Meantime - Tapa blanda

Praise for Meantime "Noel's second perceptive, character-driven novel delves into multiple relationships and how they ebb and flow over the years . . . Noel writes with empathy and precision about the minutiae of the lives of her characters, drawing her readers immediately into their interwoven stories." --Booklist "An unflinching autopsy of the heart, laying bare the raw emotions that push us to reconfigure, again and again, our senses of family." --Kirkus Reviews "Noel beautifully captures the difficulties and insecurities that make up marriage, sisterhood, and how our upbringing bleeds into our adulthood. Doubt and rediscovery abound in this heartfelt and heartbreaking story, showing how family can both bring us together and tear us apart." --Library Journal "Katharine Noel's characters display the kind of rare authenticity that makes you certain that you've met them in real life. Meantime is a shrewd and funny novel about the fragile lines that divide vulnerability from self-protection, loyalty from betrayal, and about the tiny choices that can make or unmake a friendship, a marriage, a family." --Carolyn Parkhurst, author of Harmony and the New York Times bestseller The Dogs of Babel "I'm always looking for (and hardly ever finding) a book to lure me in, keep me from cleaning out the pantry, paying bills, writing to my aunt. But Meantime is exactly this. Katharine Noel brings onto the page characters so vibrant you almost want to step out of their way as they stumble through their sorrows, armed only with gallows humor. Noel understands a fundamental truth: that in fiction as in life, tragedy can brake for comedy, but comedy brakes for nothing." --Carol Anshaw, author of the New York Times bestseller Carry the One "Noel is an expert at creating scenes and characters that feel undeniably real. In Meantime I was fully invested in the complex, funny, and unpredictable character Claire Hood--her strange history, devastating present, and uncertain future. This is a novel with edge and heart, and I loved every exquisite sentence." --Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of How to Party With an Infant and the New York Times bestseller The Descendants

Katharine Noel--the award-winning, critically acclaimed author of Halfway House--returns with a wise and moving second novel about the bond between two sisters whose stable lives are suddenly uprooted. Claire has never had a typical family. When she was nine, her father fell in love with a married woman, and the two households agreed to live under one roof. Nicknamed "the Naked Family," they were infamous in the community for their eccentric, free-spirited lifestyle. Now, her stepsister Nicole has set her mind to having a baby on her own, and Claire's husband is enthusiastic about starting a family as well. But Claire wants to avoid an ordinary existence at all costs. Then Jeremy becomes seriously ill, and his high-school sweetheart Gita is a bit too eager to lend a hand in his recovery. As Claire's suspicion of their relationship grows, she feels more distant from the people she loves. Faced with Nicole's pregnancy and Jeremy's increasing closeness with his ex, Claire must decide what she's willing to sacrifice for independence. Meantime is an insightful story of how individuals shape their families while discovering their truest sense of self. With humanity and humor, Noel examines the delicate connections between spouses, siblings, parents and children.