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Precious
The summer of 1978, ten-year-old Vicki Anderson rides her bike to the local park and goes missing. Her tight-knit blue-collar Pennsylvania neighborhood, where children roam the streets at night playing lightning tag, aboveground pools sparkle in backyards, and flowers scent the air, will never be the same.
Down the street from Vicki’s house, another family is in crisis. Troubled by her past, headstrong Natalia Kisch has abandoned her husband and two daughters for another man. Frank Kisch, grappling with his anger, is left to raise their girls alone, oblivious to his daughters’ struggles with both Eva, seventeen, plunges into an affair with her married high school teacher, and nine-year-old Sissy escapes to a world of imagination and storytelling that becomes so magical it pierces the reality of the everyday.
When Natalia unexpectedly returns, the struggles and tensions that have built over the summer erupt into a series of events that change the Kisches irrevocably—forcing them to piece together their complicated pasts and commitments to each other.
In this haunting, atmospheric debut, Sandra Novack examines loss, loyalty, and a family in crisis. Lyrical and elegiac, Precious illuminates our attempts to make sense of the volatility that surrounds and consumes us, and explores our ability, even during the most trying times, to remember and hold on to those we love most.
Down the street from Vicki’s house, another family is in crisis. Troubled by her past, headstrong Natalia Kisch has abandoned her husband and two daughters for another man. Frank Kisch, grappling with his anger, is left to raise their girls alone, oblivious to his daughters’ struggles with both Eva, seventeen, plunges into an affair with her married high school teacher, and nine-year-old Sissy escapes to a world of imagination and storytelling that becomes so magical it pierces the reality of the everyday.
When Natalia unexpectedly returns, the struggles and tensions that have built over the summer erupt into a series of events that change the Kisches irrevocably—forcing them to piece together their complicated pasts and commitments to each other.
In this haunting, atmospheric debut, Sandra Novack examines loss, loyalty, and a family in crisis. Lyrical and elegiac, Precious illuminates our attempts to make sense of the volatility that surrounds and consumes us, and explores our ability, even during the most trying times, to remember and hold on to those we love most.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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425 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
June 23, 2021
Tragische familiegeschiedenis van liefde en eenzaamheid.
May 7, 2009
Precious is a wonderful debut novel by Sandra Novack. It is the story of a family, a neighborhood, an era set in 1978 rural Pennsylvania. Ms. Novack has woven a story that pulled me in and held my interest throughout. Her lyrical prose creates an emotion and depth to the setting and characters that as a reader, felt amazingly real. The characters are so strongly drawn that you feel that you are peering into a neighborhood and truly care about these characters although at times, you don't approve of their decisions or choices.
This is the story of the Kisch family a family of four, typical of the 70's and their relationships with each other and their neighborhood and community. Natalia, the mother, is unable to find herself in the midst of her past and roles as a wife and mother and makes a choice that is devastating to her family. Her husband Frank, is left to pick up the pieces and deal with his own angst as a father and husband. He does his best but to me typifies that 70's dad who is a bit clueless as to how to deal with women, including his own wife and two daughters.
Eva, is the oldest daughter at seventeen, and is a bit lost trying to find her identity and her place in the world. She is filled with many emotions and seems to be trying to find love and acceptance. Sissy, her younger sister, is nine years old and has to deal with the changes in her family as well as the disappearance of a neighbor girl Vickie. She must deal with her own emotions and fears related to this as well as guilt over bad feelings between the girls before Vickie's disappearance.
She was a bit lost in her own dreamworld and trying to find her way without much guidance. The neighborhood itself was a character with the nosy neighbors, barking dogs, picnics and looking out for each other during some trying times.
The ending was not expected and it is not one that ties everything up neatly in a bow which is perfectly fitting for this novel. It gives you pause to think about family, love, loss, loyalty and the importance of protecting and holding on to those we love. I highly recommend reading this book, it's strength is that it's a character driven novel with a strong story line and beautifully written. Yes, there is the missing child storyline that is not the major theme of the book but it is still there as a strong component of the story. There are sexual scenes and promiscuous behavior as well but again, it is not the major theme of the book. This would be a great book to discuss with a book club to break down the characters, their dynamics and family relationships and choices.
This is the story of the Kisch family a family of four, typical of the 70's and their relationships with each other and their neighborhood and community. Natalia, the mother, is unable to find herself in the midst of her past and roles as a wife and mother and makes a choice that is devastating to her family. Her husband Frank, is left to pick up the pieces and deal with his own angst as a father and husband. He does his best but to me typifies that 70's dad who is a bit clueless as to how to deal with women, including his own wife and two daughters.
Eva, is the oldest daughter at seventeen, and is a bit lost trying to find her identity and her place in the world. She is filled with many emotions and seems to be trying to find love and acceptance. Sissy, her younger sister, is nine years old and has to deal with the changes in her family as well as the disappearance of a neighbor girl Vickie. She must deal with her own emotions and fears related to this as well as guilt over bad feelings between the girls before Vickie's disappearance.
She was a bit lost in her own dreamworld and trying to find her way without much guidance. The neighborhood itself was a character with the nosy neighbors, barking dogs, picnics and looking out for each other during some trying times.
The ending was not expected and it is not one that ties everything up neatly in a bow which is perfectly fitting for this novel. It gives you pause to think about family, love, loss, loyalty and the importance of protecting and holding on to those we love. I highly recommend reading this book, it's strength is that it's a character driven novel with a strong story line and beautifully written. Yes, there is the missing child storyline that is not the major theme of the book but it is still there as a strong component of the story. There are sexual scenes and promiscuous behavior as well but again, it is not the major theme of the book. This would be a great book to discuss with a book club to break down the characters, their dynamics and family relationships and choices.
May 31, 2012
This is not a happy book! Every character's live goes wrong in some way and nothing really gets resolved in the end. I found the ending of this book very unsatisfactory, especially about Eva.
There was some strange switching between past and present tence. The character's descriptions where pretty good, I felt sorry for them mostly.
There was some strange switching between past and present tence. The character's descriptions where pretty good, I felt sorry for them mostly.
June 28, 2017
I didn't care for the flashbacks in the middle of the narrative and I really never got the point...
July 14, 2017
The idea of a little girl doing drugs with her sister is disturbing!
August 4, 2010
Website: http://www.sandranovack.com
A Booklist Top Ten Debut
A Random House Fall 2010 "Reader's Circle" Selection
"Heralded by Booklist as one of the ten best debut novels of 2009, reviewers compared PRECIOUS to the works of Anne Tyler and Joyce Carol Oates, and called the novel compelling and beautifully written. Critically acclaimed author Novack has a natural, lyrical voice, and her setting is wonderfully atmospheric. With its focus on relationships between sisters, mother and daughter, and husband and wife, PRECIOUS has great discussion potential and will appeal widely to book clubs." -Random House Reader's Circle
Reviews for PRECIOUS
"Sandra Novack's PRECIOUS is surprising, partly because it never becomes what it appears to be--a novel about a missing child--but rather brilliantly develops into a powerful story about another family in full-tilt crisis. It is surprising as only the best debut fiction can be, showing a new writer already in full command of her gifts." -Teresa Weaver, Atlanta Magazine
"[A:] lyrical and finely crafted first novel...The graceful prose and bleak atmosphere underscore the loneliness of each character. Novack takes the massive distance between friends, husbands and wives, and makes it her home." —Publishers Weekly(12/8/08)
"[A:] dramatic, elegantly rendered debut. In this accomplished first novel, she [Novack:] writes tellingly of the complex relationships among families, lovers, and friends.—Booklist (Starred review) (2/1/09)
"Known for her incisive short stories, published in literary journals like the Iowa Review, Novack has written a haunting first novel... Told with emotional honesty and a unique grasp of the sometimes searing complexity of human relationships, this novel manages also to convey some depth about the very randomness of life and fate."—Library Journal (1/15/09)
"...The characters come alive in the details. Every tragedy is inevitable in Novack's precise, often beautiful debut." —Kirkus Reviews (12/15/08)
"Precious has everything I want in a novel. The Kisch family—and really, all of the people who inhabit this wonderful book—seem so real that I feel I've literally met them. The everyday setting is made haunting by the heart-stopping plot and by the novel's exact and understated prose. This is a novel about an era, a world, and a
neighborhood, but at its core, it's about a family struggling to understand, and to be understood."—Laura Moriarty, author of The Rest of Her Life
"Precious is a powerful, gracefully written, subtly startling work of art." - Huntington News
"Suffused with grief and an unsettling coolly observed nostalgia." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"The novel's narrative richness and focused energy baffle conventional expectations, and Novack's frequent use of the present tense adds a chilling sense of urgency to her tale, driven as much by character as plot." - Morning Call/Chicago Tribune
"Novack engineers her plot so flawlessly that the reader is swept up in the flow of the story. Her fine writing holds your attention...you want to know what is going to happen to these people." - The Baton Rouge Advocate
"A sense of foreboding lies beneath the lazy summer suburban surface of their [the characters':] lives...Novack infuses the suspense of a thriller into her close observation of a domestic drama." - The Columbus Dispatch
"Exquisitely written, Precious is about all the vanishings in
our lives—family, love, trust—and the stories we tell ourselves and each other to fill the subsequent holes left in our hearts. So haunting I haven’t been able to forget a syllable of it, Precious isn’t just spectacularly special—it's truly one knockout punch of a debut."—Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble
"Precious exposes the connections of fearful hope and weighs the cost and ultimate endurance of love. Written with compassion and grave grace, this lyrical, nuanced book establishes Novack as a significant novelist from whom we will hear much more."—Erin McGraw, author of The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard
"Like Natalia, just one of the unforgettable characters in this novel, Sandra Novack understands 'the small, complicated spaces that exist between people.' But she also understands, as Natalia learns to, how people can close those spaces, how they can return home to a love they thought was lost. This is a beautifully written, moving, and wise novel from one of the best new writers to come along in years."—David Jauss, author of Black Maps.
A Booklist Top Ten Debut
A Random House Fall 2010 "Reader's Circle" Selection
"Heralded by Booklist as one of the ten best debut novels of 2009, reviewers compared PRECIOUS to the works of Anne Tyler and Joyce Carol Oates, and called the novel compelling and beautifully written. Critically acclaimed author Novack has a natural, lyrical voice, and her setting is wonderfully atmospheric. With its focus on relationships between sisters, mother and daughter, and husband and wife, PRECIOUS has great discussion potential and will appeal widely to book clubs." -Random House Reader's Circle
Reviews for PRECIOUS
"Sandra Novack's PRECIOUS is surprising, partly because it never becomes what it appears to be--a novel about a missing child--but rather brilliantly develops into a powerful story about another family in full-tilt crisis. It is surprising as only the best debut fiction can be, showing a new writer already in full command of her gifts." -Teresa Weaver, Atlanta Magazine
"[A:] lyrical and finely crafted first novel...The graceful prose and bleak atmosphere underscore the loneliness of each character. Novack takes the massive distance between friends, husbands and wives, and makes it her home." —Publishers Weekly(12/8/08)
"[A:] dramatic, elegantly rendered debut. In this accomplished first novel, she [Novack:] writes tellingly of the complex relationships among families, lovers, and friends.—Booklist (Starred review) (2/1/09)
"Known for her incisive short stories, published in literary journals like the Iowa Review, Novack has written a haunting first novel... Told with emotional honesty and a unique grasp of the sometimes searing complexity of human relationships, this novel manages also to convey some depth about the very randomness of life and fate."—Library Journal (1/15/09)
"...The characters come alive in the details. Every tragedy is inevitable in Novack's precise, often beautiful debut." —Kirkus Reviews (12/15/08)
"Precious has everything I want in a novel. The Kisch family—and really, all of the people who inhabit this wonderful book—seem so real that I feel I've literally met them. The everyday setting is made haunting by the heart-stopping plot and by the novel's exact and understated prose. This is a novel about an era, a world, and a
neighborhood, but at its core, it's about a family struggling to understand, and to be understood."—Laura Moriarty, author of The Rest of Her Life
"Precious is a powerful, gracefully written, subtly startling work of art." - Huntington News
"Suffused with grief and an unsettling coolly observed nostalgia." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"The novel's narrative richness and focused energy baffle conventional expectations, and Novack's frequent use of the present tense adds a chilling sense of urgency to her tale, driven as much by character as plot." - Morning Call/Chicago Tribune
"Novack engineers her plot so flawlessly that the reader is swept up in the flow of the story. Her fine writing holds your attention...you want to know what is going to happen to these people." - The Baton Rouge Advocate
"A sense of foreboding lies beneath the lazy summer suburban surface of their [the characters':] lives...Novack infuses the suspense of a thriller into her close observation of a domestic drama." - The Columbus Dispatch
"Exquisitely written, Precious is about all the vanishings in
our lives—family, love, trust—and the stories we tell ourselves and each other to fill the subsequent holes left in our hearts. So haunting I haven’t been able to forget a syllable of it, Precious isn’t just spectacularly special—it's truly one knockout punch of a debut."—Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble
"Precious exposes the connections of fearful hope and weighs the cost and ultimate endurance of love. Written with compassion and grave grace, this lyrical, nuanced book establishes Novack as a significant novelist from whom we will hear much more."—Erin McGraw, author of The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard
"Like Natalia, just one of the unforgettable characters in this novel, Sandra Novack understands 'the small, complicated spaces that exist between people.' But she also understands, as Natalia learns to, how people can close those spaces, how they can return home to a love they thought was lost. This is a beautifully written, moving, and wise novel from one of the best new writers to come along in years."—David Jauss, author of Black Maps.
May 16, 2009
Where to begin? From the moment I first entered the world Sandra Novack created in Precious, I was in awe. The novel is beautifully written, lyrical even. At the very heart of the novel is the characters, each one weighed down by the events in their lives which have seemingly swallowed them whole. It is impossible to summarize this book succinctly. There are so many threads running through the novel. A mother who feels trapped in her life and neglected by her husband runs off, leaving behind a husband and two daughters. The repercussions of her actions have grave consequences. The oldest daughter, Eva, finds comfort in sex, taking up an affair with her married high school teacher who is going through his own marital crisis. Nine-year-old Sissy escapes into fantasy, often mixing her day dreams with reality. Frank, the girls’ father, is caught up in his own anger and frustration. He is just going through the motions, unable to be there for his daughters in a way they need him to be.
Add to that the sudden disappearance of a young girl in their small Pennsylvania town, which only increases the tensions already surrounding the family. Ginny Anderson, the mother of the missing girl, turns further inward, closing herself off from the rest of the world. Her connection to the Kisch family is twofold. Sissy and the missing girl, Vicki, had been good friends as had Sissy’s mother, Natalia, and Ginny.
Natalia’s return sets off an entirely new set of consequences for her family. So much has changed in the few months she had been gone.
There is so much to this novel. Each of the characters is flawed and their emotions are raw. Author Sandra Novack captures that so eloquently. One thing I found frustrating and yet so utterly true to life was how alone the characters felt. There were moments when they would come together, share in their pain and grief, but those moments were fleeting. Instead they each stood very much apart from one another, coping in their own ways. How many times did I want to reach out and hug Eva and Sissy?
Abandonment and loss are the two major themes of the novel. Within each of their lives the characters struggle to deal with their own feelings of loss. The role of family as well as that of love also plays a part. The Kisch family and the other various characters in the novel are faced with family crises that test their resolve, make them question their own realities, including the people they hold most dear.
The novel takes place in the summer of 1978, a time period that is quite significant to the setting of the book. The steel industry is showing signs of distress, the effects of the Vietnam War still linger, and it is a time when parents are less afraid for their children’s safety–at least until something unimaginable happens to change all that. Natalia’s own history as an immigrant child who lost her family during the Holocaust, herself having once lived in a concentration camp, colors her desires and perceptions of the day. Her family were Hungarian gypsies and she still carries bits of that with her. There were so many little threads like these which I would have liked to explore further, but Precious is not the book in which to do that. In this instance, such details helped fill out the characters and bring the story more fully to life.
I enjoyed Precious immensely. It took me a little while to get into it only because I wasn’t able to devote much time to reading it at first. Once I was able to sit down and really get into it, I couldn’t stop reading. I became a part of the story, my heart ached for so many of the characters–a sure sign that the book got under my skin and stole my heart. This was one of those books I hated to see come to an end.
Add to that the sudden disappearance of a young girl in their small Pennsylvania town, which only increases the tensions already surrounding the family. Ginny Anderson, the mother of the missing girl, turns further inward, closing herself off from the rest of the world. Her connection to the Kisch family is twofold. Sissy and the missing girl, Vicki, had been good friends as had Sissy’s mother, Natalia, and Ginny.
Natalia’s return sets off an entirely new set of consequences for her family. So much has changed in the few months she had been gone.
There is so much to this novel. Each of the characters is flawed and their emotions are raw. Author Sandra Novack captures that so eloquently. One thing I found frustrating and yet so utterly true to life was how alone the characters felt. There were moments when they would come together, share in their pain and grief, but those moments were fleeting. Instead they each stood very much apart from one another, coping in their own ways. How many times did I want to reach out and hug Eva and Sissy?
Abandonment and loss are the two major themes of the novel. Within each of their lives the characters struggle to deal with their own feelings of loss. The role of family as well as that of love also plays a part. The Kisch family and the other various characters in the novel are faced with family crises that test their resolve, make them question their own realities, including the people they hold most dear.
The novel takes place in the summer of 1978, a time period that is quite significant to the setting of the book. The steel industry is showing signs of distress, the effects of the Vietnam War still linger, and it is a time when parents are less afraid for their children’s safety–at least until something unimaginable happens to change all that. Natalia’s own history as an immigrant child who lost her family during the Holocaust, herself having once lived in a concentration camp, colors her desires and perceptions of the day. Her family were Hungarian gypsies and she still carries bits of that with her. There were so many little threads like these which I would have liked to explore further, but Precious is not the book in which to do that. In this instance, such details helped fill out the characters and bring the story more fully to life.
I enjoyed Precious immensely. It took me a little while to get into it only because I wasn’t able to devote much time to reading it at first. Once I was able to sit down and really get into it, I couldn’t stop reading. I became a part of the story, my heart ached for so many of the characters–a sure sign that the book got under my skin and stole my heart. This was one of those books I hated to see come to an end.
September 25, 2010
As I was reading Precious, Tolstoy's famous opening for Anna Karenina came to mind: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
In Precious it's the Kisches, a working class family struggling through an unhappy, tumultuous summer in 1978 in Pennsylvania. The US had just gone through enormous economic and social change post-WWII, and in Precious, it is home to European immigrants like middle-aged, Natalia Kisch, a Hungarian gypsy by birth and a child-survivor of the Nazi pogroms; to her husband Frank Kisch, an American steel worker; as well as, to weary, disillusioned idealists like Peter, a high school teacher and married lover to a frankly sexual seventeen-year old, Eva Kisch.
The story opens with the disappearance of nine-year old Sissy Kisch's best (and seemingly only) friend, Vicki Anderson. Vicki's mother, Ginny, is an alchoholic whose husband, a Vietnam vet, had committed suicide. She is also one person that a reserved Natalia Kisch has bonded with in the neighborhood. But Natalia, whose life had seemed an "endless succession of small tasks", had left her husband and children some months ago to be with her lover. But now Natalia has returned home to find her husband silent and withdrawn; Eva, furious and rebellious; and an overly-imaginative Sissy, troubled by her friend Vicki's disappearance, filled with distrust, and too often left to her own devices.
Novack's prose, deceptively simple, yet profoundly beautiful and wise, explores her characters deeply but with the lightest touch. She seemlessly weaves themes of love, anger, isolation, abandonment, and loneliness in a way that feels fresh and new. In Precious, Novack reveals life in all its painful, and often, bewildering inconsistencies.
But Precious is more than a story about a dysfunctional American family. Her characters are struggling to maintain their balance in a world that "gets [them] in more mundane ways". It's a novel about broken dreams and how they can haunt you into adulthood. It's a tender, emotional work about ordinary people who struggle between their need for personal freedom and individuality, and their need for love, companionship, friendship, and family.
In Precious it's the Kisches, a working class family struggling through an unhappy, tumultuous summer in 1978 in Pennsylvania. The US had just gone through enormous economic and social change post-WWII, and in Precious, it is home to European immigrants like middle-aged, Natalia Kisch, a Hungarian gypsy by birth and a child-survivor of the Nazi pogroms; to her husband Frank Kisch, an American steel worker; as well as, to weary, disillusioned idealists like Peter, a high school teacher and married lover to a frankly sexual seventeen-year old, Eva Kisch.
The story opens with the disappearance of nine-year old Sissy Kisch's best (and seemingly only) friend, Vicki Anderson. Vicki's mother, Ginny, is an alchoholic whose husband, a Vietnam vet, had committed suicide. She is also one person that a reserved Natalia Kisch has bonded with in the neighborhood. But Natalia, whose life had seemed an "endless succession of small tasks", had left her husband and children some months ago to be with her lover. But now Natalia has returned home to find her husband silent and withdrawn; Eva, furious and rebellious; and an overly-imaginative Sissy, troubled by her friend Vicki's disappearance, filled with distrust, and too often left to her own devices.
Novack's prose, deceptively simple, yet profoundly beautiful and wise, explores her characters deeply but with the lightest touch. She seemlessly weaves themes of love, anger, isolation, abandonment, and loneliness in a way that feels fresh and new. In Precious, Novack reveals life in all its painful, and often, bewildering inconsistencies.
But Precious is more than a story about a dysfunctional American family. Her characters are struggling to maintain their balance in a world that "gets [them] in more mundane ways". It's a novel about broken dreams and how they can haunt you into adulthood. It's a tender, emotional work about ordinary people who struggle between their need for personal freedom and individuality, and their need for love, companionship, friendship, and family.
April 13, 2009
I've been a fan of Sandy Novack's short stories for years. And I've come to know her a little through the internet and through her sage advice on my own writing. What I know about her personally is this: she's smart, funny, and extraordinarily kind. What I learned about her after reading her debut novel is that the depth of her soul and her heart must be so large as to be immeasurable because surely one cannot write a story like this one with anything less. This novel had me sobbing not just at the end, but also in the middle at the most unexpected times. Novack is a writer who understands the power of connecting emotionally to her reader.
Precious is the story of what happens to a family when a little girl goes missing in their small town. But while the disappearance hangs heavy in the periphery, a storm is raging within the Kisch family. And journeying through that storm, one learns just how vulnerable a child's (and teen's) limited understanding of the adult world makes her. The aftermath leaves no one untouched, including this reader.
As a writer I was impressed with Novack's technical ability: lovely, exciting, elegant sentences that weave the tale, seemingly effortless, from start to finish; masterful handling of the omniscient pov; and brilliantly carved characters--all things to be admired, and for me at least, to be studied.
Reading this book was a rewarding and gut-wrenching Experience. I cannot wait to read another by this extremely talented author.
Precious is the story of what happens to a family when a little girl goes missing in their small town. But while the disappearance hangs heavy in the periphery, a storm is raging within the Kisch family. And journeying through that storm, one learns just how vulnerable a child's (and teen's) limited understanding of the adult world makes her. The aftermath leaves no one untouched, including this reader.
As a writer I was impressed with Novack's technical ability: lovely, exciting, elegant sentences that weave the tale, seemingly effortless, from start to finish; masterful handling of the omniscient pov; and brilliantly carved characters--all things to be admired, and for me at least, to be studied.
Reading this book was a rewarding and gut-wrenching Experience. I cannot wait to read another by this extremely talented author.
April 21, 2009
I found this book to be a deeply satisfying read that touched so many places in my own psyche. It's made all the richer because of my shared Pennsylvania sensibility--I too lived the places where this story is set, and know those characters in my bones.
Yes, Vicki Anderson goes missing, however that's only a conceit for what's missing in the lives of all four members of the Kisch family--Frank, Natalia, Eva and Sissy. They in turn become metaphor for what's missing (and precious) in all our lives. Everyone has a vision of what the perfect family must be like; none of us were raised in one. Sandy's first novel explores this in the ways she writes about how each of us is at our core essentially alone; how the actions of others are in the end inexplicable to us; how some go missing and never come back, and how each of us tells ourselves and others the stories the help us believe we never are alone, the stories that help us make sense of the missing and precious in our own lives. The essential structure of this novel helps make sense of all of its disparate parts, some fantasy, some reality, some both, all tiny little microcosms of stories intertwined.
It's all the more wonderful and rewarding for me to read a book by someone I know and admire so much as a writer and a friend. Sandy is immensly talented and I know this talent will continue to express itself in new and surprising ways. I look forward to the next book.
Yes, Vicki Anderson goes missing, however that's only a conceit for what's missing in the lives of all four members of the Kisch family--Frank, Natalia, Eva and Sissy. They in turn become metaphor for what's missing (and precious) in all our lives. Everyone has a vision of what the perfect family must be like; none of us were raised in one. Sandy's first novel explores this in the ways she writes about how each of us is at our core essentially alone; how the actions of others are in the end inexplicable to us; how some go missing and never come back, and how each of us tells ourselves and others the stories the help us believe we never are alone, the stories that help us make sense of the missing and precious in our own lives. The essential structure of this novel helps make sense of all of its disparate parts, some fantasy, some reality, some both, all tiny little microcosms of stories intertwined.
It's all the more wonderful and rewarding for me to read a book by someone I know and admire so much as a writer and a friend. Sandy is immensly talented and I know this talent will continue to express itself in new and surprising ways. I look forward to the next book.
June 6, 2009
The first chapter of "Precious" grabbed me. Can't wait to finish it!
Okay, I've read Sandra Novack's thought-provoking literary novel, Precious.
This story gives the impression of being about a missing child, Vicki Anderson, but the reader soon realizes it's really an intimate look at one family's (mostly disfunctional) life.
Frank, Eva and Sissy Kitch handle the sudden return of wife and mother, Natalia in very different ways. Frank feels the need to "punish" his wife for her absence, Eva refuses to accept that her mother is back to stay and Sissy struggles desperately to prove Eva wrong.
Novack uses powerful scenarios and descriptions to describe the Kitch family, and although the story begins with the tragic disappearance of Vicki, there are light and funny moments. Subtle humor is scattered throughout.
One of my favorite moments is after a very intense dialogue directed toward Sissy from Mrs. Anderson, Sissy responds, "If Vicki doesn't come back, can I have her bike?" So typical of a child's handling of a tragic event.
I would definitely recomment this book and any and all writings by Sandra Novack.
Okay, I've read Sandra Novack's thought-provoking literary novel, Precious.
This story gives the impression of being about a missing child, Vicki Anderson, but the reader soon realizes it's really an intimate look at one family's (mostly disfunctional) life.
Frank, Eva and Sissy Kitch handle the sudden return of wife and mother, Natalia in very different ways. Frank feels the need to "punish" his wife for her absence, Eva refuses to accept that her mother is back to stay and Sissy struggles desperately to prove Eva wrong.
Novack uses powerful scenarios and descriptions to describe the Kitch family, and although the story begins with the tragic disappearance of Vicki, there are light and funny moments. Subtle humor is scattered throughout.
One of my favorite moments is after a very intense dialogue directed toward Sissy from Mrs. Anderson, Sissy responds, "If Vicki doesn't come back, can I have her bike?" So typical of a child's handling of a tragic event.
I would definitely recomment this book and any and all writings by Sandra Novack.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 8, 2012
Everything changed in the summer of 1978 . Vicki Anderson ten years old goes missing while riding her bike to the local park. Her tight Pennsylvania neighborhood of blue collar families will never be the same. Down the street from Vicki's house Natalia Kisch has abandoned her family for another man. Frank Kisch is left to raise their girls alone and deal with his anger. He is oblivious as to how his daughters are dealing with both disappearances. Eva at seventeen has an affair with her married high school teacher and Sissy age nine escapes into a world of imagination and story telling. When Natalia returns unexpectedly all the tensions and struggles that have built over the summer erupt- into a serie of events that change the Kisches and force them to piece their pasts together and renew their commitments to each other. This is an exquistely written book. The everyday setting is made haunting by the heart stopping plot. But at its core its about a family struggling to be understood and to understand.
March 26, 2012
I am surprised at the number of high ratings on this book. I clearly did not read the same book as so many of the other reviewers. The characters seemed to be moving in their own spaces, but none seemed connected to another. I continually had to remind myself who Amy was, who Ginny was, who Frank was. The "action" in the book felt contrived, overly fraught with bravado, and irrelevant to anything else within the novel. Instead of a flow of events, each scene felt like an un-related occurrence having no relation to any other event. There was no story arc, and I did not care what happened to any of the characters. Nothing seemed resolved, even by the epilogue. I was especially disappointed by the laziness of the author to use "situated" in two consecutive sentences. That's just sloppiness, and there is no excuse for that kind of writing in a published book in today's day and age of multiple revisions, editors, and proofreaders.
September 5, 2010
I won this gook from Goodreads. It's the story of The Kisch family in the summer of 1978. Their ten year old neighbor has gone missing, the mother has left her family, and the seventeen year old daughter is having an affair with her teacher. The family also includes nine year old Sissy who is just trying to get through her summer having to deal with all the emotional things going on around her and the father who can be distant most of the time.
I thought the storyline was pretty good but the book seemed a little scattered at times. At the beginning of each chapter I had to get reacquainted with who the character was the author was talking about and what was going on. The chapters didn't seem to flow together very well, if they had I think this would have been a really good book.
I thought the storyline was pretty good but the book seemed a little scattered at times. At the beginning of each chapter I had to get reacquainted with who the character was the author was talking about and what was going on. The chapters didn't seem to flow together very well, if they had I think this would have been a really good book.
March 8, 2012
I did like this book. It is not foe everyone. It started slow, a lot of characted development. The story held my interest after I finally got into the book. The writing is not rushed and the plot is slow and deliberate.
Every person and story line is well developed. There is nothing fast pace about it. Which is fine by meed, but if you are interest in a quick read, this is not the book for you.
I am glad I continued reading. I really liked the ending. So many books are really good and then the author really drops the ball at the end. This book, even though it was not a feel good novel, left me felling good that things will wrok in the long run.
Read this book if you want to sit down and take a long, slow walk through a family's life one summer.
Every person and story line is well developed. There is nothing fast pace about it. Which is fine by meed, but if you are interest in a quick read, this is not the book for you.
I am glad I continued reading. I really liked the ending. So many books are really good and then the author really drops the ball at the end. This book, even though it was not a feel good novel, left me felling good that things will wrok in the long run.
Read this book if you want to sit down and take a long, slow walk through a family's life one summer.
November 21, 2010
Precious relates one horrible summer for the Kisch family as each member undergoes a personally life-changing event. The plot is anchored by the disappearance of a friend of the younger daughter and this is the part of the story that I found the weakest. I guess it was included to draw parallels between the events within the Kisch family but it seems almost superfluous. Novak does a good job of developing the characters - especially those of the mother, Natalia, and the oldest daughter, Eva. She exposes the flaws in her characters but does not do as a good a job of showing their redeeming qualities. I had a hard time developing empathy for most of the people in this book .
September 8, 2016
It was a good read. Not quite what I was expecting from the description. I was anticipating that it would be more about the disappearance of a young girl, and possibly the investigation behind trying to find her, however, it focused on a family that are neighbors and friends of the girl. There family life goes into a downward spiral. It was a little unclear as to how the disappearance of the girl really connects to the family in terms of cause and effect, since it seems as though all of the events within the family would have happened regardless of this disappearance...but still a pretty good read.
November 9, 2010
I really struggled with this book, alternately enjoying it and wanting to smack the female characters around - they were sooo long-suffering and oppressed. The mother leaves for no good reason other than she is bored - nothing the author wrote could convince me of anything else. The friend of the youngest daughter disappears and is never found. The oldest daughter is having an affair with a teacher that ends badly. I think readers are supposed to feel and see a parallel between the child who goes missing and the teenage daughter who leaves the family and is never heard of again but I just didn't feel it. The book left me feeling grouchy.
November 9, 2010
I loved the characters in this book, especially Eva and Sissy. The sisters relationship was touching to me. Each was lost in their own worlds after their mother leaves because she no longer wants to be defined by her role as a housewife. The mother runs off and tries to recreate a life for herself, while the girls are left behind and struggle to adjust in the aftermath of being abandoned. Unfortunately for them, the world demands to much and the world of adults is overwhelming. I loved the descriptions. The ending left me crying. I've thought about this book for weeks after finishing it.
August 14, 2016
For me, this one is between three and four but I rounded up because it's a first book, and first books generally have rough spots, also because I genuinely enjoyed the book. The book does not really focus on the disappearance of Sissy's friend, as the blurb suggests, but the dynamics between the people in Sissy's family and those of the community in which her family lives. Not all of the characters were likeable, but all had enough depth to keep things interesting, an asset as the book is character- rather than plot-driven. The writing was solid, with good descriptions of people, settings, and happenings. I will likely other books by this author as I come across them.
September 11, 2010
I won this book from Goodreads. This book is full of really sad events. It all begins with a girl disappearing, but the story follows the lives of a family that is full of dysfunction. The mother walks out on the family, the father is never there for his two girls, the oldest girl is having sex with her teacher, and the youngest girl finds herself alone and not understading any of this.
At the beginning of every chapter, it is difficult to figure out which character the author is describing, and you find yourself confused. This is the reason for the 3 stars. Overall a good read.
At the beginning of every chapter, it is difficult to figure out which character the author is describing, and you find yourself confused. This is the reason for the 3 stars. Overall a good read.
October 7, 2010
This is a glimpse into one family's life during a summer that a neighborhood child goes missing. The author does an excellent job of making the reader see into the personal thoughts and feelings of the main characters, as well as some of the minor ones. This is definitely not one of your typical "day in the life" type stories. The characters have real problems that many people may have over the course of a lifetime but which culminate in one summer. I am definitely waiting for the next novel that Sandra Novack will write. I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
October 19, 2010
I won this book from Goodreads. I thought that it was well written. The story line(s)was written in a way that it had my interest until the end. Precious was not really what I expected from reading the description. I thought that the younger girl would be more of the focal point than she was. The focus was on her sister and the disappointing life that she led. I didn't expect it to end the way it did, but was still an interesting book!
January 9, 2011
A beautifully written debut novel about the Kitsch family: Natalia and Frank, estranged parents, and Sissy (9) and Eva (17) in the summer of 1978... A lack of traditional narrative arc makes it hard to stayinvested, but the lyrical writing and 3-dimensional characters (Natalia, the mother who leaves, Sissy, whose friend vanishes, Eva who loves Peter, her English teacher) I disliked the abrupt time-jump ending ala Harry Potter.
March 28, 2011
Sensitive and beautiful-it's the story of a family in a little town where the disappearance of a little girl sets the atmosphere. Each one of the parents and their two daughters goes through loss and fear of abandonment, and even when they are together there's a screaming loneliness. I enjoyed getting to know them all, and especially loved accompanying the young daughter, Sissy, through her life in away that seemed to put me under her skin.
September 9, 2013
I finally finished it. I can't give any specific reasons for why I didn't like it, but I found it rather slow, hard to get into, a bit hard to follow at times, and just unappealing. I found myself today saying, "I guess I should finish that [darn] book." Yeah. Not my favorite. So why did I finish it? It was short and I generally have rules about finishing what I've started... especially when it comes to books. So I did.
December 26, 2014
Precious is a very psychotic book. The author has taken a town of deeply disturbed characters and weaved them into a dark plot. Each of the characters bear immensely flawed personalities and they prey on one another like vultures. I would have to say the most disturbing character is Sissy. She is the instigator of the whole house of cards falling in, yet she goes happily on her way with her Pollyanna attitude. Sick!
March 12, 2009
A 10-year old girl goes missing in small-town, blue-collar Pennsylvania. This story actually centers around a neighboring family and how they deal with the crises in their own life---the wife has left the family, the teenaged girl has an affair with her teacher, the younger daughter struggles to adjust...
April 11, 2009
This book was about a broken family in the mid-70's. Two girls dealing with their absentee mother and unhappy father. It had a good premise, I just kept waiting for something to happen. There was a good story here that never got completely fleshed out. I liked the characters and wanted to learn more about them, but the author didn't go further.
March 17, 2009
I liked the book but it could have been so much better. It lacked a lot of emotion which it needed and the ending just made no sense. Actually there were a couple of odd parts that could have been left out.
Too bad too, it potential of being a GREAT book.
Too bad too, it potential of being a GREAT book.
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