Word: nora
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PRODUCTION: Stephen F. Demeter (Systems Manager); Joseph J. Scafidi (Deputy); Trang Ba Chuong, Theresa Kelliher, Peter K. Niceberg, L. Rufino-Armstrong, Lee R. Sparks (Supervisors); Robert L. Becker, Silvia Castaneda Contreras, Michael Dohne, Osmar Escalona, Garry Hearne, Nora Jupiter, Agustin Lamboy, Jeannine Laverty, Marcia L. Love, Janet L. Lugo, Peter J. McGullam, Sandra Maupin, Helen May, Michael Skinner...
After a few months of being snubbed, Nora is standing alone on her front porch on New Year's Eve in her black cocktail dress listening to the music from the neighborhood party, wondering where her life is going and whether she will ever be included in the circle of laughter. So masterly drawn is Nora that whenever her heart aches this way, so does ours...
...children") live lives as similar as their houses. They all bake the same coconut cake, hang out laundry on the same day of the week and order dinette sets with laminated tops that look like wood but sponge off easily. Loving her children is not enough. To fit in, Nora would have to keep them up, along with the lawn, live a life as ordered as the ones around her and, most important, get a husband...
...dissatisfaction and its companion, desire, which can be tamped down but comes back unannounced. "You might find it when you slipped your hand into a rubber glove to scour the kitchen sink, or in the wedges of pears sliced onto a plate for a baby's lunch." It hits Nora's neighbor Donna Durgin one day when she is "wounded by the kindness" of the Sears repairman, who doesn't charge her for fixing the washer because he can tell she really cares about things. "You wouldn't believe some of the laundry rooms I've seen," he says...
...Nora finally knows she has found a home in this unlikely suburb when Billy, who has been terrorized by the meanest third-grade bullies in modern literature, makes the Little League baseball team. It would be the tritest of endings if it did not, like every word in this stirring, stunning novel, ring absolutely true...