Firefly Lane
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Product Description
In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family tree who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.
So starts Kristin Hannah’s magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful tale of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.
From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, huge-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness.
Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in like and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own silent way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she’ll envy her legendary best friend. . . .
For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each additional through life, weathering the storms of friendship—jealousy, rage, hurt, resentment. They reflect they’ve survived it all until a single act of treachery tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the essential test.
Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone’s Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it’s the tale of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It’s about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you—and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a tale you’ll never forget . . . one you’ll want to pass on to your best friend.
Amazon.com Review
A Conversation with Kristin Hannah
Amazon.com: Why did you choose Seattle as the backdrop for Firefly Lane? Is there something unique about growing up in the Northwest that helped you to define the kind of women Kate and Tully become?
Kristin Hannah: Reasonably simply, I chose Seattle as the backdrop for Firefly Lane because it’s so much a part of who I am. I’ve lived in the Northwest for most of my life, and obviously, in all persons years, I’ve seen this part of the country evolve from an undiscovered gem into the Emerald City. So many of the places from my youth are gone, or changed, or stirred, and I guess I wanted to remember the physical reminders of persons bygone days. And while Kate and Tully are absolutely Northwest girls, I like to reflect their tale will speak to women who grew up in vastly different, more populated areas. After all, it’s ultimately about friendship, and persons seeds can be planted anywhere.
Amazon.com: While you were writing, at any point did you find yourself feeling more sympathetic to Kate or to Tully? How did you keep the weight of the plot balanced between them as their tales evolved?
KH: There’s no way to avoid the truth that Kate is more than a small like me. Thus, I identified with her from the very beginning–she was the tiny town girl who had to get up in the pre-dawn hours to feed her horses, and read The Lord of the Rings during every family tree trip, and felt lost in the first few months at the sprawling University of Washington. All of that was me, so naturally, the problem was not in feeling sympathetic toward Katie; it was much more about holding her at arm’s part, seeing her not as an extension of myself, but as a completely fictional woman. Tully was a different tale entirely. While many readers might be surprised by this, I really fell in like with Tully. In the final analysis, she’s one of my favorite characters of all time. I know she’s bold and selfish and bigoted and ambitious to a fault, but she’s also terribly broken, wounded by her parents, unable to judge in like, and ultimately very real. I reflect all of us know a “Tully” in our lives, and they bring a lot of drama…and a lot of fire and sparkle.
Amazon.com: You have a gorgeous way of showing both the tension and tenderness between mothers and daughters. Was it a challenge to write Tully’s painful history with her own mother, and later, the conflict that builds between Kate and her own daughter?
KH: Honestly, I judge that the mother-daughter relationship is magical, complex, potentially treacherous, very much powerful, and deeply transformative. To place it simply, all of us have this relationship, and in a very real way, “none of us comes out alive.” We are all formed first as daughters and then tested as mothers. There’s nothing like motherhood to make us reassess how we were as daughters. One of my favorite parts of Firefly Lane was the circle of Kate’s relationship with her mom. First we see her as an mad teen, slamming the door on her mother…and then later her own daughter does the same thing to her. There’s a real symmetry in that, a truth that many of us have learned. I have regularly wished in the past few years that my mom were here to help me as I raised my own teenage son. As a girl, with my own mom, I thought I knew it all; now I know better. Somewhere, I know my mom is smiling.
Amazon.com: Throughout the novel, both Kate and Tully question the reliability of like. Is it that question that makes the rift between them and, ultimately, reunites them in friendship?
KH: You’re right, they each do continually question the reliability of like. For Kate, it’s a self-esteem issue. She absolutely believes in like–she’s grown up surrounded by it–but she constantly questions Johnny’s commitment to her. I permanently felt that was largely because she felt like a moon to Tully’s bright and bright sun. For Tully, she honestly doesn’t judge that right romantic like exists, and for all of her overblown ambition and belief in herself, she has been wounded by her mother’s repeated abandonment. The result is that she feels she’s unlovable.
Amazon.com: Kate and Tully are each huge personalities in their own way. Was it hard to make male characters who really know them?
KH:The challenge with regard to male characters was not so much making men who understood Kate and Tully, it was rather to make like tales that equaled the power and emotional intensity of the friendship. After all, the men in the tale were vital–Johnny particularly–but it was really a tale about the women.
Amazon.com: When Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone first came out, many readers were shocked that a man could write such an intimate portrait of a woman. Do you reflect women are in fact the best writers of women’s fiction? Would you ever consider writing a novel where men take center stage?
KH: One of the fantastic things about being a writer is that we get the chance to inhabit the minds and souls of a variety of individuals. I really don’t reflect male/female is the central question in terms of the viability of a voice and/or vision. We writers can “become” murderers, animals, psychopaths, vampires, lawyers, doctors, wizards, children. In fleeting, our storytelling skills and character-building abilities are limited only by our own imaginations. Until recently, most of my novels–while female-centric in vision–were equally narrated by male characters, and one–Angel Falls—was primarily narrated by men. I didn’t see the writing of that any different than anything else.
Amazon.com: Do you see yourself as a writer of romance or women’s fiction? What do you see as the differences in these two genres–is one an evolution of the additional, or is the mark unimportant?
KH: I started as a romance leader and stirred into women’s fiction about ten years ago. While many definitions abound, mine is this: romance is a subsection of the broad, all-inclusive women’s commercial fiction market. Women’s fiction in all-purpose is not an evolution of romance; much of women’s fiction is completely unrelated to any romantic fundamentals. But, it is right that many current commercial women’s fiction authors started in romance.
Amazon.com:Many women read fictional romance to escape the stress of everyday life and find inspiration in a pleased ending. Is there a primary experience that you hope your readers will have after reading Firefly Lane?
KH: I am a sucker for a pleased ending myself. In fact, my spouse and I regularly go round and round about movies in which I despise the ending and he likes it. He permanently says I’m only comfortable with pleased ever after, but that’s not right. What I want is an emotionally satisfying, organic ending. I want to be really engaged until the last page, and I want to judge every moment up until I close the book. Sometimes I want to laugh, sometimes I want to weep, and sometimes I want to scream that it can’t really be over. (Harry Potter comes to mind on this one). The point is, I want to be stirred deeply. That’s what I look for in additional books and what I hope to deliver in my own.
Just FYI, here are some of my favorite endings: Gone With the Wind, Middlemarch, Prince of Tides, An Inconvenient Wife, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, It, Shadow of the Wind. Some are pleased, some are sad, some are bittersweet. All are memorable.
Amazon.com: If you could meet any writer, living or dead, who would it be, and what would you question them?
KH: There are, of course, dozens of choices here, and I could certainly go through the classics and come up with many names and questions, but the truth is that I want to sit down with Stephen King and listen to some rock and roll, and question him how in the world he has stayed so excellent for so long.
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The description of this used book was not accurate, it should have said binding crushed and needs to be reglued before use.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I have read most of Hannah’s books and liked them. I loved the name of the book and really wated to like it but it went on and on and on and on. I was so ready for it to end. I nearly quit reading it but rarely do that so I perservered. I do not recommend it.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
If you’ve seen or read “Beaches,” you already know what happens in this one. If Hannah’s version of “Beaches” had much to offer or an appealing twist, it wouldn’t be so terrible. But, such is not the case. She did her research for this book and mentions every brand name, song, item of clothing and TV show that she possibly can. It turns into one huge advertisement for each decade. Sorry to say, research is not writing. The effort should have gone into building me care about the characters or the tale. Really, the effort should have gone into NOT building an exact copy of “Beaches.” You get distracted with all the mention of the brand names; there are wasted opportunities and some things just don’t add up. An overall poor effort from a name you’d reflect would have this down by now.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Kristin Hannah does for the “women’s movement” what the Menendez Brothers did to parenting in the 1980’s! Her cardboard characters stand up to rape, addicted incompetant parents and being homeless teens all with ease and not only make it lacking any of the normal examination and errors but the main spoiled brat, Tully (fleeting somehow for “Tallulah”) really becomes Oprah Winfrey in the process! Not a terrible day’s work in anyone’s eyes. Just not realistic or a sympathetic hero even to the “Coach” attache generation of modern girls! Tul’s best friend, Kate gets snubbed unmercifally in this rubble of a tale by none additional than Tully, who not only tries to steal away Kate’s hub, the infinitely wimpy Johnny, but manages to screw up Kate’s teenage daughter, Marah (fleeting for “Mariah”) in one full swoop!
Not exactly the “Beaches”, lady friendship tale that leader, Kristin Hannah and her misguided editor want you to compare this book to.
The writing style is Sophomoric, more of a “I’ll tell you what happens” style rather than letting the Plot dictate the tale.
Don’t waste your time on this rubbish! Or at the very least wait for it to appear in the bargain rack at your local store someday soon! A waste of Trees and Paper too!
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This book was a quick read, but the characters were so cheesy, and I establish it hard to get past that. The book jacket mentions “an unforgiveable mistake” and it took so long to get to that that I just didn’t care any more. I did need the tissues at the end, but I needed them at the end of Beaches, too. I was disappointed that I had paid so much for it.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5