Chorus

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

'You don't have to go back. You will stay here at home, with me. This is where you belong.'

One afternoon, in a little farmhouse in rural Virginia, the ailing Marie Shaw dies in ambiguous circumstances and nothing is ever the same again for the seven young children she left behind. Spanning from the Great Depression to the burgeoning of US counterculture in 1959, Chorus sensitively traces the divergent paths taken by the grieving Shaw siblings as they grow together and apart over the decades. Henry, Jack, Maeve, Lane, Sam, Wendy and Bette get married and divorced, go to war and give birth to children of their own, break down and pick themselves up again.

Chorus is a hopeful story of family, of loss and recovery, of complicated relationships forged between brothers and sisters as they move through life together, and of the unlikely forces that first drive them away and then ultimately back home.

Reviews

'A story about love and its resilience, how much we really know about our own family and what binds them together even against seemingly insurmountable odds.' - Good Housekeeping March 2022 Book Club pick

'The author writes beautifully about family and relationships. One for fans of Elizabeth Strout and Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler. I recommend curling up in a chair and absorbing it in one go' - Prima

'Sometimes I open a book and fall in love within the first page - this is one of those times ... the author writes beautifully about family and relationships. One for fans of Elizabeth Strout and one of my favourite books, Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler. I recommend curling up in a chair and absorbing it in one go.' - Prima Books of the Month

'As vast, clear, and iconic as only timeless stories are, Kauffman's Chorus is a key: meet the Shaw family and discover, in its infinite and invisible complexity, the universal core of your own.' - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, author of Hex

'A profoundly beautiful and wise novel. ... A pure and true portrait of the lifespan of a family, I'm in awe of Kauffman's skill as a writer and her elegance in the use of it.' - Kathleen MacMahon, author of Nothing But Blue Sky

Author Bio

Rebecca Kauffman is originally from rural Ohio. She studied Classical Violin Performance at the Manhattan School of Music before receiving an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. Her previous novels are Another Place You've Never Been, The Gunners and The House on Fripp Island. She currently lives in Virginia.