Pg. 69: Cherise Wolas's "The Resurrection of Joan Ashby"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Resurrection of Joan Ashby: A Novel by Cherise Wolas.

About the book, from the publisher:

I viewed the consumptive nature of love as a threat to serious women. But the wonderful man I just married believes as I do—work is paramount, absolutely no children—and now love seems to me quite marvelous.

These words are spoken to a rapturous audience by Joan Ashby, a brilliant and intense literary sensation acclaimed for her explosively dark and singular stories.

When Joan finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she is stunned by Martin’s delight, his instant betrayal of their pact. She makes a fateful, selfless decision then, to embrace her unintentional family.

Challenged by raising two precocious sons, it is decades before she finally completes her masterpiece novel. Poised to reclaim the spotlight, to resume the intended life she gave up for love, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportion forces her to question every choice she has made.
Epic, propulsive, incredibly ambitious, and dazzlingly written, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is a story about sacrifice and motherhood, the burdens of expectation and genius. Cherise Wolas’s gorgeous debut introduces an indelible heroine candid about her struggles and unapologetic in her ambition.

Visit Cherise Wolas's website.

Writers Read: Cherise Wolas.

The Page 69 Test: The Resurrection of Joan Ashby.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Cherise Wolas reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Cherise Wolas, author of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby.

Her entry begins:

I think I’ve read every day of my life since I was five. Although I dip into nonfiction occasionally, my lust is for gorgeously deep, beautifully written, powerful novels that open up new worlds, present unexpected and original truths, peopled with complex, multi-faceted characters who defy easy categorization, the way people are in real life. I adore novels that get me thinking, about the world of the novel, of the world beyond the novel, and of my own work. I adore novels where the words sparkle like gems, where the sentences are jewels, where enormous care has been taken, not only with the story, but in the telling of that story.

Right now, I’m rounding toward the finish line of Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. Despite years of education and my own dedicated reading, I’d never read him. He dropped into my life unexpectedly while I was watching a movie in which a character pulls a copy of Buddenbrooks from his ex-wife’s...[read on]

About The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, from the publisher:

I viewed the consumptive nature of love as a threat to serious women. But the wonderful man I just married believes as I do—work is paramount, absolutely no children—and now love seems to me quite marvelous.

These words are spoken to a rapturous audience by Joan Ashby, a brilliant and intense literary sensation acclaimed for her explosively dark and singular stories.

When Joan finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she is stunned by Martin’s delight, his instant betrayal of their pact. She makes a fateful, selfless decision then, to embrace her unintentional family.

Challenged by raising two precocious sons, it is decades before she finally completes her masterpiece novel. Poised to reclaim the spotlight, to resume the intended life she gave up for love, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportion forces her to question every choice she has made.

Epic, propulsive, incredibly ambitious, and dazzlingly written, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is a story about sacrifice and motherhood, the burdens of expectation and genius. Cherise Wolas’s gorgeous debut introduces an indelible heroine candid about her struggles and unapologetic in her ambition.

Visit Cherise Wolas's website.

Writers Read: Cherise Wolas.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Cherise Wolas reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Cherise Wolas, author of The Family Tabor: A Novel.

One title she tagged:

Property by Lionel Shriver. This is Shriver’s first collection (stories bookended by two novellas), and the stories are intelligent, insightful, ironic, dense with details, sharp, and often very funny. The collection feels unified to me, more than most, because Shriver thoroughly explores her theme which is about ownership: about how we do—or do not—possess things like homes, land, money, empty nests, and ourselves. This thematic commitment allows the stories to communicate with one another in unusual ways, and I’ve been finding there is a fluidity to...[read on]

About The Family Tabor, from the publisher:

The new novel from Cherise Wolas, acclaimed author of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

Harry Tabor is about to be named Man of the Decade, a distinction that feels like the culmination of a life well lived. Gathering together in Palm Springs for the celebration are his wife, Roma, a distinguished child psychologist, and their children: Phoebe, a high-powered attorney; Camille, a brilliant social anthropologist; and Simon, a big-firm lawyer, who brings his glamorous wife and two young daughters.

But immediately, cracks begin to appear in this smooth facade: Simon hasn’t been sleeping through the night, Camille can’t decide what to do with her life, and Phoebe is a little too cagey about her new boyfriend. Roma knows her children are hiding things. What she doesn’t know, what none of them know, is that Harry is suddenly haunted by the long-buried secret that drove him, decades ago, to relocate his young family to the California desert. As the ceremony nears, the family members are forced to confront the falsehoods upon which their lives are built.

Set over the course of a single weekend, and deftly alternating between the five Tabors, this provocative, gorgeously rendered novel reckons with the nature of the stories we tell ourselves and our family and the price we pay for second chances.

Visit Cherise Wolas's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Resurrection of Joan Ashby.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Tabor.

Writers Read: Cherise Wolas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Cherise Wolas's "The Family Tabor"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Family Tabor: A Novel by Cherise Wolas.

About the book, from the publisher:

The new novel from Cherise Wolas, acclaimed author of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

Harry Tabor is about to be named Man of the Decade, a distinction that feels like the culmination of a life well lived. Gathering together in Palm Springs for the celebration are his wife, Roma, a distinguished child psychologist, and their children: Phoebe, a high-powered attorney; Camille, a brilliant social anthropologist; and Simon, a big-firm lawyer, who brings his glamorous wife and two young daughters.

But immediately, cracks begin to appear in this smooth facade: Simon hasn’t been sleeping through the night, Camille can’t decide what to do with her life, and Phoebe is a little too cagey about her new boyfriend. Roma knows her children are hiding things. What she doesn’t know, what none of them know, is that Harry is suddenly haunted by the long-buried secret that drove him, decades ago, to relocate his young family to the California desert. As the ceremony nears, the family members are forced to confront the falsehoods upon which their lives are built.

Set over the course of a single weekend, and deftly alternating between the five Tabors, this provocative, gorgeously rendered novel reckons with the nature of the stories we tell ourselves and our family and the price we pay for second chances.

Visit Cherise Wolas's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Resurrection of Joan Ashby.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Tabor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Cherise Wolas

From my Q&A with Cherise Wolas:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

When I first thought of Harry, Roma, Phoebe, Camille, and Simon—patriarch, matriarch and their adult children—whose lives, collectively and individually, are at the center of my second novel, they arrived with their last name already fixed. They were, from the start, the Tabors. And before I’d written a single word, before I knew it would become a novel, I was already calling it The Family Tabor. A spare title, but a little mysterious too–no further clues other than they might be close-knit, and by gathering them under that single umbrella and placing Family before Tabor, perhaps indicating that whatever they experience, they will do so together. And indeed, over a broiling summer weekend in Palm Springs, CA, gathered to celebrate Harry being named Man of the Decade, all the Tabors experience individual life-altering revelations while collectively immersed in a shocking...[read on]

Visit Cherise Wolas's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Resurrection of Joan Ashby.

The Page 69 Test: The Family Tabor.

Q&A with Cherise Wolas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novel novels about novelists

Sarah Skilton is the author of Bruised, a martial arts drama for young adults; and High and Dry, a hardboiled teen mystery. At the B&N Reads blog she tagged six novels about novelists, including:

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, by Cherise Wolas

Joan Ashby’s writing career is off to dazzling start. Adored by critics and readers alike for her dark prose, she’s poised to become a lifelong literary star. Children were never in the picture—until Joan’s husband Martin changes the rule they agreed to and urges her to succumb to motherhood. Raising her two boys isn’t easy, and her creative ambitions struggle against “the consumptive nature of love.” Wolas’ powerhouse debut novel promises to take readers on an emotional ride, while tackling questions about the ways in which women are sometimes forced to choose between love of family and self-actualization.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue