03/30/2015
Gillies’s (The White Lie) assured novel uses fragmented storytelling and flashbacks to generate tension and suspense in what might otherwise be a static narrative. Nina Findlay, hospitalized after a bus accident while on holiday in Greece, dissects her broken marriage and other fractured relationships in conversation with the attentive, attractive Dr. Christos. Gillies skillfully builds a sense of mystery around the secrets that destroyed the lifelong bond between Nina and the Romano brothers who grew up next door: Luca, her favorite, and Paolo, her husband of 25 years. Through her budding trust in the doctor, Nina explores the pivotal losses that haunt her: her parents’ separation, the deaths of her mother and sister-in-law, her miscarriage. Gillies’s brisk, confident style deftly manages convoluted jumps in time, and small gems of insight glitter among her clean, precise prose: “There was no doubt that Paolo was the nicer brother. Always kind. Even-tempered. Reliable. Loyal. But it hadn’t been any use.” This sure-handed, lovely exploration of the human heart is certain to build Gillies’s audience. (May)
"In her disturbing and...tantalizing second novel, Andrea Gillies...plumbs the heart of marital infidelity. In the world of this novel, we betray our spouses simply by withholding the best of ourselves, by saving it for another." —The New York Times Book Review
"Elegantly told in flashbacks and up-close observations, Nina's story of adult romance is illuminating, redemptive, and hot as all get-out." —The Oprah Magazine
"Gillies’s brisk, confident style deftly manages convoluted jumps in time, and small gems of insight glitter among her clean, precise prose...This sure-handed, lovely exploration of the human heart is certain to build Gillies’s audience." —Publishers Weekly
"In her second novel, Gillies explores...the fallibility of memory and the often heartbreaking half-truths we tell ourselves by way of compensation." —Kirkus Reviews
“Gillies is a skilled writer, painting the scene of Nina’s Greek getaway with cleanly evocative prose.” —The Huffington Post
"Gillies offers a lot of food for thought about love, memory, and the lies we tell ourselves." —Booklist
"Riveting." —Library Journal
“A rich, intricate, utterly convincing portrait of one woman's midlife meltdown.” —Lisa Zeidner, author of Layover and Love Bomb
“This mesmerizing, intelligent work overturns traditional assumptions about love, family, and loss and delivers a series of twists that are as unexpected as they are richly satisfying.” —Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Birds of Paradise
"The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay is at once lyrical and riveting. Unfolding on a radiant Greek Island, with darker echoes of Scotland and Norway, this lushly transporting, thoughtful novel moves through overlapping time periods in an intricate series of themes and variations. Despite its graceful cadence, it courses with suspense; Andrea Gillies has given us something rare, an exquisite page-turner." —Hilary Reyl, author of Lessons in French
“The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay is a sure, poised, relentlessly honest novel that carries the reader through multiple layers of deception and revelation, showing us the hidden heartbreak in families and marriage.” —Fernanda Eberstadt, author of Rat and The Furies
“Gillies writes magnificently on everything she touches.” —Sunday Times (UK)
“[The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay] moves backward and forward across several decades, uncovering intergenerational secrets and the holes in the stories people tell themselves.” —The Guardian (UK)
“Funny and wise . . . not to be missed.” —Good Housekeeping (UK)
“An intelligent, thoughtful, grown-up romance about second chances and the complications of relationships.” —The Herald (Scotland)
“Winner of the Orwell and Wellcome prizes for her first book, Keeper, Gillies combines a wonderfully unreliable narrator with a deeply layered love story.” —Scottish Book Trust
“Romance is everywhere, there is love—filial, parental, platonic, amorous—and flirting and coupling and unraveling. But The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay is not chick lit. There’s a provocative intelligence in Gillies’s tale that challenges perceptions and beliefs about love, honesty, and betrayal.” —Bookanista
04/01/2015
This new novel from Gillies (The White Lie) concerns a love triangle among the eponymous Nina Findlay and the Romano brothers, Paolo and Luca. Nina married Paolo, the boring, responsible one, but had long been in love with bad boy Luca. After Luca's wife dies, decades-long tensions erupt, and Paolo and Nina separate. Nina flees to a small Greek island to escape the stress of her divorce, but when she is hit by a minibus she must remain on the island while her broken leg heals. Depressed, bored, and unsure of what she wants, she spends her time with Dr. Christos, the attractive, English-speaking, and recently separated local physician. There's a lot going on here, and the pacing is uneven, with the narrative switching between moody introspection and extreme emotional strain that disrupts the flow. The sections about Nina's mother and the complicated relationship among the brothers are riveting; however, Nina's endless study of herself can be tedious. Gillies also overuses foreshadowing and telegraphs twists. VERDICT Narrative flaws notwithstanding, the overall writing is sound. Recommended for readers of women's fiction and fans of exotic locales.—Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD
2015-02-17
Through the lens of a failed marriage and a lost love, a flawed but appealing woman recovers her health while dissecting her complicated relationships. In her second novel, Gillies explores the same subject she did in Keeper (2010), her raw nonfiction account of caring for a close family member with Alzheimer's: the fallibility of memory and the often heartbreaking half-truths we tell ourselves by way of compensation. Forty-something editor Nina Findlay grew up next door to two brothers, the one she married and the one she loved. Having finally left her husband, Paolo, Nina returns to the Greek island where they honeymooned and promptly gets hit by a bus. We spend the rest of the book recouping with her in the hospital, where she meets a charming doctor whose intentions are murky at best—but so, as it turns out, might be Nina's. Wandering between her childhood, her coming of age, and her uncertain present, she tries to tell the story of her marriage without really understanding how it started; or, more critically, how it's likely to end. Nina's dead mother, Anna, the eccentric alpha female to her daughter's apprehensive beta, haunts the narrative like a specter who doesn't realize she's overstayed her welcome. Both women are attractive but sometimes-frustrating, and there are moments when what Nina seems to need most is a good shake. Fortunately, she manages to give herself one in time to weave together enough of her history's free-floating threads to leave us covered. In this middle-aged love triangle, the points take a while to connect.
