Jessica Francis Kane

A beautifully observed and deeply funny novel of May Attaway, a university gardener who sets out on an odyssey to reconnect with four old friends over the course of a year. At forty, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she's turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm's length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends. She knows they will never have a proper reunion, so she goes, one-by-one, to each of them. A student of the classics, May considers her journey a female Odyssey. What might the world have had if, instead of waiting, Penelope had set out on an adventure of her own? RULES FOR VISITING is a woman's exploration of friendship in the digital age. Deeply alert to the nobility and the ridiculousness of ordinary people, May savors the pleasures along the way--afternoon ice cream with a long-lost friend, surprise postcards from an unexpected crush, and a moving encounter with ancient beauty. Though she gets a taste of viral online fame, May chooses to bypass her friends' perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them in their messy analog ones. Ultimately, May learns that a best friend is someone who knows your story--and she inspires us all to master the art of visiting.

A Novel

Rules for Visiting

A stunning first novel that is an evocative reimagining of a World War II civilian disaster On a March night in 1943, on the steps of a London Tube station, 173 people die in a crowd seeking shelter from what seemed to be another air raid. When the devastated neighborhood demands an inquiry, the job falls to magistrate Laurence Dunne. In this beautifully crafted novel, Jessica Francis Kane paints a vivid portrait of London at war. As Dunne investigates, he finds the truth to be precarious, even damaging. When he is forced to reflect on his report several decades later, he must consider whether the course he chose was the right one. The Report is a provocative commentary on the way all tragedies are remembered and endured.

The Report

"A middle-aged woman, irritated with her wealthy young neighbor's yard improvements, offers a corner of her lawn to a Croatian immigrant who wants a vegetable garden. A daughter accompanies her father to Israel, where, seeing a new side of him away from her mother, she makes an unusual bargain. In twelve stories about the difficult, sometimes impermeable boundaries between friends, neighbors, and family relations, Jessica Francis Kane explores just how close we can come to love, success, happiness, and forgiveness."--P. [4] of cover.

stories

This close

A collection of stories set in the U.S. and London portrays characters at odds with the patterns of their lives, from a mathematician who forsakes everything to prove a theory, to a young New York publicist trying to make ends meet, to a woman author achieving fame late in life. 20,000 first printing.

Bending Heaven

This Close, a graceful, moving new collection by the author of The Report *An NPR and Flavorwire Best Book of the Year * How close can we come to love, success, happiness, forgiveness? An older woman, irritated with her wealthy young neighbor's yard "improvements," offers a corner of her lawn to a Croatian immigrant who wants a vegetable garden. A recent college graduate living in New York City finds himself in a strangely entangled friendship with his dry cleaner and her son. A daughter accompanies her father to Israel, where, seeing a new side of him away from her mother, she makes an unusual bargain. Through thirteen stories, some stand-alone, others woven with linked characters, Kane questions the tensions between friendship and neighborliness, home and travel, family and ambition. In writing filled with wit and humor and incredible poignancy, she deftly reveals the everyday patterns that, over time, can swerve a life off course.

Stories

This Close

A naive young man, recently arrived in New York City, accidentally strikes up a rapport with his dry cleaners and finds himself uncomfortably suspended between customer and saviour.

Lucky Boy

Sarah takes a holiday to London with her husband and their teenage daughter. Thrown together in the uneasy otherworld of tourists, the family are forced confront their lack of familiarity with one another.

Jessica Francis Kane

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