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Blame, September 2009
Hardcover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
September 2009
On Sale: September 1, 2009
304 pages
ISBN: 0374114307
EAN: 9780374114305
Hardcover
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Fiction
Michelle Huneven, Richard Russo once wrote, is “a writer of
extraordinary and thrilling talent.” That talent explodes
with her third book, Blame, a spellbinding novel of guilt
and love, family and shame, sobriety and the lack of it,
and the moral ambiguities that ensnare us all. The story: Patsy MacLemoore, a history professor in her
late twenties with a brand-new Ph.D. from Berkeley and a
wild streak, wakes up in jail—yet again—after another epic
alcoholic blackout. “Okay, what’d I do?” she asks her
lawyer and jailers. “I really don’t remember.” She adds,
jokingly: “Did I kill someone?” In fact, two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a mother and daughter,
are dead, run over in Patsy’s driveway. Patsy, who was
driving with a revoked license, will spend the rest of her
life—in prison, getting sober, finding a new community (and
a husband) in AA—trying to atone for this unpardonable act. Then, decades later, another unimaginable piece of
information turns up. For the reader, it is an electrifying moment, a joyous,
fall-off-the-couch-with-surprise moment. For Patsy, it is
more complicated. Blame must be reapportioned, her life
reassessed. What does it mean that her life has been based
on wrong assumptions? What can she cleave to? What must be
relinquished? When Huneven’s first novel, Round Rock, was published,
Valerie Miner, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review,
celebrated Huneven’s “moral nerve, sharp wit and uncommon
generosity.” The same spirit electrifies Blame. The novel
crackles with life—and, like life, can leave you breathless.
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