Download Ebook The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden
Nevertheless, reviewing guide The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden in this site will certainly lead you not to bring the published publication all over you go. Merely keep the book in MMC or computer disk and they are readily available to review at any time. The prosperous air conditioner by reading this soft documents of the The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden can be introduced something new behavior. So currently, this is time to confirm if reading can boost your life or not. Make The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden it undoubtedly work and also get all advantages.
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden
Download Ebook The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden
The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden. Just what are you doing when having extra time? Talking or surfing? Why don't you aim to read some e-book? Why should be reading? Reading is one of enjoyable and delightful task to do in your downtime. By checking out from numerous resources, you can locate new info and also encounter. Guides The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden to read will be countless beginning with clinical publications to the fiction publications. It suggests that you could check out the books based upon the requirement that you wish to take. Of program, it will be different and also you can review all e-book kinds whenever. As right here, we will certainly show you a publication should be reviewed. This publication The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden is the choice.
The advantages to take for reading guides The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden are coming to improve your life quality. The life top quality will not only concerning the amount of understanding you will obtain. Even you review the fun or enjoyable e-books, it will certainly assist you to have enhancing life top quality. Feeling fun will lead you to do something completely. Moreover, the book The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden will certainly give you the lesson to take as a good need to do something. You might not be worthless when reading this e-book The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden
Never ever mind if you do not have sufficient time to visit guide establishment and search for the preferred publication to check out. Nowadays, the online e-book The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden is involving offer convenience of checking out practice. You may not have to go outdoors to search guide The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden Searching and also downloading guide entitle The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden in this write-up will give you far better remedy. Yeah, on the internet book The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden is a type of digital book that you could get in the link download given.
Why must be this on the internet e-book The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden You could not should go somewhere to read guides. You could review this publication The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden whenever and also every where you desire. Even it is in our leisure or sensation bored of the works in the office, this corrects for you. Get this The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden now and also be the quickest individual that completes reading this e-book The Answer To Your Question, By Paulette Alden
THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION is the winner of The Kindle Book Review's 2013 Best Indie Book Award in the suspense category.
After raising her son, Ben, by herself, librarian Inga Daudelin is blindsided when he is accused of the murders of four young women. At the same time, Jean, a young, pregnant waif who seems both simple and wise, "imprints" on Inga at work, drawing her into an unusual friendship. When Ben kidnaps Jean, Inga and lead detective Ron O'Loughlin, with whom she is falling in love, search for the two, who along with Jean's baby, have formed a strange but human family.
"This wonderful novel is a success at every level--an engrossing thriller and a nuanced examination of love--written with artful directness. I loved every word and could not put it down." -- Scott Turow
- Sales Rank: #313847 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-01-10
- Released on: 2013-01-10
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"A riveting novel from first page to last, The Answer to Your Question showcases author Paulette Alden's genuine talent as a gifted storyteller. Also highly recommended are her two earlier titles: Feeding the Eagles: Short Stories (Graywolf Press) and Crossing the Moon (Penguin)."
-- Julie Summers, The Midwest Book Review Bookwatch, May 2013
From the Author
From author Paulette Alden
Answer started with a question: What would it be like to be the mother of someone like Ted Bundy? I was living in Tacoma, Washington, when Bundy was first accused of the murder of young women in the area. No one who knew him could believe that handsome, bright, personable Ted could be a killer. I had heard that Ted's mother worked as a librarian near where I was living. I never met her, but I would often think about her, wondering what it would like to have this bright, promising son accused out of the blue of murder. That became one genesis of the novel: I would create a character whose son was accused of murder.
Another character is Jean--a simple-wise naïf, seventeen, pregnant, Southern, on her own in Tacoma while her husband is serving in Viet Nam. She "imprints" on Inga at the library where they work, drawing her into an unusual friendship. The story unfolds when Ben, the son, kidnaps Jean and takes her with him on the lam.
Though Ben started out based on Bundy, at some point I decided I didn't want to write about a psychopath. I thought of my Ben as a more complex person, with factors which one might not be able to fathom. We can't always know why people--even ourselves--do the things we do.
The book's title, The Answer to Your Question, is deceptive, suggesting as it does that the book will actually provide answers. It differs from most mystery or crime novels, which satisfy readers in the end by providing such answers as who-done-it and why. The lack of answers resulted from my own sense of human nature. To me the greatest mystery is the human heart, and it can't be completely understood.
I read a piece in The New York Times by Andrew Solomon, reflecting on Adam Lanza and the New Town tragedy. He spent hundreds of hours interviewing the parents of Dylan Klebold, convinced if he dug deeply enough into their characters, he would understand why Columbine happened. He came to view them as not only inculpable, but as "admirable, moral, intelligent and kind people" whom he would gladly have had as parents himself. Knowing Tom and Sue Klebold only made Columbine "far more bewildering" and forced Solomon to acknowledge that "people are unknowable." When I read that, I understood better what was behind my novel, even if I hadn't always known it when I was writing it. We want answers because they make us feel we're in control, when so often in life we're not.
About the Author
Paulette Alden is the author of Feeding the Eagles, a collection of short stories (Graywolf Press), and Crossing the Moon, a memoir (Penguin). A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, she has taught memoir and fiction writing at Stanford, the University of Minnesota, Carleton College, St. Olaf College, and the Key West Literary Seminar. Originally from South Carolina, Alden now lives in Minneapolis, where she blogs on books and writing and critiques literary manuscripts via her website, www.paulettealden.com.
Most helpful customer reviews
60 of 64 people found the following review helpful.
Gripping and Powerful
By Sheryl Sorrentino
Set during the Vietnam War era and told in the alternating voices of Inga (a middle-aged librarian whose enigmatic son, Ben, is accused of strangling four women) and Jean (the seemingly naïve young transplant from North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains who finds herself pregnant by her absentee soldier husband), The Answer to Your Question is a tricky book to review without revealing spoilers. Possessing strong elements of literary fiction (due in no small part to the raw beauty of Alden's writing), its most powerful and jarring scenes take place at precisely those turning points a reviewer ought not divulge. It is also a difficult book to characterize genre-wise, because of its many plot twists and thriller-esque "whodunit" theme. But it is the edginess of Alden's prose--a poetic realism bordering on the austere--that drew me in and kept me hooked.
The Answer to Your Question is not a story for those wanting neatly-wrapped thematic packages and happy endings. To really appreciate this work, the reader must be comfortable with pain, heartache, and ambiguity. But despite its troubling subject matter, glimmers of hope and positivity sparkle throughout and are primarily revealed through the unlikely friendship that develops between Inga and Jean. Inga is a less-than-perfect woman and mother who manages to find (or, more accurately, recognize) love and friendship in the heart-wrenching context of her son's murder investigation and subsequent manhunt. Jean is a particularly endearing character who is easy to dismiss as a clueless country bumpkin, but whose superficially still waters run deeper than one might expect. Inga's pain and confusion, juxtaposed with Jean's ostensible but oh-so-human frailty, are what keep this story bubbling and flowing from beginning to end. I consistently liked these two women (and more importantly, cared about them) even though I couldn't quite explain or justify some of their actions.
As is true in real life, the characters' responses to challenging events weren't always black or white. For instance, I took a bit of umbrage with the fact that no-nonsense Jean remained on the lam with Ben for so many months, to the exclusion of contacting Inga, her only protector and mentor. I felt the author could have played up the ever-present threat of Ben's gun, or the volatility of his unstable mental state, to explain Jean's increasing dependence on him. While Jean hints at having repulsive feelings of attraction for her captor (which made certain scenes between them both plausible and deliciously creepy), a bit more emphasis on those details might have made this entire premise more convincing to me. But despite such "imperfections," what pulled me back to this story time and again were the uncontrived voices of the protagonist and her prodigious young friend--one beleaguered, the other ingenious; each straightforward and pure in its articulation. Though nothing alike (and nothing like me), the simple, harmonious chord spontaneously struck by these two characters resonated deeply.
Without question a page-turner, The Answer to Your Question offers something beyond mind-numbing entertainment. Like all good art, its themes mirror real life. Alden cleverly weaves many unanswerable but fundamental questions into her gripping and subtly-crafted text: Why do otherwise "normal" children sometimes grow up to become murderers? Where do we draw the line between familial loyalty and moral obligation to those around us? When are we justified in taking life? By the end, I was so absorbed by these stubborn-if-secondary topics, I no longer craved the "Answer" implicitly promised by the novel's title, i.e., whether or not Ben actually murdered the four victims. To the one truly important question--whether this book is a worthwhile read, my answer is a resounding YES!
Sheryl Sorrentino (author of Later With Myself: The Misadventures of Millie Moskowitz; An Unexpected Exile; and The Floater)
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
The Answer To Your Question is not always what you expect...
By Elisabeth Zguta
Bold and compelling - this is the heartfelt story of Inga & Jean, and how their lives became intertwined. This novel pulls the reader into the intense scrutiny of two characters' psyche. Each protagonist has a voice that grows stronger, as they each reach out for their own emotional survival. An intriguing tale, told with an original voice. Paulette Alden has done well to reveal the story of the two unfortunate souls who imprinted on each other while on the path of their own journeys. Both are confronted with unimaginable loss. Inga deals with her fate and choses life after mayhem. Jean, a simple woman, learns about the world and copes with the immeasurable heartache. Our humanity is often tested by tragedy. Questions arise... How we answer is the way we each define ourselves. Inga and Jean replied with decency and loyalty in this wonderful story. They asked the hard questions, and faced the answers. I highly recommend this book for all those who appreciate the human struggle and are not afraid to hear a voice seeking an answer to their question.
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
A terrific novel
By Louise R.
The answer to your question is: YES, do read this book! It's beautifully written in a clear, natural style. The suspenseful, surprising (& sometimes shocking) story is told by the two main characters -- middle-aged, middle-class Inga and teen-aged Jean, a country girl making her way alone in the absence of her soldier husband. These women are skillfully revealed through their distinctive voices. As they tell their stories, the reader comes to care for them and want to know what they'll do next and how events will unfold. Much of the dramatic action is driven by Inga's son Ben, the dark and dangerous force in the book. His threatening (serpent-like) presence and violent misdeeds place Inga and Jean in extreme situations that force them to ask painful questions and make hard choices. This novel successfully draws the reader into its mysterious world of darkness and light. Once you start reading, you won't want to put the book down.
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden PDF
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden EPub
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden Doc
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden iBooks
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden rtf
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden Mobipocket
The Answer to Your Question, by Paulette Alden Kindle
