AUDIOBOOK
About
"A beautiful love story and meditation on grief, memory, art, and the deepest secrets we hold to keep living." -Angie Kim • "Reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith's magnificent Ripley novels...Brilliant and wily...Captivating." -Maureen Corrigan • "Wry, tender, and deeply original." -Christina Baker Kline
For readers of Elizabeth Strout and Sigrid Nunez, a darkly funny and moving debut novel about the unforgettable Agatha, whose devotion to a widow with dementia (and an inconvenient attachment to her daughter's grave) sparks a radical reckoning with life, loss, and love's aftermath.
Agatha, a bristly painter fleeing her own darkness, decamps to rural New Mexico to live the reclusive life of a small-town curmudgeon. It is there she meets Alice, a mild widow with a deepening case of dementia who keeps steady vigil at her daughter's backyard grave. Despite Agatha's rough edges and fierce aversion to sentimentality, she surprises herself by falling in love, and her well-worn convictions begin to upend.
As Alice's condition worsens, Agatha hatches a plan for them to live together at her remote residence at Mesa Portales. But when Alice's wayward son comes along with different ideas-and Alice suddenly goes missing-Agatha takes matters into her own hands with the help of a faithful thirteen-year-old-neighbor, a pair of shovels, and her trusty pickup, embarking on an unusual mission that calls into question whether some secrets are better kept buried.
Sharp, watchful, at once thrillingly perceptive and hidden from herself, Agatha is as imposing as the vast landscape her rustic adobe home overlooks. Loosely inspired by the life of Agnes Martin, I Am Agatha introduces us to this irascible, indelible character who learns-over a stretch of strange, singular days-new ways to fathom life, death, and her own heart. Nancy Foley grew up in New Mexico. She has been a writer in residence at Hedgebrook, and divides her time between New Mexico and Oregon. I Am Agatha is her first novel.
For readers of Elizabeth Strout and Sigrid Nunez, a darkly funny and moving debut novel about the unforgettable Agatha, whose devotion to a widow with dementia (and an inconvenient attachment to her daughter's grave) sparks a radical reckoning with life, loss, and love's aftermath.
Agatha, a bristly painter fleeing her own darkness, decamps to rural New Mexico to live the reclusive life of a small-town curmudgeon. It is there she meets Alice, a mild widow with a deepening case of dementia who keeps steady vigil at her daughter's backyard grave. Despite Agatha's rough edges and fierce aversion to sentimentality, she surprises herself by falling in love, and her well-worn convictions begin to upend.
As Alice's condition worsens, Agatha hatches a plan for them to live together at her remote residence at Mesa Portales. But when Alice's wayward son comes along with different ideas-and Alice suddenly goes missing-Agatha takes matters into her own hands with the help of a faithful thirteen-year-old-neighbor, a pair of shovels, and her trusty pickup, embarking on an unusual mission that calls into question whether some secrets are better kept buried.
Sharp, watchful, at once thrillingly perceptive and hidden from herself, Agatha is as imposing as the vast landscape her rustic adobe home overlooks. Loosely inspired by the life of Agnes Martin, I Am Agatha introduces us to this irascible, indelible character who learns-over a stretch of strange, singular days-new ways to fathom life, death, and her own heart. Nancy Foley grew up in New Mexico. She has been a writer in residence at Hedgebrook, and divides her time between New Mexico and Oregon. I Am Agatha is her first novel.
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Reviews
"Narrator Jennifer Pickens captures Agatha, the irascible title character, within the first minutes of this audiobook. With her artist's eye, Agatha observes things that most people don't notice. Despite her stony manner and her desire for solitude, Agatha is in love with Alice, who is slowly succumbing to the ravages of dementia. Alice's son plans to put her in a care facility, but Agatha offers her the sanctuary of her own home. Pickens is splendid delivering Foley's spare, condensed prose. Loosely based on the life of New Mexico artist Agnes Martin, Foley's novel weaves a gorgeous tapestry of the moments, both terrible and wonderful, that make up this fictional Agnes' life.
Pickens' stellar narration turns this beautiful reflection on life and its wonders into much more than a moving love story."
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