Mona Simpson Book order

"The story of a family whose single mom, fighting mental illness, slowly becomes unable to raise her family, told from the perspective of each of the three children. As the novel opens, a mother drives her eldest son Walter from their home in Los Angeles to the University of California at Berkeley. It will be her last fully responsible act before breaking down completely and being committed to a mental hospital, leaving her children behind. Holding tight to his ambitions to become an architect, Walter must cope with the sudden loss of his family and all financial support. With the help of a family friend, his younger sister and brother, still at home, barely manage to escape social services and foster care, but they must fend for themselves as they try to finish school and begin searching for their own careers. We hear each of them tell their own story as they witness the slow disappearance of their beloved mother into mental illness while they struggle to achieve the life she envisioned for them and to keep the family intact"-- Provided by publisher

Tom Owens gehört zu den legendären amerikanischen Unternehmern - dem Microsoft-Gründer Bill Gates nicht unähnlich -, die den amerikanischen Alltag nachhaltig beeinflußt haben. Owens hat sich bei all der Arbeit allerdings keinerlei Gedanken über sein Privatleben gemacht. Er ist nun ein gemachter Mann, dem sogar politische Ambitionen zugeschrieben werden. Doch eines schönen Tages steht die zehnjährige Jane bei ihm vor der Tür. Ihre Mutter hat sie zu Owen geschickt, denn sie behauptet, daß er Janes Vater ist. Das Mädchen versucht, eine Beziehung zu diesem Mann, ihrem vermeintlichen Vater, zu knüpfen, was gar nicht so einfach ist. Denn da gibt es nicht nur Olivia, seine langjährige Freundin, sondern auch viele andere Frauen, die ein Auge auf diese gute Partie geworfen haben. Jane freundet sich aber mit Noah Kaskie an, seinem besten Freund und alter ego, der, an einen Rollstuhl gefesselt, ersehnt, was Owen für selbst-verständlich hält - Erfolg im Beruf und bei den Frauen. Wie Jane es schafft, diese diffizilen Konstellationen zu verändern, und wie Owens schließlich zu sich selbst findet, davon handelt Mona Simpsons neuer Roman, in dem sie wieder enormes literarisches Gespür beweist.

Une jeune fille de treize ans cherche une famille adoptive pour se libérer d'une mère abusive, perverse, indiscrète et égoïste qui lui est follement attachée.

In her highly acclaimed first novel, Anywhere But Here , Simpson created one of the most astute yet vulnerable heroines in contemporary fiction. Now Mayan Atassi--once Mayan Stevenson--returns in an immensely powerful novel about love and lovelessness, fathers and fatherlessness, and the loyalties that shape us even when they threaten to destroy us. Now a woman of twenty-eight and finally on her own in medical school, Mayan becomes obsessed with the father she never knew, leading her to hire detectives to dredge up the past, thus eroding her savings, ruining her career, and flirting with madness in a search spanning two continents.

A national bestseller—adapted into a movie starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon—Anywhere But Here is the heart-rending tale of a mother and daughter. A moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer, the novel follows the two women as they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions. A brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation, Anywhere But Here is a story about the things we do for love, and a powerful study of familial bonds.