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The
Usual Rules - Writer Comments
What other writers
have been saying about The Usual Rules:
"Joyce Maynard takes us
into the heart and mind of a thirteen year old coming to terms with her
mother’s death. What so many of us wondered about -- and what most
of us feared -- is captured perfectly in these pages: the horror, the
disbelief, the unspeakable grief, and the painfully slow recovery that
come hand in hand with such a sudden and senseless loss."
—
Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters
"Joyce Maynard has taken a timely subject and found in it those timeless
aspects of human experience that sometimes make fiction more truthful
than fact. Any reader who has suffered great loss -- loss of love, of
certainty, of trust in the usual rules -- will empathize with, and be
comforted by, Maynard’s wonderfully authentic characters. The story
of their journey from devastation to hope is honest, heartrending, compassionate,
and, in the end, profoundly healing. A jewel."
—
Martha Beck, author of Expecting Adam
"The Usual Rules is a wonderful book, bravely and beautifully written.
Even though the novel is about one of the personal tragedies of September
11, reading it is an unexpected joy. Amazingly, there isn’t an ounce
of hype or sentimentality in this account. No lofty political or social
conclusions are drawn, no patriotic themes are invoked. Instead, Maynard
works on a small scale, inside one family, and she writes with humor,
insight, and a touch of real genius. This writer understands so well that
human suffering and human healing really take place not in the newspapers
or on television, but quietly at home, in the details of everyday life,
deeply affecting the people we know, the people we are."
—
Reeve Lindbergh, author of No More Words:
A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
"Every now and then I'll finish a stellar book and think, 'I wish
I'd written that.' The Usual Rules is one of these -- a heartbreaking,
haunting, perfectly pitched novel about a young girl who loses everything
on a sunny September morning, and manages to find herself in the midst
of it all. If we are all still learning lessons post 9/11, then Maynard’s
book should be required reading: to help us remember how we used to be,
and to celebrate the stronger, spirited people we are capable of becoming."
—
Jodie
Picoult, author of Perfect Match and Second Glance
"Out of violence, sorrow and loss, Maynard has crafted a miracle:
a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful novel that has much to say about
families and the ways in which they support and fail each other. At the
heart of The Usual Rules is this: love and understanding are the means
by which we save ourselves."
—
Anne
LeClaire, author of Leaving Eden and Entering Normal
"Joyce Maynard has written the story we all imagined but dared not
tackle -- what happens to a post-millennial Wendy thrust into a Neverland
she could never have imagined."
—
Jacqueline
Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean
RECOMMEND JOYCEMAYNARD.COM TO A FRIEND
THE
USUAL RULES HOMEPAGE •
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