. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the novel-within-the-novel, which was called Splinters. The second half of the book is really where it all comes together, and it was only then that I really came to care about the characters. Wolverton is clearly a talented and gifted writer, but I couldn't fathom a whole lot of sympathy for Brynn, the woman in a coma whom everyone is rallying around.
Terry Wolverton's debut novel, BAILEY'S BEADS, is one of the most extraordinary and engrossing books I've read in some time. This moving, wise, and provocative novel is the story of Bryn Redding, a Los Angeles writer who lies comatose following an auto accident. At her bedside are Bryn's lover (Djuna) as well as Bryn's mother (Vera) and through their alternating points of view the reader soon comes to discover that Bryn is not quite the person either of the two grieving women thought she was. While drawing the reader into the compelling plot Wolverton simultaneously explores that common human tendency to feel we actually "know" another person when in fact we are often only familiar with a select part of the whole...or we are merely interpreting their behavior...or simply projecting our own experience onto them. This extremnely well written novel accomplishes this all in a quiet and subtle manner which haunted this reader long after finishing the book. It's a real gem not to be missed.
This girlfriend-in-a-coma story is an interesting examination of how we create our identities, and especially those of our loved ones, through story. The novel plays with form in a way that feels ahead of its time (the original pub date was the early '90s, I believe), and the questions it asks are still relevant. It's also a good read for anyone who's ever dealt with a difficult in-law. -)
"Bailey's Beads" is a masterpiece. Authentic. Original. Brave. This outspoken novel takes you to places both inevitable and unexpected. Beautifully written. Searingly honest. It exposes and makes visible the urges and longings we may want to hide from others as well as from ourselves. The handful of poems, which grace this novel, are occasions of such depth as to be utterly breath-taking.

Having read "Bailey's Beads" -- I now feel more compassion for the characters it portrays, as well as for more myself as a result. There is something so recognizably human in this tale of (possible) loss, love, longing, lust and unrequited expectations. A humanizing read.