Mary Gordon

"From the award-winning, much loved writer: a deeply moving novel about an American woman's place during the Spanish Civil War, the lessons she took from it, and how her story will shape her granddaughter's path. Marian cut herself off from her conservative, wealthy Irish Catholic family when she volunteered during the Spanish Civil War--experiences she has always kept to herself. Now in her nineties, she shares her Rhode Island cottage with her granddaughter...

A darkly gripping portrait of an Irish-American family A multi-generational novel set over the course of a day, The Other Side centers on the journey of Vincent and Ellen MacNamara. Married for sixty-six years, the two have seen their share of hardships: emigration from Ireland to America; the bitter disappointments handed down to their children and grandchildren; and, most recently, setbacks to their health. In The Other Side, Vincent returns from...

Mary Gordon's extraordinary novel about a young Catholic woman who pursues father figures-only to wrestle to break free of them Felicitas Maria Taylor was brought up in a cocoon, raised by five devoutly religious women. The death of her father while she was still a baby has caused her to seek out the extreme in men, and that is what she finds in Father Cyprian, a priest whom Felicitas visits during summers in upstate New York. The charismatic Cyprian...

A collection of dazzling and thought-provoking essays from lauded author Mary Gordon Much acclaimed for her novels, Mary Gordon is also a brilliant and wide-ranging essayist. Gathering together twenty-eight of her forays into nonfiction, Good Boys and Dead Girls provides a richly autobiographical context for the themes that mark her fiction, such as Irish-American life, Catholicism, embattled families, and the redeeming power of art. Many of the pieces...

A lifelong Christian evaluates the differences between her beliefs and those of fellow Christians, describing her efforts to study Jesus as a character of the Gospels, in an analysis of biblical stories through which the author developed a greater awareness of Jesus as a deity in human form.

"The beloved author at her storytelling best: four wonderful novellas of Americans abroad and Europeans in America. In these absorbing and exquisitely made novellas of relationships at home and abroad, both historical and contemporary, we meet the ferocious Simone Weil during her final days as a transplant to New York City; a vulnerable American grad student who escapes to Italy after her first, compromising love affair; the charming Irish liar of...

"First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E.M. Forster recognition as a major writer. At its heart lie two families - the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked - some very funny, some very tragic - that results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards...