Gossip by Beth Gutcheon and a Giveaway!

The critically acclaimed author of Good-bye and Amen, Leeway Cottage, and More Than You Know returns with a sharply perceptive and emotionally resonant novel about all the ways we talk about one another, the sometimes fine line between showing concern and doing damage, and the difficulty of knowing the true obligations of friendship.

Loviah “Lovie” French owns a small, high-end dress shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Renowned for her taste, charm, and discretion, Lovie is the one to whom certain women turn when they need “just the thing” for key life events: baptisms and balls, weddings and funerals. Among those who depend on Lovie’s sage advice are her two best friends since boarding school days: Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf. Despite the love they share for their mutual friend, there has always been a chilly gulf between Dinah and Avis, the result of a perceived slight from decades ago that has unimaginably tragic echoes many years later. 

An astute chronicler of all that makes us human, Beth Gutcheon delivers her most powerful and emotionally devastating novel to date. Gossip is a tale of intimacy and betrayal, trust and fidelity, friendship and motherhood that explores the way we use “information” — be it true, false, or imagined — to sustain, and occasionally destroy, one another. ~~ synopsis from Goodreads 

My thoughts on Gossip ~~ 

This story is told from the POV of Lovie, the not-so-rich girl that is befriended by both Dinah and Avis while in boarding school. Lovie goes on to be a successful dress shop owner and becomes the glue that keeps the three friends and their families together.

I love stories that follow women from a young age to their later years. Gossip is the story of the progression of these women's lives and how they grow and struggle in their friendships. The three women meet when they are very young and the story follows them and their intertwined families until the women are quite old.

The author does a great job on character development and I felt like I was one of the friends. I felt the same joys, the same frustrations and the same emotions that the characters felt as they are going through the good times and the bad times.

I have not read any books by Beth Gutcheon before this one, even though she has written quite a few. This story intrigued me and I jumped at the chance to review it. I will definitely be reading more of Ms. Gutcheon's work.

Author Bio 

Beth Gutcheon, author of Gossip, is the critically acclaimed author of eight previous novels: The New Girls, Still Missing, Domestic Pleasures, Saying Grace, Five Fortunes, More Than You Know, Leeway Cottage and Good-bye and Amen. She is the writer of several film scripts, including the Academy Award nominee The Children of Theatre Street. She lives in New York City.

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GIVEAWAY!! 

I am offering my gently-read hardback copy of Gossip to one lucky person. This is US only since I have to mail the book myself.

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~ I am making it international!  

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