But for Maynard, writing per se has never been the point. I was going to study art—but I also wanted to learn about history, political science, poetry, film animation. I was going to act business analyst in google in plays and join a dance class. I would make friends with whom I’d stay up late talking about music and movies. Weekends, I’d visit New York City—the place I hoped one day to live.
To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. We were married the following summer, 2013, on a hilltop in Harrisville, surrounded by old New England friends and a surprising number of Californians, for whom that little town was as wonderful and exotic as a village in Provence. It was Fourth of July weekend, which meant that, from the hilltop where we celebrated, we could look down over the fireworks of three different towns. Jim did something utterly without precedent then. He took one whole summer off from his work as an estate litigator. We shipped his Triumph Bonneville back east, and since it seemed a little ambitious to travel entirely by motorcycle, we bought a 1992 Chrysler LeBaron convertible for days when we might need a break from the bike.
She is currently at work on a book about her return to Yale University two and a half years ago as an undergraduate, forty-eight years after dropping out at age 18. It is forbidden to copy anything for publication elsewhere without written permission from the copyright holder. A gripping debut novel of female power and vulnerability, race, and class set in a small Mississippi town in the early 1980s. An up-all-night love story wrapped in a mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted. Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Harper Perennial.
Joyce Maynard is the author of eighteen books, including the New York Times bestselling novels, Labor Day and To Die For , Under the Influence and the memoirs, At Home in the World and The Best of Us. Probably Joyce’s best-known book, At Home in the World is a memoir that recounts, among other things, her relationship with J D Salinger, and the inclusion of such saw her ridiculed by many reviewers. Reading At Home in the World, while simultaneously getting to know Joyce in person, both as a mentor and a friend, was certainly a first for me as a reader, and consequently it’s a book that will always hold a special place in my heart. I started reading At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard en route to Antigua. I had originally hoped to finish it prior to the start of the memoir writing retreat Joyce was running on her home in Lake Atitlan, but alas, my copy only arrived the day before I left London, leaving me little time to do so. Years after the death of Johnny Gunther, a falling brick struck and killed Jayson Greene’s daughter.
Yale had gone coed two years before, but ours was the first class in which women would complete the full four years. I think I always knew I’d tell the story of a family who love each other a lot, but break apart. I carried this story with me for a very long time. Maybe it was the death of my second husband, Jim, five years ago, and the experience of losing someone so dear to me, that released me from what I think of as “the old narrative”.
