"La vie d’Helen Cartwright est terminée. À 83 ans, elle décide de retrouver
le village de son enfance en Angleterre poour affronter le deuil de son fils
et de son mari. Après avoir vécu six décennies à l’étranger, ce retour marque
pour elle la fin de son existence, il ne lui reste plus qu’à attendre la mort.
Puis, par une froide nuit d’automne, une rencontre fortuite avec une souris
conduit Helen à un voyage surprenant. Pendant deux semaines, cette veuve
recluse découvre une raison de vivre inattendue.
Le roman de Simon Van Booy est un bijou de délicatesse, d’émotion
retenue, d’intelligence vive, le tout porté par une écriture à la fois sensible
et profonde. Drôle, émouvant, sans jamais tomber dans le pathos ou la
mièvrerie. Un remède pour la solitude est un livre précieux sur la possibilité
de la seconde chance, sur la vie après la vie."
"Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns from sixty years in Australia to the English village of her childhood. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss.
Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship, and a way back into life itself."
"As a writer lies dying, he has one last story to tell: a tale of faith and devotion, a meditation on what lies beyond this life, and a prayer of gratitude that may lead to rebirth.
'Language is a map leading to a place not on the map,' announces a young writer lying in a hospital bed at the beginning of The Presence of Absence. As he contemplates his impending physical disappearance and the impact on his beloved wife, he realizes, 'Life doesn't start when you're born . . . it begins when you commit yourself to the eventual devastating loss that results from connecting to another person.'
Infused with poetic clarity and graced with humor, Simon Van Booy's innovative novella asks us to find beauty—even gratitude—in the cycle of birth and death. Stripped of artifice, The Presence of Absence is a meditation between the writer and the reader, an imaginative work that challenges the deceit of written words and explores our strongest emotions.
Simon Van Booy is not only a master storyteller but a writer whose fiction is rich with philosophical insights into things both mapped and undiscovered. The Presence of Absence parts the darkness to reveal what has been just out of sight all along."
"In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his thirteen-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light.
'What you give in this world,' an old man tells his grandson, 'will be given back to you.' Those words illuminate the actions within this unforgettable novel and its connected characters. A young man survives two nearly fatal accidents. A black family saves an orphaned white boy. A pregnant teenager is rescued by the side of the road. An autistic teenager is given his first job. Each incident grows in meaning and power over many decades as we see connections sometimes felt but not always apparent to the people themselves. 'Everything was moving,' observes Samuel (Carol's grandson) in the Kentucky woods. 'An invisible force that was everywhere, and made everything touch.'
Told by a master storyteller, Night Came with Many Stars is a rare novel that reveals how wondrous, mysterious, and magically connected life can be—the light Simon Van Booy creates in this novel illuminates our own lives."
"An exquisite new collection of short stories from award-winning author Simon Van Booy.
Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people's stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes readers into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor, to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these masterfully written tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives, but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better.
"Van Booy's stories are somehow like paintings the characters walk out of, and keep walking." -Los Angeles Times
'Simon Van Booy knows a great deal about the complex longings of the human heart.' --Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Audiobook Table of Contents:
A Sacrifice, read by Alana Kerr Collins
The Green Blanket, read by James Fouhey
Playing with Dolls, read by Simon van Booy
The Pigeon, read by Giordan Diaz
The Hitchhiker, read by Alana Kerr Collins
Not Dying, read by Darren Burrows
The Saddest Case of True Love, read by Simon van Booy
The Doorman, read by James Fouhey"
![[French] - Un Remède pour la solitude Audiobook](https://covers.audiobooks.com/images/covers/large/9781004214792.jpg)
