Emily, alone

Stewart O'Nan, 1961-

Book - 2011

Newly independent widow Emily Maxwell dreams of visits by grandchildren and mourns changes in her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood before realizing an inner strength to pursue developing opportunities.

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Subjects
Published
New York : Viking 2011.
Language
English
Main Author
Stewart O'Nan, 1961- (-)
Item Description
Sequel to: Wish you were here.
Physical Description
255 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780670022359
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

WHO is Stewart O'Nan? Over the past 17 years, he's written 11 novels - we'll turn to the 12th in a moment - as remarkable for their precise, economical language and depth of characterization as for the fact that each is as different from its predecessor, in style, tone and narrative approach, as if it had come from a different author. What unites these disparate books are their themes - the fragmented and solitary nature of contemporary American life, the degradation of Rust Belt cities and towns, the slippery line between the working and middle class - and a distinct ability to turn toward the dark places from which other writers might avert their gaze. This is, perhaps, a fancy way of saying that O'Nan often veers into the bloody territory traditionally ascribed to genre fiction (thrillers, mysteries, horror, even procedurals), revolving around murders, abductions, mysterious plagues or gruesome accidental deaths, with forays into the supernatural, as in "The Night Country," narrated by three teenagers killed in a car crash. This is a writer who, like Dickens, you can count on to kill off the little girl - a writer who looks at cars warming in suburban driveways and sees "enough white smoke for a million suicides." So it's funny, and unexpected, that O'Nan's most terrifying novel, "Wish You Were Here" (2002), relegated such violence to the sidelines, centering instead on the familiar psychological torture a family wreaks upon itself. Sprawling and virtuosic, that novel follows Emily Maxwell (70-ish and newly widowed) and her family over a final week at their Chautauqua lake house, which Emily has decided to sell despite the family's objections, turning the gathering into "politics on a dangerously heartfelt level, where the smallest disagreement could be taken as a betrayal." Now Emily has returned. Set seven years later, in 2007, "Emily, Alone" - O'Nan's best novel yet - finds his difficult heroine rattling around her Pittsburgh house, "her life no longer an urgent or necessary business," redistributing Kleenex boxes (the fullest on her nightstand, the least full in the office), cleaning her stove in preparation for the cleaning lady's arrival, noting "the usual troop of jays and nuthatches and titmice in her bird journal," scanning the obituaries for familiar names and, mostly, planning for the annual visits of her children, Margaret and Kenneth. So quiet and orderly is Emily's life that a phone call followed by a ringing doorbell constitutes a "madhouse," a walk in the snow "an adventure" and the purchase of a new car a life-changing event. The novel, in a way, hinges on that car - a bright blue Subaru Outback that she (hilariously) worries is too flashy - which, both literally and metaphorically, allows her greater agency over her own life and, in the months that follow, sends her into something of an emotional tailspin. Suddenly, she finds herself open to the world anew, no longer derisive of her neighbors' garish Christmas decorations but "grateful for the sheer silly exuberance," and increasingly aware of both her culpability in her children's struggles and her own shortcomings, her restless desire for something larger, for perfection, for the impossible fulfillment of her ideals. "Why did she always want more," she asks herself, "when this was all there was? " Emily's frenetic activity and endless lists are, of course, a way of fending off such questions, as well as the overwhelming surges of memory that serve only to further her constant sense of loss. "She could not stop these visitations, even if she wanted to," she laments. "They plagued her like migraines, left her helpless and dissatisfied, as if her life and the lives of all those she'd loved had come to nothing, merely because that time was gone, receding even in her own memory, to be replaced by this diminished present." It's heartbreaking stuff - I will confess that I found myself sobbing at certain, often unexpected, points, as when Emily donates a set of monogrammed luggage, feeling like "an executioner" - and yet the novel's brilliance lies just as much in O'Nan's innate comic timing, which often stems from Emily's self-imposed isolation from, and disgust with, the modern world. At a Van Gogh exhibit, she thinks the people listening to the audio tour look like "the subjects of some mind-control experiment, pressing buttons on a small black box wired to their heads." Underlying the humor is an incisive investigation of the ways cultural forces shape private lives: the constant clash between Emily and her children has as much to do with generational differences as with questions of temperament and personal inclination. A child of the Depression and the Great War, raised in privation, Emily prizes thrift and industry. Her children - products of the 1960s and, of course, their parents' financial stability - prize self-expression over all. If O'Nan's earlier novels were influenced by Poe, the spectre of Henry James hovers delicately above Emily's Grafton Street home, insinuating itself into O'Nan's spiraling, exact sentences and the beautiful, subtle symbolism that permeates the novel. James, of course, wrote ghost stories, too, and viewed the supernatural forces at play in stories like "The Turn of the Screw" as an embodiment of the anxiety that underlies the stuff of daily life, "the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy." If O'Nan makes one thing clear in "Emily, Alone," it's that these days the normal - for an 80-year-old woman living alone, far from her children - might be just as sinister as it is easy. So quiet and orderly is Emily's life that a phone call followed by a ringing doorbell constitutes a 'madhouse.' Joanna Smith Rakoff is the author of the novel "A Fortunate Age."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 27, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Upon completion of his psychologically rigorous, emotionally raw, yet deceptively buoyant giant of a domestic drama, Wish You Were Here (2002), O'Nan obviously had sufficient material and heart left over to once again visit the Maxwell family of Pittsburgh a few years on in time. In the previous novel, the matriarch, Emily, has just lost her husband, and she, her sister-in-law, her two grown children, and their children gather for the last time at the family summer home in Chautauqua, New York. Now, in this sequel, we follow Emily through her domestic pleasures, concerns, and crises as the calendar year moves from holiday to holiday, with Emily experiencing increased infirmity while also seeing the physical decline of her sister-in-law and even her beloved spaniel. Connection to her children remains tricky as they approach middle age, and establishing communication with her grandchildren seems beyond her ability, for they live in a young society whose tenets are unfamiliar to her. Emily's parental disappointment arises from her abiding sentiment that what one does for one's children is endless and thankless. O'Nan again proves himself to be the king of detail. What people eat, how they eat it, what they think and say in the midst of eating it this novel represents the almost minute mapping of the lay of the domestic land as O'Nan the sociological cartographer views it. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: An author tour and radio-publicity campaign will follow O'Nan's recent appearance as a panelist at the ALA/ERT Booklist Author Forum at ALA's Midwinter Meeting.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

O'Nan checks back in with the Maxwell family from Wish You Were Here in this bracingly unsentimental, ruefully humorous, and unsparingly candid novel about the emotional and physical travails of old age. At 80, widow Emily Maxwell has become dependent on her equally aged sister-in-law, Arlene, to chauffeur them to the rounds of Pittsburgh's country club dinners, flower shows, museums, and increasingly frequent funerals. After Arlene has a stroke, Emily is forced into reclaiming her independence, but she remains clear-eyed about her diminishing future and what she can expect of her two adult children and four grandchildren, giving O'Nan the opportunity and space to expertly play out the misunderstandings, disagreements, and resentments among parents and their grown children. Emily fears saying the wrong things (yet often does) and frets about her grandchildren, who are uninterested in family traditions and lax with thank-you notes. The unhurried plot follows Emily from a lonely Thanksgiving with Arlene to a Christmas visit from her daughter and two grandchildren, Easter with her son and his children, and the eve of her summer departure to Chautauqua. During this time, friends and acquaintances die, Emily observes the deterioration of the neighborhoods she's known for decades, and she continues to converse with her old dog, Rufus. Efficient, practical, stubborn, frugal, and a lover of crosswords, church services, and baroque music, the closely observed Emily is a sort of contemporary Mrs. Bridge, and O'Nan's depiction of her attempts to sustain optimism and energy during the late stage of her life achieves a rare resonance. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Award winner O'Nan returns to the Maxwell family in this sequel to Wish You Were Here. Emily Maxwell, widowed and head of a flawed family beset with disappointments, confronts her own mortality when her sister-in-law Arlene suffers a fainting spell. The doctors can't diagnose the cause, but it is indicative of what's happening to their friends, most in poor health and limited to walkers or confined to wheelchairs. Upon hearing of the death of a friend, Emily asks herself whether she is mourning the passing of a friend or of happier times when they were busy, young, and alive. Gone are the genteel traditions that kept the older generation running smoothly, traditions lacking in her own grown children, Kenneth and Margaret. Margaret, a recovering alcoholic, is divorced and has two children to raise; her finances are a disaster; and she has no job. Kenneth's wife's hostility to Emily causes tension at family gatherings. Emily copes by keeping to her routines, accompanied by her aging dog, Rufus, knowing that she can do only so much to keep the inevitable changes at bay. VERDICT With sympathy and compassion, O'Nan spotlights the plight of aging baby boomers, further enriching our understanding of the human condition. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/10.]-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Another quietly poignant character study from O'Nan (Songs for the Missing, 2008, etc.), this one tracing the daily routines and pensive inner life of an elderly widow.Emily Maxwell, newly bereaved in Wish You Were Here (2002), is now more or less accustomed to life without her beloved husband Henry. His death and the more recent loss of her best friend Louise are still painful, but she's adjusted. She has her aging dog Rufus for company; she's a regular churchgoer; she reads and listens to classical music; every Tuesday she drives with her sister-in-law Arlene from their separate homes in Pittsburgh to the suburban Eat 'n Park's two-for-one breakfast buffet. Arlene's collapse at the restaurant dramatically closes the first chapter, but otherwise O'Nan's low-key narrative bears out Emily's uneasy sense that "she was at an age where all was stillness and waiting." Holiday visits from her children underscore fraught family relations. Daughter Margaret, a recovering alcoholic in shaky economic circumstances, has always annoyed Emily with her messy feelings and disorganized ways. Son Kenneth is dutiful but reserved; Emily and his wife Lisa dislike each other. Her four grandchildren are in college or beginning careers; "it was hard to follow their lives from a distance." Emily is well aware that she too distanced herself from her family when she married the more privileged Henry, and her unsentimental musings over past and present relationships form the novel's emotional core as nine months unfold from November 2007 to the following July. O'Nan gently depicts Emilyinclined to be as critical of herself as of those who don't meet her exacting, old-fashioned standardstrying to judge less and accept more. She doesn't change so much as let go, learning that an existence diminished by age and loss is nonetheless precious for the pleasures that remain: gardening in the spring, going through childhood mementoes, simply knowing that she has lived, loved and endured.Rueful and autumnal, but very moving.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Praise for Emily, Alone   "O'Nan's best novel yet . . . It's heartbreaking stuff--I will confess that I found myself sobbing at certain, often unexpected, points . . . and yet the novel's brilliance lies just as much in O'Nan's innate comic timing, which often stems from Emily's self-imposed isolation from, and disgust with, the modern world. . . . If O'Nan's earlier novels were influenced by Poe, the specter of Henry James hovers delicately above Emily's Grafton Street home, insinuating itself into O'Nan's spiraling, exact sentences and the beautiful, subtle symbolism that permeates the novel." -- The New York Times Book Review "Emily is as authentic a character as any who ever walked the pages of a novel. She could be our grandmother, our mother, our next-door neighbor, our aunt. Our self . . . In a portrait filled with joy and rue, O'Nan does not wield a wide brush across a vast canvas but, rather, offers an exquisite miniature. Just as Emily prefers Van Gogh's depiction of a branch of an almond tree over the more spectacular Sunflowers , so, too, do we readers appreciate an ordinary life made, by its quiet rendering, extraordinary. No matter her--and our--unavoidable end, Emily . . . teaches us that small moments not only count but also endure." --Mameve Medwed, The Boston Globe "It takes a deft hand to do justice to the ordinary . . . but, if the mundane matters to you, then Stewart O'Nan is your man. . . . O'Nan's glory as a writer is that he conveys the full force of the quotidian without playing it for slapstick or dressing it up as Profound. . . . Emily, Alone [is] moody, lightly comic, and absolutely captivating. . . . With economy, wit, and grace, O'Nan ushers us into the shrinking world of a pleasantly flawed, rather ordinary old woman and keeps us readers transfixed by the everyday miracles of monotony." --Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air "To say that nothing happens in this [ Emily, Alone ] is like saying that there's nothing going on in that glorious room in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum where Rembrandt's numerous portraits of his mother hang. . . . [O'Nan] is a seamless craftsman who specializes in the lives of ordinary people. In Emily Maxwell, O'Nan has created a sturdy everywoman, occasionally blemished by pettiness and disdain for common idiocy, but always striving for a moral equilibrium." -- San Francisco Chronicle "As riveting as a fast-paced thriller, albeit one that delves into the life and psyche of an elderly woman." -- The Miami Herald "Stewart O'Nan's books are not about poverty, life's crises, gross injustice, or family drama; in fact, there's very little drama in his works. He has become a spokesperson--in modern fiction--for the regular person, the working person, and now, the elderly. . . . This is a writer who illuminates moments like that one, moments you never even noticed. . . . O'Nan's thoroughness is like a skill from another time--a quieter time, when it was easier to listen." -- Los Angeles Times "O'Nan's storytelling is as patient and meticulous as his heroine. He illuminates the everyday with splendid precision. Readers who appreciate psychological nuance and fictional filigree will delight in Emily, Alone ." --Stephen Amidon, The Globe and Mail (Toronto) "Emily stretches for a kind of rediscovery. Throughout she is lovable and heartbreaking and real. When this novel ends, in a moment of great hope and vigor, you'll find yourself missing her terribly." -- Entertainment Weekly (Grade A) "O'Nan gives each small experience an emotional heft, and he's supremely skilled at revealing Emily's emotional investment in every small change in her life. . . . [A] plainspoken but brassy, somber but straight-talking [tone] infuses this entire nervy, elegant book." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune "[O'Nan] is an author who would drive all around town to avoid running over a single cheap thrill. He subverts our desire for commotion and searches instead for drama in the quotidian motions of survivors. . . . [ Emily, Alone ] quietly shuffles in where few authors have dared to go. And it's so humane and so finely executed that I hope it finds those sensitive readers who will appreciate it." --Ron Charles in The Washington Post " Emily, Alone demonstrates that though the distance between an incredibly boring book and a fascinating one may seem small, it is actually miles wide. It takes a madly inventive writer to make a novel about an old woman's daily existence as absorbing as this one is." -- The Daily "Stewart O'Nan is a master of introspection." -- The Denver Post "O'Nan's book, with great poignancy and humor, offers a rare glimpse into the life of a woman whose life is nearing an end. . . . [Emily is] an irresistible character--funny, flawed, and thoroughly unsentimental about her inevitable fate. . . . In different hands, this might have been a morose book, but it's actually delightful. O'Nan's ability to deliver such a flawless portrait of a woman thirty years his senior speaks to his gifts as a writer." -- The Dallas Morning News " Emily, Alone , by Stewart O'Nan, is a book of quiet yet stunning beauty; steady and trim from the outside, like its protagonist, and, just like her, stirring inside with deep longings, intense observations, and a strong attachment to living." -- The Huffington Post "O'Nan has the rare ability to make the ordinary seem unordinary in a way that is reminiscent of Updike." -- The Daily Beast "Reading Emily, Alone made me think of Charles Dickens. This is somewhat incongruous, because Stewart O'Nan's novels are not crafted out of the complicated, multilayered plots that we associate with Dickens. But O'Nan does share a laserlike observational talent with the Victorian master--one that can shock the reader into a sense that the story is lifted out of one's own family or even oneself. . . . O'Nan is a true virtuoso. . . . [Emily] is quietly heroic." --William Kist in The Cleveland Plain Dealer "Mr. O'Nan skillfully and sensitively re-creates Emily's world, from the city streets she nervously navigates in the car to her fears of illness and death." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Old age treads the thin line between melancholy and mirth in Stewart O'Nan's marvelous new novel, Emily, Alone ." -- Buffalo News "There's a calm, enveloping tone to the story that belies its unflinching exploration of a woman's chronically discontented heart. . . . Its chief pleasure comes from unraveling this little old lady's mess tangle of emotions." -- BookPage "Stewart O'Nan may simply be genetically incapable of writing a bad book. His characters are written with precision, intelligence, and verisimilitude; they're so luminously alive that a reader can accurately guess about what they're eating for dinner or what brand toothpaste they use. . . . The fact that Stewart O'Nan can take an 'invisible woman'--someone we nod to pleasantly and hope she won't engage us in conversation too long--and explore her interior and exterior life is testimony to his skill. Mr. O'Nan writes about every woman . . . and shows that there is no life that can be defined as ordinary." -- Mostly Fiction Book Reviews (online) "[ Emily, Alone ] is an elegant examination of aging, family, and identity with a fine balance of the surprising and the expected. It is at once optimistic and totally realistic, and every page is a joy to read. As a sequel or stand-alone title, Emily, Alone is an understated yet powerful character study from one of America's outstanding storytellers." --Bookreporter.com "[By reading Emily, Alone ] it is possible that the reader could reach a deeper understanding of the stage of life or the ways that we visit the sins of our parents on our children or of the folly of holding on to outdated patterns of living. When it comes to showing us to ourselves, Stewart O'Nan is a master." -- New York Journal of Books "A warmhearted, clear-eyed portrait of a woman in her dotage who understands that life is both awfully long and woefully short, much of it passed in waiting and regret, but never, heaven forbid, about just the past, since 'every day was another chance.'" -- Barnes and Noble Review "This exquisite novel plumbs an interior landscape rarely explored in literature . . . It's testament to O'Nan's talent than Emily, Alone is a page-turner suffused with vibrancy, humor, even hope." -- Macleans "Utterly devastating, poignant, so subtle. It is unpardonable that O'Nan is not a household name." --Edward Champion via Twitter "Emily Maxwell, in Stewart O'Nan's terrif Emily, Alone , joins India Bridge & Olive Kitteridge as women characters whom you won't soon forget." --Nancy Pearl via Twitter "[A] bracingly unsentimental, ruefully humorous, and unsparingly candid novel about the emotional and physical travails of old age. . . . The closely observed Emily is a sort of contemporary Mrs. Bridge, and O'Nan's depiction of her attempts to sustain optimism and energy during the late stage of her life achieves a rare resonance." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "O'Nan again proves himself to be the king of detail. What people eat, how they eat it, what they think and say in the midst of eating it--this novel represents an almost minute mapping of the lay of the domestic land as O'Nan the sociological cartographer views it." -- Booklist (starred review) "With sympathy and compassion, O'Nan spotlights the plight of aging baby boomers, further enriching our understanding of the human condition." -- Library Journal "Another quietly poignant character study from O'Nan . . . Rueful and autumnal, but very moving." -- Kirkus Reviews PENGUIN BOOKS EMILY, ALONE Stewart O'Nan is the author of fourteen novels, including The Odds; Emily, Alone ; and Last Night at the Lobster , as well as several works of nonfiction, including, with Stephen King, the bestselling Faithful . He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his family. ALSO BY STEWART O'NAN FICTION   Songs for the Missing Last Night at the Lobster The Good Wife The Night Country Wish You Were Here Everyday People A Prayer for the Dying A World Away The Speed Queen The Names of the Dead Snow Angels In the Walled City   NONFICTION   Faithful (with Stephen King) The Circus Fire The Vietnam Reader (editor) On Writers and Writing, by John Gardner (editor)   SCREENPLAY   Poe Table of Contents Praise for Emily, Alone About the Author Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph   TWO-FOR-ONE JUST VISITING MYSTERIES OF THE BRAIN THE VIEW FROM THE FIFTH FLOOR CLOSE TO NORMAL THE RESURRECTION PILGRIMS THE BELLE OF THE BALL THE DAY OF REST KINDRED SPIRITS FAMILY PICTURES ALL-WHEEL DRIVE HIGHWAY ROBBERY KLEENEX EXTRAVAGANCE CHRISTMAS CHEER THE BUSIEST DAY OF THE YEAR PRESS FOR ASSISTANCE THE HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST EARTHLY POSSESSIONS THE GIFT HOUSEKEEPING UNDER THE WEATHER INGRATITUDE FORGETFULNESS MYSTERY! PF BEE MINE A BAD HABIT EXPRESSIONS OF SYMPATHY THE DAMAGE SPRING AHEAD THE FLOWER SHOW THE PROBLEM WITH GOOD FRIDAY CURIOUS THE GROWN-UP TABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY 392 THE CRUELEST MONTH ALMOND BLOSSOMS DRIVE-BY THE VIRTUAL TOUR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS THE MYSTERY OF MARCIA COLE BETTER OR WORSE? WHITE ELEPHANTS INNOCENT VICTIMS LOVE, EMILY THE START OF THE SEASON TUBBY TATERS CYD CHARISSE IMPROVEMENTS HARD TO KILL OLD HOME DAYS EXIT, STAGE LEFT For my mother, who took me to the bookmobile Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life--startling, unexpected, unknown? --Virginia Woolf TWO-FOR-ONE T uesdays, Emily Maxwell put what precious little remained of her life in God's and her sister-in-law Arlene's shaky hands and they drove together to Edgewood for Eat 'n Park's two-for-one breakfast buffet. The Sunday Post-Gazette , among its myriad other pleasures, had coupons. The rest of the week she might have nothing but melba toast and tea for breakfast, maybe peel herself a clementine for some vitamin C, but the deal was too good to pass up, and served as a built-in excuse to get out of the house. Dr. Sayid was always saying she needed to eat more. It wasn't far--a few miles through East Liberty and Point Breeze and Regent Square on broad streets they knew like old friends--but the trip was a test of Emily's nerves. Arlene's eyes weren't the best, and her attention to the outside world was directly affected by whatever conversation they were engaged in. When she concentrated on a thought, she drove more slowly, making them the object of honking, and once, recently, from a middle-aged woman who looked surprisingly like Emily's daughter Margaret, the finger. "Obviously I must have done something," Arlene had said. "Obviously," Emily agreed, though she could have cited a whole list. It did no good to criticize Arlene after the fact, no matter how constructively. The best you could do was hold on and not gasp at the close calls. In the beginning they'd taken turns, but, honestly, as atrocious as Arlene was, Emily trusted herself even less. Henry had always done the driving in the family. It was a point of pride with him. When he was dying, he insisted on driving to the hospital for his chemo himself. It was only on the way home, with Henry sick and silent beside her, bent over a plastic bowl in his lap, that Emily piloted his massive Olds down the corkscrewing ramps of the medical center's parking garage, terrified she'd scrape the sides against the scarred concrete walls. For several years she used the old boat to do her solitary errands, never venturing outside of the triangle described by the bank, the library and the Giant Eagle, but after a run-in with a fire hydrant, followed quickly by another with a Duquesne Light truck, she admitted--bitterly, since it went against her innate thriftiness--that maybe taking taxis was the better part of valor. Now the Olds sat out back in the garage with her rusty golf clubs as if decommissioned, the windshield dusty, the tires soft. She wasn't a fan of the bus, and Arlene had made a standing offer of her Taurus, itself a boxy if less grand antique. The joke among their circle was that she'd become Emily's chauffeur, though, as that circle shrank, fewer and fewer people knew their history, to the point where, having the same last name, they were sometimes introduced by the well-meaning young, at a University Club function or after one of Donald Wilkins's wonderful organ recitals at Calvary, as sisters, a notion Arlene though not Emily found wildly amusing. Today, as always, Arlene was late. It was gray and raining, typical November weather for Pittsburgh, and Emily stood at the living room's bay window, leaning over the low radiator and holding the sheer curtain aside. The storm window was spotted and dirty. A few weekends ago, her nextdoor neighbor Jim Cole had generously hung them, but he'd failed to clean them properly, and now there was nothing to be done until the spring. She would spend a morning tending to them herself, the way her mother had taught her, with vinegar and water, wiping them streak-free with newsprint, but that was months off. Outside, the trees and hedges along Grafton Street were bare and black, and the low sky made it feel like late afternoon instead of morning. The Millers' was still for sale. Their leaves hadn't been picked up yet, and lay smothering the yard, a dark, sodden mass. She wondered who would be looking to buy this time of year. The last she'd heard, Kay Miller was in an assisted living place over in Aspinwall, but that had been in August. Emily thought she should visit her, though in truth it was the last thing she wanted to do. When she thought of fashionable, flighty Kay Miller in a place like the one in Aspinwall, she couldn't help but picture Louise Pickering's final hospital room. The oatmeal bareness, the mechanical bed, the plastic water pitcher with its bent straw on the rollaway table. Consciously, she knew those places could be very nice, just as homey as your own bedroom, or close to it, but the vision of Louise persisted, and the idea that she was at an age where all was stillness and waiting--not true, yet impossible to dismiss. Excerpted from Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.