FIRST YOU TRY EVERYTHING: A REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

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FIRST YOU TRY EVERYTHING

BY JANE MCCAFFERTY

ABOUT THE BOOK:

An engrossing tale of a marriage that’s falling apart and a wife who will stop at nothing to keep it together.

From their early days in college, Evvie and Ben were drawn to each other by feelings of isolation stemming from their wounded childhoods, passionate idealism, and zeal for music. Sheltered by their love, they weathered the challenges and trials of the imperfect world around them. But as the years passed, they grew apart. Now Ben has his sights set on a completely different kind of future—alone, or with someone else.

Convinced that Ben cannot live without her, Evvie begins to unravel, as she obsessively devises ways to reclaim the love that she cannot let go of. She gambles on a spectacularly dangerous scheme, one that may ultimately have devastating consequences.

Jane McCafferty has written a highly original, utterly beguiling, and emotionally satisfying novel about marriage. Told from alternating viewpoints, this gripping, psychologically astute, and madcap novel illuminates the power of love to define and transform our lives, for better or for worse.

PRAISE FOR FIRST YOU TRY EVERYTHING:

“[An] evocative read. . . . A gimlet-eyed story of divorce and love, which bristles with pain and beauty. . . . Set amid the gritty splendor of Pittsburgh, the novel masterfully conveys both the youthful love that Ben and Evvie once shared and why it has fizzled.”

— Marie Claire

 “With the plainspoken beauty of her prose and the convincing way the novel inhabits each protagonist’s consciousness…McCafferty has given us a story of shattered illusions, essential as long as humans have dreams from which they need to wake up.”-- Cleveland Plain Dealer  “McCafferty’s second novel coins its own brand of heart-searing suspense. . . . Fans of Anne Tyler, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and other top-drawer domestic fiction writers will enjoy this unpredictable, offbeat novel.”— Library Journal  “[A] deeply moving portrait of the dissolution of a marriage . . . [with] heartrending scenes illuminating the pain of separation, both for the one leaving and the one left.”— Booklist  “[A] sensitive, offbeat second novel. . . . [that] offers some nicely observed insights into guilt and despair . . . until heartbreak and delusion lead to an act of lunacy that will redefine the landscape. Everyday tragedy takes a surreal spin in this . . . soulful, idiosyncratic tale.”— Kirkus “Jane McCafferty knows how marriage can go stale, how it can turn and curdle despite a couple’s best intentions and efforts. Wise, wry and surprising, First You Try Everything is about the mad things we do to hang on to lost love.”— Stewart O'Nan, author of Emily, Alone and The Odds “The tools in Jane McCafferty’s anatomy lab: big heart, big brain, jars of funny bones, twine of poetic prose. Under the microscope one finds expanding constellations, other times the minute dna of words combining beautifully with other words. Either way the reader sits back in charged happiness at the discoveries.”— Nancy Zafris, author of Lucky Strike and The Metal Shredders  
“Told in direct, plain-spoken language, Jane McCafferty’s first novel gathers genuine emotional depth and complexity as it follows the lives of two middle-aged sisters, Ivy and Gladys, and the 17-year-old girl, Raelene, who befriends them. 

— New York Times Book Review

 “[This] first novel focuses on the life-altering effects of love, loss and abandonment... McCafferty gives readers a...view of the nature of personal transformation.” — Publishers Weekly 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jane McCafferty is the author of the novel One Heart and two collections of stories, Thank You for the Music and Director of the World and Other Stories, which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. She is the recipient of an NEA award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. She lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW:
FIRST YOU TRY EVERYTHING by Jane McCafferty could be simply described as a tale of two people growing apart and how one of them can’t bear to let go. But there is nothing simple about FIRST YOU TRY EVERYTHING. McCafferty has given readers such intense, spellbinding characters, that no matter how hard the story is to read at some point, you must keep turning the pages. Evvie and Ben were quirky personalities when they met and their life seemed perfectly planned out until Ben began to “grow up” and away from Evvie, and she was unable to grasp the reality of his infidelity and decision. Grasping at straws again simplifies Evvie’s determination to keep her marriage intact because what she does goes quite against the norm.

With both characters having troubled home lives growing up, it is really Evvie who took the hit head on; and her head was never the same again! She begins to go from obsessive to fanatical and beyond. Ben tries so desperately to cut Evvie out of his life so he can go on to lead a normal life with a new love but he doesn’t realize how far it will push Evvie. People around Evvie, especially Ben, just can’t seem to come to grips with Evvie’s steady decline and her own silent screams for help. McCafferty tells the story from both Ben and Evvie’s points of views so readers will almost be able to get into their heads. However, in some instances, I am not sure it is a safe place to go. I found FIRST YOU TRY EVERYTHING to be a book I had to finish even though at times I was so unhappy about what I was reading. I believe the characterizations were so well written that one’s feeling for them becomes a very real thing to the reader. To say it was a bit disturbing I believe is appropriate. However, to say that this should keep you from reading FIRST YOU TRY EVERYTHING would deny readers of an exceptionally well-written, remarkable character study.

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO DANIELLE AND THE FINE

FOLKS AT HARPER COLLINS, I HAVE ONE

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