Praise for Pages for Her
1 of 100 Best Books of 2017 (San Francisco Chronicle)
One of 2017’s Best Fiction Books (Kirkus Reviews)
“A poetic and in-depth look at the self—as individual, writer, mother, wife, daughter, and lover.”
— ZYZZYVA
“Reading Brownrigg’s novels feels like entering a fictional world that is less fussy, more real. Mainstream fiction could do with substantially more fiction about romance between teenagers and between middle-aged women . . . For now, we have these pages.”
—JOSEPHINE LIVINGSTONE, The New Republic
“Captivating . . . Brownrigg, who lives in Berkeley, animates her sequel with love, marriage, feminism and ‘the knife-edges of sexuality.’ ”
—The Mercury News
“Sylvia Brownrigg’s latest novel, Pages for Her, reads like a contemporary Symposium, in which two whip-smart Yale alumnae try to puzzle out desire in the wake of past satisfactions and midlife disappointments . . . The book’s . . . observations illustrate how compellingly perceptive the characters are—and how rewardingly surprising and precise Brownrigg’s language is.”
—Yale Alumni Magazine
“Emotionally authentic and sincere.”
— The Dallas Morning News
“Brownrigg . . . approaches her characters with clarity and sensitivity, capturing the nuances in the women’s relationships to the people they love—as mother, daughter, sister, friend, wife, or lover—and the power they give those people to define and inspire them . . . Brownrigg considers motherhood, romance, identity, and the changes brought by time in this tender, insightful novel.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A thoughtful, gentle, yet passionate novel . . . Brownrigg’s themes of sexuality, betrayal, marriage, and identity resonate along with this tale’s strong sense of yearning as it poses the question, Can you be a soul mate with someone you haven’t seen in two decades?”
— Booklist
“Sylvia Brownrigg’s Pages for Her is a complex portrait of two women’s sexuality. In the romantic universe of Brownrigg’s novel, there is no either/or, no simple black and white. When characters—read people—are freed from the often blinding forces of personal obligation and private loss, a lust for intimacy takes over. In Pages for Her, Brownrigg gives us two accomplished women who, coming together after decades apart, understand that truth laid bare is best beguiled.”
—ALICE SEBOLD, author of The Almost Moon
“In this intense, compelling novel, Sylvia Brownrigg writes vividly about passion rekindled in midlife with the force of a tsunami. Pages for Her, the sequel to Pages for You, stands as a beautiful testament to human complexity, reminding us that fierce love comes in many forms, none of them mutually exclusive.”
— CLAIRE MESSUD, author of The Burning Girl
“Pages for Her takes on all the Big Questions in women’s lives: what it means to have ‘enough’ in love, sex, work, motherhood; what we deserve; what we long for; how we get trapped; how we can break free. I found myself reading with pen in hand, compelled to underline both Brownrigg’s gorgeous prose and her astute insights.”
— PEGGY ORENSTEIN, author of Girls & Sex:
Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
“Sylvia Brownrigg’s elegant, absorbing, beautifully written new novel is structured as a double narrative that twists closer together with every chapter, bringing Anne and Flannery together again. The many fans of Pages For You will love this brilliant continuation of their story.”
—KATE CHRISTENSEN, PEN/Faulkner Award–winning
author of The Great Man
“With Pages for Her, Sylvia Brownrigg has achieved the seemingly impossible, a gorgeous and piercing book that is both a huge gift to the many readers who loved its predecessor Pages for You, and an exquisitely intelligent stand-alone novel about the intertwined arcs of time and love.”
—ANN PACKER, author of The Children’s Crusade
“With Pages for Her, Brownrigg does open-heart surgery, probing the deep chamber where unfinished love resides, untouchable by time, still beating.”
—CAROL ANSHAW, author of Carry the One
“In elegant, graceful prose, Sylvia Brownrigg glides in and out of the lives of two women: Flannery, a writer married to a bombastic artist who values her beauty more than her mind; and Anne, an academic nearly a decade older whose decision not to have a child ends her long-term relationship. Many years ago, these women shared a once-in-a-lifetime passion. Now, brought together serendipitously, they are surprised to find that time has done little to tamp down desire. Nuanced, assured, and razor-sharp, Pages for Her is both a bittersweet story about rekindled love and a profound meditation on what it means to be alive.”
—CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE
Also by Sylvia Brownrigg
Morality Tale
The Delivery Room
Pages for You
The Metaphysical Touch
Ten Women Who Shook the World
Copyright © 2017 by Sylvia Brownrigg
First Counterpoint hardcover edition: 2017
First Counterpoint paperback edition: 2018
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Picador
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64009-054-5
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Names: Brownrigg, Sylvia, author.
Title: Pages for her : a novel / Sylvia Brownrigg.
Description: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017005013 | ISBN 9781619029330 (hardback) | eISBN 9781619029811
Subjects: LCSH: Lesbians—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Lesbian. | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3552.R7867 P33 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005013
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