The Whole World Over - by Julia Glass (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the National Book Award-winning author of Three Junes comes the story of Greenie Duquette, who lavishes most of her passionate energy on her Greenwich Village bakery and her young son--until she makes an impulsive decision that will change the course of several lives around her.

Greenie's husband, Alan, seems to have fallen into a midlife depression, while Walter, her closest professional ally, is nursing a broken heart. At Walter's restaurant, the visiting governor of New Mexico tastes Greenie's coconut cake and decides to woo her away to be his chef. For reasons both ambitious and desperate, she accepts--heading west without her husband.

Review Quotes

"Gorgeous. . . . delicious, delightful, and deeply satisfying." --The Times-Picayune

"Her second novel is even finer than her first. . . . Glass offers unobtrusive yet resounding insights into the paradoxes of families, the necessary solace of friendship and the volatility of intimate relationships gay and straight. Her social commentary is at once mischievous and trenchant." --Chicago Tribune

"Enormously appealing and inventive . . . sure to solidify Julia Glass' reputation as one of America's most talented younger novelists." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A generous, tentacled, ensemble novel. . . . [Glass] is deft at the quick portraiture and character shorthand that this novelistic approach requires." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Glass pins down these lives with verve, precision, and depth.... A wise book, with breadth as well as depth." --The Oregonian

About the Author

JULIA GLASS is the author of the best-selling Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; her previous novels include, most recently, And the Dark Sacred Night and The Widower's Tale. A teacher of fiction and a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Glass lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.