Hood Pdf Summary Reviews By Emma Donoghue

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Hood Pdf Summary

A tale of grief and lust, frustration and hilarity, death and family.

Penelope O’Grady and Cara Wall are risking disaster when, like teenagers in any intolerant time and place—here, a Dublin convent school in the late 1970s—they fall in love. Yet Cara, the free spirit, and Pen, the stoic, craft a bond so strong it seems as though nothing could sever it: not the bickering, not the secrets, not even Cara’s infidelities.

But thirteen years on, a car crash kills Cara and rips the lid off Pen’s world. Pen is still in the closet, teaching at her old school, living under the roof of Cara’s gentle father, who thinks of her as his daughter’s friend. How can she survive widowhood without even daring to claim the word? Over the course of one surreal week of bereavement, she is battered by memories that range from the humiliating, to the exalted, to the erotic, to the funny. It will take Pen all her intelligence and wit to sort through her tumultuous past with Cara, and all the nerve she can muster to start remaking her life.

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Hood Review

Goldilocks

3.0 out of 5 stars Lesbian grief overload
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2015

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Closeted Pen (Penelope) O’Grady takes the reader for a heartbreaking ride through Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief, via flashbacks, following the sudden death of her beloved Cara Wall, in a taxicab accident. Pen is a captivating character who lives a simple life and was deeply in love with her partner; she is stricken. Halfway in, Pen references the book title: the color of her Cara’s red hair, the recall of her raincoat hood on a bittersweet busride, the “widowhood” to which she now is subject, the “sisterhood”… She tells us: “There wasn’t a lesbianhood that I knew of, only an ism, sounding like a digestive disease.” Tender, touching love story, beautifully written and moving, but ultimately, a drain. Further, for those sensitive, there is much explicit homosexuality in “Hood”. Introduced to Emma Donoghue’s writing with “Room”, she made the lead character profoundly sympathetic and frankly for that reason, I persevered to finish.

R. Linz

5.0 out of 5 stars I cannot put into words how much I love this book.
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2004

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I have read this book many times, and at times it makes me sob with bitter sadness, and at other times it makes me laugh out loud. The writing is exquisite; the bathtub scene (Pen’s memory of a peaceful time with her and her recently deceased lover) captures perfectly what the essence of love is. It’s beautiful. The frustration that Pen feels at having to keep silent about her partner’s death (because she works at a Catholic school and because she lives in Ireland) transmits frustration to the readers as well — but not in that hokey, “oh being a lesbian is so hard” preachy way. It is Pen’s evolution as she learns to cope with Cara’s death and to face certain truths she didn’t want to deal with previously. I also believe that it is a beautiful love story but in a realistic way – the main characters are not perfect, yet their love is so intense. It’s not a “romance” — it’s a real-life, complex love story. I haven’t been as big a fan of Donoghue’s other novels so far, but this one stands out as exceptional for its writing, story line and character development. Read Hood — with a box of tissues nearby.

About Emma Donoghue Author Of Hood pdf Book

Emma Donoghue the author of Hood pdf book grew up in Ireland, 20s in England doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature, since then in Canada. Best known for my novel, film and play ROOM, also other contemporary and historical novels and short stories, non-fiction, theatre and middle-grade novels.