This quirky debut novel translates perfectly to audio, aided by four narrators (Tyler Bunch, Kristin Kilian, Beth MacDonald, and Mia Pitasi) whose voices distinctly convey what listeners expect these characters to sound like. Not an easy job when there are numerous speakers, including a homeless man, a teenager who delights in cutting herself, an ashram-seeking young mother, and a Jesuit priest sent by the church to confirm miracles. While other characters speak in the first person, Hallowell wisely keeps Francesca's voice in the third person, creating a distance between this lonely, troubled teenager and the listener an apt parallel to her reluctance to expose herself or accept what others see as her supernatural powers. Particularly poignant is the miniscule line that develops between madness and sanity, prismatically viewed in one character after another. While there is much humor here, absolutely nothing is superficial. Though the final chapter seems tacked-on, too neatly tying up loose ends, the book as a whole is thoroughly enjoyable. Rochelle Ratner, formerly with Soho Weekly News, New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
Narrated by Tyler Bunch, Kristin Kilian, Beth McDonald, Mia Pitasi
Janis HallowellUnabridged — 7 hours, 59 minutes
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
Narrated by Tyler Bunch, Kristin Kilian, Beth McDonald, Mia Pitasi
Janis HallowellUnabridged — 7 hours, 59 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Ambitious first novel examines the power of faith-and its dangers. Chester, a former English Lit Ph.D. with mental problems, is a homeless person in a town that's probably Boulder. One morning, he has a vision that Francesca, a 14-year-old girl who helps serve the homeless free meals at her neighbor Ronnie's cafe, is the Holy Virgin. Chester decides that he is to be her protector. Francesca, beautiful but going through a troubled patch of adolescence since her parents' divorce, is in fact afraid she might be pregnant, although the sexual encounter she had remains ambiguous. After an incident at the cafe, word spreads among the homeless that Francesca has holy healing powers. Her distracted mother Anne, a paleobotanist with no use for the leap of faith required for religious belief, conveniently leaves town for a dig while Francesca, staying with Ronnie, becomes increasingly known as a miracle worker. By the time Anne returns, the cult around Francesca has become a media event, inflamed by Ronnie's sister Rae, a professional seeker (we all know the type), and Francesca's friend Sid, who is secretly selling Francesca-relics. Anne is slow to realize that Francesca has in fact begun to believe in her own powers, to enjoy the role of Virgin thrust upon her, and to act as a pretty credible miracle worker. People believe they are changed after contact with her. By setting up the possibility of miracles occurring while also leaving a trail of rational explanation, Hallowell challenges the reader to think in new ways about how belief evolves and how it affects actions. In the end, Francesca is not pregnant and, at a crucial moment, is unable to heal. But the question lingers whether her temporarydivinity was real to those who believed. Though her story and characters are both sometimes labored and her writing stilted, there's a lot to admire in the complexity of the issues Hallowell raises-and in her lack of easy answers. Agent: Kathleen Anderson/Anderson Grinberg
Provocative and suspenseful.
Beautifully written and brimming with strong, appealingly eccentric characters...raises intriguing questions about the nature of contemporary faith and religion.
THE ANNUNCIATION OF FRANCESCA DUNN asks poignant emotional questions, striving to define reality and redemption in a troubled world.
An intriguing and memorable look at what might happen if a modern-day miracle did occur.
Skillfull ... delightful ...charming .... the characters are quirky, troubled, and appealing, and we’d be willing to follow them just about anywhere.
Janis Hallowell writes with lucid grace...
"Provocative and suspenseful."
Provocative and suspenseful.
This lovely and absorbing book is given a splendid four-actor production here. Tyler Bunch reads the voice of Chester, a homeless visionary who first “sees” that the adolescent Francesca Dunn is the Virgin, carrying the infant God. Kristan Kilian, Beth MacDonald and Mia Pitasi take the viewpoints of Anne, Francesca’s scientist mother, of Sid, Francesca’s school friend, and of Francesca herself, whose situation is deeply complicated by the fact that her followers seem actually to be healed by her touch, that suddenly she can see secrets in peoples’ hearts, and that she can feel life quicken inside her. All four actors are wonderful; why doesn’t the publisher tell who takes which part? One wants to thank them individually. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170010554 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2004 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
A Novel
Chapter One
Chester
People who live in houses never get it, but street people know: Fall begins on the fifteenth of August, at the exact moment when summer's at its peak. It happens like breath, the exhale being the seed of the inhale. There's the first yellow leaf. A tiredness comes over the green. The smell of snow rolls down from the mountain, and your bones remember the cold that's coming. It was that night, the night summer slipped into fall, that she became the Virgin. Before, she was just a girl who worked at Ronnie's Café on weekends, handing out free food after hours. There had never been anything about her to suggest divinity. No trace of roses lingered around her; there was no holy brightness. But all of that changed with the season.
That night, as always, I waited until dark to look for a place to sleep. There was a spot in the bushes by the river that I often used, and after I smoothed the dirt with my hand, I gingerly pulled my sleeping bag from its sack, trying to keep the goose down from leaking out of the many small rips in the fabric. I aligned the bag north to south because I can't sleep crosswise to the earth currents, and then I checked to make sure it wasn't visible from the road. You see, when the season changes, it brings the college boys back to town. They come, all suburbs and sex, looking to show their frat-boy friends how to kick bums trapped in sleeping bags. They never got me, though. I knew their ways from teaching them, long ago. And from being one of them before that.
I sat and ate my supper, a splendid ripe tomato pinched from a backyardgarden. With the tip of my knife, I saluted my unknowing benefactors. They of the white picket fence and cozy kitchen. When the tomato was gone, I put away my knife, wiped the juice out of my beard, and turned up the collar on my coat. I didn't take off my boots. As much as I hated the dirt going into my bag, boots tend to disappear if they're not on you, and boots can make the difference between staying alive and not.
I had settled in, hoping for sleep, when there was a commotion above the water. I opened my eyes, and she was there. She was a vision, a visitation, a sighting, a hallucination. All words for the same thing: the moment that imprinted itself on all the remaining moments of my life.
She hovered over the creek, swirled in ambrosial light. The water coursed around her feet, but her dress stayed dry. She held the baby close. Her mouth moved, but I couldn't hear the words, so I made my way to the edge of the water. She was the girl from Ronnie's, only with eyes as deep as the universe and wrapped in a cloak of glory. The smell of roses, the velvety ache of them, lured me in. She smiled at me and said, "Yours will be a magnificent role in the coming of my son."
I'm no newcomer to strangeness. I've had it all my life. It's my curse and my blessing that I can smell things other people can't. I can pick up the rotten sweetness of infection from across the street. Anger coming off a person is an acrid, mustardy thing, not unlike the odor of ants, and lying has a cloying, soapy smell that makes my mouth pleat. In the past, when social workers and do-gooders discovered my gift, they sent me to shrinks who gave me the latest antipsychotic. I tried to take them, but the drugs always made me go dead inside. Each time I ended up deciding to carry on intact, smells and all, rather than live in that pharmaceutical twilight.
I had been smelling things forever, but I had never had a vision before. And this was the real deal, complete with singing angels and rapturous awe. I knew instantly who she was. I hadn't been to church since I was a little boy, but I knew. I recognized her by the roses and by the blue of her robe. And before I realized what was happening, she reached between my ribs and took my heart in her hand. It settled there like a tame rat, trembling at her touch.
I don't know how long she was with me, but when I came back to myself, I was waist deep in the water and she was gone. And I knew that this was what I was supposed to do: find her in the flesh and serve her.
The Annunciation of Francesca DunnA Novel. Copyright © by Janis Hallowell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
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