Blessings

There is immense sadness and loss in this quiet story. But, the tragedies woven throughout Anna Quindlen's novel Blessings occur in a world where love and forgiveness can still be found.

Skip Cuddy is the new caretaker for the Blessings estate. Once home to a wealthy family, it is now inhabited by the sole remaining child, an elderly daughter who is cared for by a maid who comes each day and Skip, who mostly tends the property. Skip, on parole after being released from jail, seems happy with his simple life, until he finds a baby on his door step. He makes a decision that changes everyone's lives.

The story is told in a matter of fact way that mirrors the quiet of the world of Blessings. The novel moves from the present to the past as show more Lydia Blessing remembers her own life, first as a debutante in New York City and then as the disgraced daughter relegated to the country where she finds she is content to stay.

This isn't a dramatic book: life happens, and we witness it, with characters who, for the most part, are trying to do the right things in a changing world. But it is a lovely written tale and worth the time. show less

A young, desperate couple leaves an infant at Blessings, where the new caretaker Skip Cuddy finds the babe and decides to raise her. As he's on parole and the old lady Lydia Blessing is old and set in her ways, it may not seem like the best of situations. Can they manage to be a sort of family?

A heartwarming tale that reads very fast and was sometimes deceptively simple, while delving into themes of family and secrecy. Unfortunately I had one of the big reveals spoiled for me while researching for my book club before being quite finished with the book, so what should've been an "Aha!" moment was only a small nod of recognition. Though to be fair, there was plenty of foreshadowing. The ending seemed a little abrupt, a sense that the show more idyll couldn't have lasted anyway and though I knew that, it didn't make me any happier about it. A bittersweet tale exploring family, regrets and how we can never quite know if we're making the "right" choice. Lots of fodder for book discussions, too. show less

There is something to the quality of Anna Quindlen’s writing that just astounds me. Somehow, it is both incredibly delicate and undeniably powerful. She is able to describe moments and feelings in a way that is both stunning it its beauty and its strength.

“Blessings” is the story of several people whose lives are forever changed with the arrival one night of a baby girl. Left on the doorstep of the mansion which is the centerpiece of a small town, this baby becomes the center of the lives of Lydia Blessing, the owner, and her caretaker, Skip. Each is forced to reevaluate their lives as they find themselves forever changed by the life of this child.

Lydia Blessing, now an old woman, finds herself changing is ways she never show more expected, and realizing that her life had been very different than she’d previously thought. “…And the child at its center, crowing and smiling and waving her arms about. They had all made her want more than she had. The curse of having young people about the house was that they were always so redolent of possibility.”

Skip, a man whose life is at a crossroads between possibility and disaster, takes in and cares for Faith. His life changes in an instant, to something he can barely recognize, and to something he is in constant wonder about. “That was all right, too, because seeing it just reminded him that it was kind of a fluke. Like Faith had been, a burst of something incandescent in a long stretch of grey days.”

This is a story of choices and consequences. Where people are forced to reexamine who they are, who they were and who they hope to be. How people adapt, or refuse to adapt to circumstances. How the past has a greater impact on our current lives than we can possibly until – sometimes until it is too late.

It is also a story of incredible loss. Loss of life, of love, and of possibility. The world continues on, whether we want it to or not – whether we accept the direction or not. “There was a weight to the emptiness of rooms in which you had once lived that was more fearsome than anything she had ever encountered in life, not because they were haunted, as she had joked with Skip Cuddy, but because they were not. The conversations, the quarrels, the long fraught silences, the tears: they had disappeared utterly and completely.”

As I’ve thought about this book and the best word I might use to describe it – the closest I could come was “poignant”. It’s not what I would choose – but the definition, “affecting or moving the emotions” certainly applies to this beautifully written story. show less

Anna Quindlen is one of those authors who holds the power to knock the socks off of me. Every time I go to pick up one of her books I know that, at some point, I’m going to end up in tears – so I have to pace myself accordingly.

Blessings was no different. While it didn’t contain nearly the same amount of tragedy some of Quindlen’s other books have (Yes, Every Last One, I’m looking at you), it still had some heartbreaking moments, but, in true Quindlen style, I knew that these characters would be strong enough to overcome it.

Blessings is the story of a family, an unlikely family, but complete with all of the past wrong-doings, mistakes, loves and hurts that a “normal” family might have. This family consists of a Korean show more housekeeper, an 80ish year old woman, and a convicted felon groundskeeper… and one tiny, helpless baby. Of course, there is also the house, which is filled with history and memories and can’t be left out of the mix.

I was completely charmed by Charles “Skip” Cuddy and his treatment of the unlikely turn of events that culminated in his finding a baby in a box on the steps of “his” barn. I held my breath through each hurdle and ached for him as he learned the correct way to care for the child, and, when the end came (as it always does in these types of stories), my heart ached for him.

Blessings is a story of redemption, unlikely love, strength of character where there was none before and of making the right choices, no matter the pain involved to those making those choices. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it did wonders to “reset” me after reading a few bad books in a row. show less

This book was a selection for my daughter's book club. Let me say straight off that I loved it!

A baby is left by the garage of the local "big house" by a couple of teenagers, and found by the handyman who lives over the garage. A strange complicity develops between him and the house's owner, and two people from opposite sides of the social divide enter into a friendship that reconciles their own pasts.

So now I'm going to talk about the rules it breaks. You get a lot of talk on writer blogs about never starting your novel with a backstory dump: Blessings sets up the action and then gives you 70 pages of backstory before the story moves forward. You're told to use short, punchy sentences. Blessings is strewn with long and sometimes show more somewhat clunky sentences.

So why does it work so well? The answer has to be that the writing is beautiful, the characters are immaculately drawn and very convincing, and the setting gets just enough--but not too much--attention. It struck me that the main story is in fact quite slight, and that without the backstory setup I'd probably be thinking "so what?" as it gets going. But by the time the action gets going, I was so thoroughly invested in the lives of the characters that I devoured the rest of the book.

This is a story to study for its structure. There's something very sure about Quindlen's touch; in a very short read (just over 200 pages) she packs in a lot of literary wallop. show less

I really enjoyed this. Quindlen has a strong, clean prose style that skillfully picks the telling details that vividly evoke both setting and character. Blessings is the name of an estate in upstate New York. There are passages that lyrically put before your eye the pond with snapping turtles and leaping trout, the herons, the apple orchard. And the characters are well-drawn too, the two major characters are a study in contrasts. There's eighty-year-old Lydia Blessings, born to wealth and her young estate caretaker Skip Cuddy, who came to work for her straight out of jail and lives above the garage. They're bound into an unlikely friendship when a newborn baby is left on their doorstep that Skip is determined to raise as his daughter. show more

Whether it's the small details of how an infant moves or smells, or the habits of mind of an elderly lady born in the 1920s, Quindlen writes it in a convincing way you think of as authentic. If I don't rate this higher, its not because I'm not conscious of flaws, but it just doesn't rise to a level where it moved me, made me think, made me want to dogear the pages because of a particularly striking quote or surprised me. But it was a warm, feel-good and entertaining read. show less

from James:

I would have given this book 5 stars, but I didn't like how the lives ended up, which is to say that I got wrapped up in their happiness. That's probably a sign of a good book. It's a heavy-handed title, but otherwise, I'd recommend this to anyone who reads for strong characters...even when those characters make bad decisions.