If You Left

Name: If You Left
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Ashley Prentice Norton
ISBN: 9781515974598

Author: Ashley Prentice Norton

Narrator: Christina Delaine

Unabridged: 8 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/15/2016

Categories: Fiction, Family Life, Women

Synopsis

For most of their marriage, Althea has fluctuated between extreme depressive and manic states, and Oliver has been the steady hand that guided her to safety. This summer, Althea decides that she will be different from here on. She will be the loving, sexy wife Oliver wants, and the reliable, affectionate mother their nine-year-old daughter Clem deserves. Her plan: to bring Clem to their Easthampton home once school is out—with no "summer girl" to care for her this time—and become "normal."

But Oliver is distant and controlling, and his relationship with their interior decorator seems a bit too close; Clem has learned to be self-sufficient, and getting to know her now feels like very hard work for Althea. Into this scene enters the much younger, David Foster Wallace–reading house painter, who reaches something in Althea that has been long buried.

Fearless and darkly funny, If You Left explores the complex dance that is the bipolar marriage, and the possibility that to move forward, we might have to destroy the very things we've worked hardest to build.

About Ashley Prentice Norton

Ashley Prentice Norton is a graduate of Exeter, Georgetown, and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Chocolate Money, was heralded as "darkly funny . . . compulsively readable" by People. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Meg - A Bookish Affair on July 03, 2016

"If You Left" is the story of Althea, a woman who suffers from bipolar disorder. She is married to Oliver, a man who up until recently has seemed to tolerate Althea's illness well. Sure, he cheats on her constantly and approaches women in front of her but he seems to not be bothered by her illness a......more

Goodreads review by Sophie on May 18, 2016

ARC was kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review As You Left is a novel that follows Althea; a married, wealthy, New Yorker. Althea suffers from manic depression disorder and the only stability in her life is her husband Oliver. Due to her disorder, her marriage suffers and s......more

Goodreads review by Mary on July 01, 2016

Althea Willow has suffered with bipolar disorder most of her life, with her husband Oliver being her primary caretaker/stabilizer. She has been hospitalized many times during their marriage, and Oliver knows exactly what to do, which things to pack, and how to explain her repeated absences to their......more

Goodreads review by Cindy on June 16, 2016

Reading fiction is a wonderful way to learn about the problems many of us encounter in REAL life. For instance, more people talk freely about domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse now that it’s in the public conscience, and a frequent topic in popular fiction. But I haven’t read anything about c......more

Goodreads review by June on June 08, 2016

Althea Willow is the 38-year-old main protagonist of "If You Left", a disturbing novel by Ashley Prentice Norton. Her moods wildly pendulum back and forth between extreme poles of depression and elation. What she calls, respectively, the Tombs and the Visions. She is, in fact, bi-polar. As long as s......more