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Loading... The English Americanby Alison Larkin
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. If you like chick lit, British characters, and adoption plots, this one's for you. It was not for me. I found it boring by page 60 and decided not to finish it. ( ) This is a charming story. I listened it because the author lives in my area. I thought I'd give it a try and listened to the audio. I really enjoyed it. Alison is a lovely reader, I have since listened to many of the books she read. This story if full of humor and hard situations. She had me laughing and my stomach tying in knots through-out. Beautiful things happen in the library. One of my favorite hobbies is perusing the stacks at random, searching for bits of gold that stand out amongst the copper. And, once again, I found one. The English American is the story of a woman who learns to accept herself, those around her, and, most of all, the power of love. If you are an American who enjoys reading about England, or a Brit who likes reading about America, this is the book for you. Pippa Dunn, having been adopted by a Bristish couple in her infancy, feels deeply the ways in which she differs from family and friends. Ultimately locating her birth parents, she discovers she is actually an Georgian redneck with a British accent. Underlying issues of identity, nurtue vs. nature, and nationality are hadnled with a light, deft touch, humor and humanity. There is a set piece at a funeral which had me absolutely in stitches. This book came out of Larkin's semi-autobrtiographical one-woman comefy sketch. I had the pleasure of attending a readingh at the Berkshire Wordfest this past fall. My friend bought the audiobook, which she thought was hilarious. Perhaps because I could hear Larkin's voice in my head, I found it equally so. Print or audio, I don't think you can go wrong. no reviews | add a review
When Pippa Dunn, adopted as an infant and raised terribly British, discovers that her birth parents are from the American South, she finds that "culture clash" has layers of meaning she'd never imagined. Meet The English American, a fabulously funny, deeply poignant debut novel that sprang from Larkin's autobiographical one-woman show of the same name. In many ways, Pippa Dunn is very English: she eats Marmite on toast, knows how to make a proper cup of tea, has attended a posh English boarding school, and finds it entirely familiar to discuss the crossword rather than exchange any cross words over dinner with her proper English family. Yet Pippa--creative, disheveled, and impulsive to the core--has always felt different from her perfectly poised, smartly coiffed sister and steady, practical parents, whose pastimes include Scottish dancing, gardening, and watching cricket. When Pippa learns at age twenty-eight that her birth parents are from the American South, she feels that lifelong questions have been answered. She meets her birth mother, an untidy, artistic, free-spirited redhead, and her birth father, a charismatic (and politically involved) businessman in Washington, D.C.; and she moves to America to be near them. At the same time, she relies on the guidance of a young man with whom she feels a mysterious connection; a man who discovered his own estranged father and who, like her birth parents, seems to understand her in a way that no one in her life has done before. Pippa feels she has found her "self" and everything she thought she wanted. But has she? Caught between two opposing cultures, two sets of parents, and two completely different men, Pippa is plunged into hilarious, heart-wrenching chaos. The birth father she adores turns out to be involved in neoconservative activities she hates; the mesmerizing mother who once abandoned her now refuses to let her go. And the man of her fantasies may be just that... With an authentic adopted heroine at its center, Larkin's compulsively readable first novel unearths universal truths about love, identity, and family with wit, warmth, and heart. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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