A stunning story cycle from bestselling New York Times Notable author, Mary-Beth Hughes, The Ocean House explores the fractured lives of families from a beach town on the Jersey Shore as the consequences of loss pass through generations. Faith, a mother of two young children, Cece and Connor, is in need of summer childcare. As a member of a staid old beach club in her town and a self-made business consultant, she is appalled when her brother-in-law sends her an unruly, ill-mannered teenager named Lee-Ann who appears more like a wayward child than competent help. What begins as a promising start to a redemptive relationship between the two ends in a tragedy that lands Faith in a treatment facility, leveled by trauma. Years later, Faith and her mother, Irene, visit Cece in college. A fresh-faced student with a shaved head and new boyfriend, Cece has become a force of her own. Meanwhile, her grandmother, Irene, is in the early stages of dementia. She slips in and out of clarity, telling lucid tales of her own troubled youth. Faith dismisses her mother's stories as bids for attention. The three generations of women hover between wishful innocence and a more knowing resilience against the cruelty that hidden secrets of the past propel into the present. Including stories from an array of characters orbiting Faith's family, The Ocean House weaves an exquisite world of complicated family tales on the Jersey Shore. In ever-tender and elegant prose, Mary-Beth Hughes masterfully explores the emotional consequences of loss and the saving graces of love.
A novel of a wealthy family in midcentury America and the flaws beneath the surface, from “a writer of dexterity and imagination.” (New York Times Book Review). As the 1960s draw to a close, the Devlin family lead almost-perfect lives. Dashing father Nick is a successful businessman long married to sweetheart Jean, who upholds the family home and throws dinner parties while daughter Lily attends Catholic school and is disciplined into modesty by the nuns. Under the surface, however, the Devlins are silently broken by the death of their little boy. As Nick’s older brother, a man driven by callous and rapacious urges, inducts Nick into the cutthroat world of the cosmetics industry, the Devlin family, fragmented by betrayals, will become victims of the cruelest kind of hurt. “Mary-Beth Hughes's body of work casts a dreamy, hypnotic effect, even while slyly exposing the risks and rewards of love and its devastations among the upper class.”—Elle “There’s a lot of smoking, bourbon, bangs and center parts. People have live-in help with whom they play bridge. But the book glosses these details lightly; to the extent it is a period piece, it is in the way it summons a now somewhat dated idea of luxury, ambition and, by extension, accomplishment... it amazes me how many of the book’s images have stayed with me.”—The New York Times Book Review “Hughes is a quietly devastating writer, reminiscent of Evan S. Connell and James Salter in her delicate, almost surgical ability to peel back the thin skin of normal life and to lay bare our painful truths, contradictions, the stains of grief and betrayal...a beautiful, haunting novel.”—A.M. Homes
A stunning story cycle that explores the fractured lives of families in a Jersey Shore beach town from the bestselling, New York Times Notable author. Faith, a mother of two young children, Cece and Connor, is in need of summer childcare. As a member of a staid old beach club in her town and a self-made business consultant, she is appalled when her brother-in-law sends her an unruly, ill-mannered teenager named Lee-Ann who appears more like a wayward child than competent help. What begins as a promising start to a redemptive relationship between the two ends in a tragedy that lands Faith in a treatment facility, leveled by trauma. Years later, Faith and her mother, Irene, visit Cece in college. A fresh-faced student with a shaved head and new boyfriend, Cece has become a force of her own. Meanwhile, her grandmother, Irene, is in the early stages of dementia. She slips in and out of clarity, telling lucid tales of her own troubled youth. Faith dismisses her mother’s stories as bids for attention. The three generations of women hover between wishful innocence and a more knowing resilience against the cruelty that hidden secrets of the past propel into the present. Including stories from an array of characters orbiting Faith’s family, The Ocean House weaves an exquisite world of complicated family tales on the Jersey Shore. In ever-tender and elegant prose, Mary-Beth Hughes masterfully explores the emotional consequences of loss and the saving graces of love. “[The Ocean House] accrues a rich, novelistic sweep and leaves readers with a vertiginous sense of contingency.” —The New York Times
In this New York Times Notable novel, a New Jersey mother struggles as her husband goes to jail to protect Roy Cohn: “This is a beautiful book.”—Booklist (starred review) “It’s the summer of 1964, and the once-privileged Clemens family is in tatters. Husband Will is serving time at Woeburne penitentiary for refusing to testify against Roy Cohn, who acted as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s counsel. Genteel wife Kay shuttles between their oceanfront home and son Bo’s bedside at New York Hospital, where he is being treated for cancer. Stretched thin, Kay can only focus on one tragedy at a time, so the needs and confusion of preadolescent daughter Lou-Lou go unnoticed. Told in shifting points of view, this first novel offers rich, nuanced characterizations ripe for book club discussion. Dozens of memorable scenes showcase Hughes's eye for penetrating detail...Highly recommended.”—Library Journal “Reads like an epic: part prison story, hospital-ward drama, family tragedy, and historical flight of fancy.” —Los Angeles Times “A skillfully charted plot about the complex nature of loyalty.”—The New York Times Book Review “Hughes’s portrait of a weary, shell-shocked family is pitch-perfect.”—Time Out New York
Short stories about the universal need to be loved, from “a quietly gorgeous writer” (The New York Times Book Review). In “Pelican Song,” a thirty-year-old modern dancer who moonlights as a movie ticket taker visits her parent’s picturesque home to discover that her stepfather has begun mistreating her too-accommodating mother. “Horse” follows maladjusted honeymooners in Atlantic City whose romantic weekend is saved from emotional catastrophe. A holiday in New York City turns from shopping sprees to a young girl’s sharp discovery of her father’s secret life in “Rome.” With an elegant blend of humor and pathos, Mary-Beth Hughes captures the turning points in relationships that make us wonder how well we really know those we love. Double Happiness is a revealing meditation on the fragility of contentment and the lengths we must go to in order to sustain it, and “[an] intensely moving collection” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Excellent.” —The New Yorker
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.