Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Women's Fiction, Phases of Life - Fiction, Love & Relationships - Fiction

A False Sense of Well Being

Name: A False Sense of Well Being
Author: Jeanne Braselton
ISBN: 9780345443120

by Jeanne Braselton

Write a review

Overview

WINNER OF THE GEORGIA AUTHOR OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR FIRST NOVEL

“Braselton’s confident first novel is [a] depiction of love on the rocks in the New South that combines small town charm with major league angst. . . . A down-home Proustian recherché search . . . [An] entertaining, rueful account of an apparently ‘normal’ marriage.”
–Los Angeles Times

“Simply extraordinary. [This novel] has the wit and modern comedy of Nora Ephron and the literary force of Flannery O’Connor.”
–KAYE GIBBONS Author of Ellen Foster

At thirty-eight, Jessie Maddox has a comfortable life in Glenville, Georgia, with the most responsible husband in the world. But after the storybook romance, “happily ever after” never came. Now Jessie is left to wonder: Why can’t she stop picturing herself as the perfect grieving widow? As Jessie dives headlong into her midlife crisis, she is joined by a colorful cast of eccentrics. There’s her best friend Donna, who is having a wild adulterous affair with a younger man; Wanda McNabb, the sweet-natured grandmother who is charged with killing her husband; Jessie’s younger sister Ellen, who was born to be a guest on Jerry Springer; their mother, who persistently crosses the dirty words out of library books; and of course the stuffed green headless duck. . . .

When a trip home to the small town of her childhood raises more questions than it answers, Jessie is forced to face the startling truth head-on–and confront the tragedy that has shadowed her heart and shaken her faith in love . . . and the future.

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE GEORGIA AUTHOR OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR FIRST NOVEL

“Braselton’s confident first novel is [a] depiction of love on the rocks in the New South that combines small town charm with major league angst. . . . A down-home Proustian recherché search . . . [An] entertaining, rueful account of an apparently ‘normal’ marriage.”
–Los Angeles Times

“Simply extraordinary. [This novel] has the wit and modern comedy of Nora Ephron and the literary force of Flannery O’Connor.”
–KAYE GIBBONS
Author of Ellen Foster

At thirty-eight, Jessie Maddox has a comfortable life in Glenville, Georgia, with the most responsible husband in the world. But after the storybook romance, “happily ever after” never came. Now Jessie is left to wonder: Why can’t she stop picturing herself as the perfect grieving widow? As Jessie dives headlong into her midlife crisis, she is joined by a colorful cast of eccentrics. There’s her best friend Donna, who is having a wild adulterous affair with a younger man; Wanda McNabb, the sweet-natured grandmother who is charged with killing her husband; Jessie’s younger sister Ellen, who was born to be a guest on Jerry Springer; their mother, who persistently crosses the dirty words out of library books; and of course the stuffed green headless duck. . . .

When a trip home to the small town of her childhood raises more questions than it answers, Jessie is forced to face the startling truth head-on–and confront the tragedy that has shadowed her heart and shaken her faith in love . . . andthe future.

Kaye Gibbons

Simply extraordinary. A False Sense of Well-Being has the wit and modern comedy of Nora Ephron and the literary force of Flannery O’Connor.

About the Author, Jeanne Braselton

Jeanne Braselton was born and raised in Georgia. She is the adopted daughter of a poet who was designated chief of the Cherokee Nation. While working as a journalist for the Rome News Tribune, she won numerous Georgia Press Association awards. A False Sense of Well-Being is her first novel.

From the Hardcover edition.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Anne Rivers Siddons

This may be the best first novel I’ve ever read.

Kaye Gibbons

Simply extraordinary. A False Sense of Well-Being has the wit and modern comedy of Nora Ephron and the literary force of Flannery O’Connor.

Lee Smith

I thoroughly and absolutely loved this novel. . . . Well structured, well paced, outrageously funny but deadly serious, A False Sense of Well-Being hits a nerve–a literary work that has the possibility of being very popular, especially with women. Braselton is an astute social commentator with a remarkable and accomplished debut. She has a genius for the offhand comment that cuts right to the core of life. Gutsy, moving, and memorable.

Publishers Weekly

In this amiable expos? of a genteel enclave of the Deep South, where marriages disintegrate into strained truces, 38-year-old Jessie Maddox finds herself imagining all the ways her faultlessly upright but mind-numbingly boring banker husband, Turner, might plausibly die. A fall in the shower? A freak explosion in the basement? Anything would do. In lieu of murderous action, Jessie seeks the same false sense of well-being she prescribes to her psychiatric patients at the Glenville Wellness Center, like Wanda McNabb, a homemaker who actually has killed her husband. Then Jessie's best friend in Glenville Meadows, a suburban subdivision full of "Southern Living wives," confesses that she is involved in a steamy affair, and Jessie finds herself desperate for any change at all. In an effort to recapture her youth, she journeys to her hometown in Randolph Gap, Ala., where her mother a maker of macram? handbags and a fervent evangelical churchgoer still keeps house for her long-suffering father, and her wild sister, Ellen, is visiting with her son, Justin, and a full menagerie of birds. By contrast, dull Turner starts looking better. Finally, the gritty realities of smalltown limitations and universal disappointments steer the story away from a Thelma and Louise finale toward a more realistic but no less dramatic and ironic ending. Braselton's depiction of the plight of restless women and her brilliant descriptions of sheltered suburbia and smalltown life are delivered with scathing wit. (Oct. 2) Forecast: Blurbs from Anne Rivers Siddons, Kaye Gibbons, Lee Smith and Terry Kay suggest the slant and appeal of this novel, and should do much to capture readers' attention. An eight-city author tourand national print advertising will help. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This debut novel by a Georgia writer comes with much-deserved praise from authors such as Kaye Gibbons, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Lee Smith. After 11 years of marriage and four miscarriages, Jessie Maddox is puzzled by thoughts and dreams of her husband Turner's death. Why would she want her kind (if somewhat boring) husband dead? Through women she knows, the book explores the ways wives seek happiness, from adultery to violence. Trying to understand her staid life as Turner's wife and a member of the local Episcopal church, Jessie visits her rural Alabama home. There she begins to reconcile the past and the present with the help of the Holy Rock church, her fundamentalist mother, and her hell-raising sister. Braselton's characters and situations evoke sympathetic laughter and provide ample insight into the human condition. This is regional fiction at its best. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/01.] Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Southern families and crumbling marriages are center stage in a capable if routine debut. Braselton launches the story with quirky comic flair by reporting Jessie's compulsive fantasies about how her husband might meet an accidental death. Turner's great crime is his predictability; he's a nice enough fellow for a banker, but life with an upright, stable do-gooder has apparently killed any passion Jessie felt for him. Marriage to Turner brought this native of rural Randolph Gap, Alabama, across the state line to tidy Glenville, Georgia, into a tailored, planned community and a faux-Georgian house. Jessie's upward mobility, though applauded by her sanctimonious mother, has left her wondering what life is all about. It doesn't help that her best friend is having an adulterous affair with a young department-store salesclerk, or that new client Wanda McNabb (Jessie is a mental-health worker) has recently killed her husband in self-defense. In an attempt to gather her thoughts, Jessie, approaching 40 and despondent about her inability to conceive a child, goes home to Randolph Gap for a weekend. If solutions don't arise from the visit, at least she gets to witness her mother crashing her Lincoln Town Car into the steps of the Holy Rock Church. As is often the case in real life, actually taking the trip down memory lane is less satisfying than thinking about it, and what Jessie gets in Randolph Gap is a hangover from a night on the town with her sister (having just left her husband, nympho Ellen is also staying with their parents), an escapade involving a large stuffed duck, and a crying jag over the grave of her first boyfriend. Dissatisfaction abounds: all the main players are disappointedwith their husbands, their lives, the prospect of a future that can be called from the sidelines. Braselton's too-cohesive theme inevitably falls a little flat as a promising start sinks into familiar terrain. A solid tale of country-fried suburban woes with few surprises. Author tour