What do you think?
Rate this book
Lifelines
A beautifully wrought and sharply detailed story of the intertwining lives of two Duse, a strong-willed psychic and Isadora, her daughter, who struggles to find her own identity. A masterful evocation of the complex network of expectation, love, rebellion and need that is at the core of every mother-daughter relationship.
279 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
6 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Leavitt
47 books828 followersCaroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of Cruel Beautiful World, Is This Tomorrow, With or Without You, Pictures of You (Algonquin Books), which. Pictures of You was on the Best Books of the Year lists from the San Francisco Chronicle, The Providence Journal, Bookmarks and Kirkus Reviews. It was also a Costco Pennie's Pick. Is This Tomorrow was long listed for the Main Readers Prize, a WNBA Reading group Choice, A San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick/Editor's Choice, a Jewish Book Club Pic and the winner of an Audiofile Earphones Award.
Her 13th novel DAYS OF WONDER will be published by Algonquin/Hatchette in the spring of 2024.
The winner of a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant, a second prize winner in Goldenberg Fiction Prize, A Sundance Screenwriting Lab Finalist, a Nickelodeon Screenwriting Fellowship Finalist and a National Magazine Award Nominee, Leavitt is a senior writing instructor at UCLA and Stanford online and a freelance manuscript consultant. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Psychology Today, Salon,More, and more.
She has been featured on The Today Show and profiled in the New York Times.
You can reach her through www.carolineleavitt.com. On twitter @leavittnovelist. On Instagram @carolineleavitt and FB https://www.facebook.com/carolineleav... @carowriter99
Her 13th novel DAYS OF WONDER will be published by Algonquin/Hatchette in the spring of 2024.
The winner of a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant, a second prize winner in Goldenberg Fiction Prize, A Sundance Screenwriting Lab Finalist, a Nickelodeon Screenwriting Fellowship Finalist and a National Magazine Award Nominee, Leavitt is a senior writing instructor at UCLA and Stanford online and a freelance manuscript consultant. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Psychology Today, Salon,More, and more.
She has been featured on The Today Show and profiled in the New York Times.
You can reach her through www.carolineleavitt.com. On twitter @leavittnovelist. On Instagram @carolineleavitt and FB https://www.facebook.com/carolineleav... @carowriter99
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 28, 2014
4.0 out of 5 stars - "A talent is to sort out life with, to explain it so you won't ever feel like you're out of control."
This is not just another mother-daughter drama, but a finely constructed and compelling study of the nature of expectations, superstitions, and dreams. If you are told that you are special, unique, and have a gift -- will you believe it, live up to it, or even want it?
Isadora, raised in what she calls a "strange paradise" by her psychic mother and a doting father (a dentist who uses hypnotism to reduce pain during procedures), was told from the beginning that she had a special ability that she would have to find within herself. Fighting against the stigma of having a mother who read palms and had visions when touching objects belonging to other people, Isadora can't seem to discover one iota of any power within herself. Although initially very attached to her parents, particularly to her mother, teen rebellion surfaces and feeds her desire to escape the embarrassment of being her mother's completely ordinary daughter. Because of the "star" on her palm, Isadora's mother Duse insists that it is a sign of the talent within if only Isadora would try harder to figure it out. Thinking her mother a charlatan and resisting any belief in the supernatural, Isadora escapes to attend college out of state and limps painfully toward adulthood with only a smidgen of insight and understanding about the nature of love. When her life spirals out of control, she goes back to the only bulwark of certainty she has ever known -- her mother. But this time, Duse does not have the answers and solutions that Isadora desperately needs.
What made this good -- the author's writing. She makes you want to know these characters even as you shake your head at some of the choices they make and the things they do. In fact, Isadora isn't a particularly likable person, and the reader may get impatient with her, but definitely will feel some empathy for her struggles for intimacy and independence. The novel is fairly short and is a quick read, only because of the desire to see where Isadora's search for herself takes her. I've read another of this author's books -- Is This Tomorrow -- and I enjoyed it as well. This is not a tale with happily ever after endings, but it feels authentic and hopeful nevertheless. I don't necessarily believe in psychic powers, or palm reading, but then again, I might if I had personal experience of it or saw it in action. To say that Duse is an unconventional mother is an understatement, but the reader never doubts her love for her daughter and every mother's wish for her child -- to be happy. I think book groups would find this a great one for discussion.
Thank you to NetGalley and Open Road Integrated Media for the e-book ARC to review.
This is not just another mother-daughter drama, but a finely constructed and compelling study of the nature of expectations, superstitions, and dreams. If you are told that you are special, unique, and have a gift -- will you believe it, live up to it, or even want it?
Isadora, raised in what she calls a "strange paradise" by her psychic mother and a doting father (a dentist who uses hypnotism to reduce pain during procedures), was told from the beginning that she had a special ability that she would have to find within herself. Fighting against the stigma of having a mother who read palms and had visions when touching objects belonging to other people, Isadora can't seem to discover one iota of any power within herself. Although initially very attached to her parents, particularly to her mother, teen rebellion surfaces and feeds her desire to escape the embarrassment of being her mother's completely ordinary daughter. Because of the "star" on her palm, Isadora's mother Duse insists that it is a sign of the talent within if only Isadora would try harder to figure it out. Thinking her mother a charlatan and resisting any belief in the supernatural, Isadora escapes to attend college out of state and limps painfully toward adulthood with only a smidgen of insight and understanding about the nature of love. When her life spirals out of control, she goes back to the only bulwark of certainty she has ever known -- her mother. But this time, Duse does not have the answers and solutions that Isadora desperately needs.
What made this good -- the author's writing. She makes you want to know these characters even as you shake your head at some of the choices they make and the things they do. In fact, Isadora isn't a particularly likable person, and the reader may get impatient with her, but definitely will feel some empathy for her struggles for intimacy and independence. The novel is fairly short and is a quick read, only because of the desire to see where Isadora's search for herself takes her. I've read another of this author's books -- Is This Tomorrow -- and I enjoyed it as well. This is not a tale with happily ever after endings, but it feels authentic and hopeful nevertheless. I don't necessarily believe in psychic powers, or palm reading, but then again, I might if I had personal experience of it or saw it in action. To say that Duse is an unconventional mother is an understatement, but the reader never doubts her love for her daughter and every mother's wish for her child -- to be happy. I think book groups would find this a great one for discussion.
Thank you to NetGalley and Open Road Integrated Media for the e-book ARC to review.
August 14, 2014
Duse is the mother, Isadora the daughter in this story that is an exploration into the mother-daughter bond. Duse is gifted, or delusional depending on whose point of view you believe, with the ability to read palms and know things after an older woman takes her under her wing. At first she doesn't even believe in such things until she blossoms under the older woman's tutelage. She is 'itchy' to study hands, almost verging on obsessive, so she can have insight into strangers lives and maybe lead her to her own destiny and far from the boring average lives around her. Indeed destiny arrives and palm-reading has her marry Dentist Martin, with his promising lined palm, who is the exact opposite of her. Stable and reserved, a little embarrassed by 'mystical things', Martin falls hard. Together the two have Isadora, named with the hope of greatness and the 'knowing' that her palm promises a gift of it's own. Through the years, Martin indulges Duse's 'gift', and even allows Isadora to be fed in the belief that she is special. The child grows up adored and charmed into the promise of a great destiny of her own. The problem is Isadora is nothing like her mother and waits for a gift that may never come. Desperate to leave her mother's strange world, one she once believed in as a child, she falls in love with the older divorced Daniel while in college only to find herself in a tangled mess with her lover's ex. This is where Isadora swallows too much, becomes an outsider in her own love life. One can almost say her life verges on the strange more than her psychic mother, in her lover's abrupt disappearance.
When Duse attains a taste of notoriety, landing on a television show after helping find a missing child, Isadora's embarrassment echoes what many children (full-grown or otherwise) feel when their parent is painfully different. The old story of the child-parent bond, the seesaw of pride and embarrassment children often struggle with carries us through the novel. Early on, Isadora is made to feel less interesting, when as a young child her peers hope she can read their palms. Living in anyone's shadow isn't conducive to a healthy love, made worse by a mother hell-bent on making Isadora believe she will be great. In Duse's defense, what mother doesn't wish they can will a beautiful destiny on their beloved child?
Death opens Duse's eyes to the things she ignored for the love of palm reading. The last part of the novel is for reflection. Isadora too wonders if her smothering love was the cause of Daniel's strange disappearance. But as a woman, I felt Daniel's tie to his ex would be enough to make any woman, particularly a young one, cling harder to her lover and of course a smarter woman to run. There is a lot to take in, the novel starts off slowly but becomes stronger as the reader ventures deeper into the reading. I enjoyed it more for it's painful exposure of mother-daughter love, full of admiration and painful embarrassment which I believe sums up most mother-daughter relationships, sprinkled with frustration too on both sides. A good read.
When Duse attains a taste of notoriety, landing on a television show after helping find a missing child, Isadora's embarrassment echoes what many children (full-grown or otherwise) feel when their parent is painfully different. The old story of the child-parent bond, the seesaw of pride and embarrassment children often struggle with carries us through the novel. Early on, Isadora is made to feel less interesting, when as a young child her peers hope she can read their palms. Living in anyone's shadow isn't conducive to a healthy love, made worse by a mother hell-bent on making Isadora believe she will be great. In Duse's defense, what mother doesn't wish they can will a beautiful destiny on their beloved child?
Death opens Duse's eyes to the things she ignored for the love of palm reading. The last part of the novel is for reflection. Isadora too wonders if her smothering love was the cause of Daniel's strange disappearance. But as a woman, I felt Daniel's tie to his ex would be enough to make any woman, particularly a young one, cling harder to her lover and of course a smarter woman to run. There is a lot to take in, the novel starts off slowly but becomes stronger as the reader ventures deeper into the reading. I enjoyed it more for it's painful exposure of mother-daughter love, full of admiration and painful embarrassment which I believe sums up most mother-daughter relationships, sprinkled with frustration too on both sides. A good read.
August 4, 2014
Duse is the mother, Isadora the daughter in this story that is an exploration into the mother-daughter bond. Duse is gifted, or delusional depending on whose point of view you believe, with the ability to read palms and know things after an older woman takes her under her wing. At first she doesn't even believe in such things until she blossoms under the older woman's tutelage. She is 'itchy' to study hands, almost verging on obsessive, so she can have insight into strangers lives and maybe lead her to her own destiny and far from the boring average lives around her. Indeed destiny arrives and palm-reading has her marry Dentist Martin, with his promising lined palm, who is the exact opposite of her. Stable and reserved, a little embarrassed by 'mystical things', Martin falls hard. Together the two have Isadora, named with the hope of greatness and the 'knowing' that her palm promises a gift of it's own. Through the years, Martin indulges Duse's 'gift', and even allows Isadora to be fed in the belief that she is special. The child grows up adored and charmed into the promise of a great destiny of her own. The problem is Isadora is nothing like her mother and waits for a gift that may never come. Desperate to leave her mother's strange world, one she once believed in as a child, she falls in love with the older divorced Daniel while in college only to find herself in a tangled mess with her lover's ex. This is where Isadora swallows too much, becomes an outsider in her own love life. One can almost say her life verges on the strange more than her psychic mother, in her lover's abrupt disappearance.
When Duse attains a taste of notoriety, landing on a television show after helping find a missing child, Isadora's embarrassment echoes what many children (full-grown or otherwise) feel when their parent is painfully different. The old story of the child-parent bond, the seesaw of pride and embarrassment children often struggle with carries us through the novel. Early on, Isadora is made to feel less interesting, when as a young child her peers hope she can read their palms. Living in anyone's shadow isn't conducive to a healthy love, made worse by a mother hell-bent on making Isadora believe she will be great. In Duse's defense, what mother doesn't wish they can will a beautiful destiny on their beloved child?
Death opens Duse's eyes to the things she ignored for the love of palm reading. The last part of the novel is for reflection. Isadora too wonders if her smothering love was the cause of Daniel's strange disappearance. But as a woman, I felt Daniel's tie to his ex would be enough to make any woman, particularly a young one, cling harder to her lover and of course a smarter woman to run. There is a lot to take in, the novel starts off slowly but becomes stronger as the reader ventures deeper into the reading. I enjoyed it more for it's painful exposure of mother-daughter love, full of admiration and painful embarrassment which I believe sums up most mother-daughter relationships, sprinkled with frustration too on both sides. A good read.
When Duse attains a taste of notoriety, landing on a television show after helping find a missing child, Isadora's embarrassment echoes what many children (full-grown or otherwise) feel when their parent is painfully different. The old story of the child-parent bond, the seesaw of pride and embarrassment children often struggle with carries us through the novel. Early on, Isadora is made to feel less interesting, when as a young child her peers hope she can read their palms. Living in anyone's shadow isn't conducive to a healthy love, made worse by a mother hell-bent on making Isadora believe she will be great. In Duse's defense, what mother doesn't wish they can will a beautiful destiny on their beloved child?
Death opens Duse's eyes to the things she ignored for the love of palm reading. The last part of the novel is for reflection. Isadora too wonders if her smothering love was the cause of Daniel's strange disappearance. But as a woman, I felt Daniel's tie to his ex would be enough to make any woman, particularly a young one, cling harder to her lover and of course a smarter woman to run. There is a lot to take in, the novel starts off slowly but becomes stronger as the reader ventures deeper into the reading. I enjoyed it more for it's painful exposure of mother-daughter love, full of admiration and painful embarrassment which I believe sums up most mother-daughter relationships, sprinkled with frustration too on both sides. A good read.
September 24, 2012
Through my own fault, I was slow to get into this book. Shame on me. Like all others by this wonderful author, the story-telling is wonderful. The characters are interesting. I want to know more. If I don't finish this on Sunday, I'll be taking it along Monday to the "read in" at the library. Thanks, Caroline Leavitt, for another good read.
Read
July 12, 2024I kept putting this down to read other books, but I finally finished. Sadly, it’s the Leavitt book I like the least.
November 30, 2013
a woman was able to read palms. on her way home she meets a man and has sex the first time with him at a park. she gets pregnant and moves to marry him. her dad died, then her mom
she had the baby, a girl, but she wasnt able to read palms. she met a man and moved in with him, his x wife was over all the time. then he wanted to marry her but disappeared without a word.
the girl went back home to take care of her mom after her stroke. she then found out the man she was going to marry was ok but just didnt want to marry her
she had the baby, a girl, but she wasnt able to read palms. she met a man and moved in with him, his x wife was over all the time. then he wanted to marry her but disappeared without a word.
the girl went back home to take care of her mom after her stroke. she then found out the man she was going to marry was ok but just didnt want to marry her
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2014
A deeply moving story that illustrates the bonds and difficulties that often arise in mother and daughter relationships. A beautiful book for people who enjoy books with lots of character development, descriptive prose, and slower build in their books. Beautifully written and a treat to get to review through NetGalley.
January 24, 2016
I love Caroline Leavitt's writing! She gives the reader such a sense of character...right down to their pulse. This seemed to me to be a bit different from her other works (I believe I've read them all) but I liked the chances she took...I liked the epilogues for both Duse and Isadora...a nice way to tie up the story.
July 14, 2014
This story was so dark. Isadora is probably one of the strongest characters ever. Another great work from Caroline Leavitt.
Want to read
August 15, 2017Author Interview: http://www.momadvice.com/post/sundays...
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews