Amazing Grace Adams: The New York Times Bestseller and Read With Jenna Book Club Pick

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Grace is 45, the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. How does society erase women over 40? Why do you think that is? How does this story help you see the women in your life differently? This is a book who may be enjoyed by readers of women’s fiction, particularly those who are perimenopause or menopausal who may relate to some of Grace’s emotions. Grace can taste the metal heat coming off the vehicles wedged either side of her as she smiles at him. With her mouth, not her eyes. I was so fed up with the kind of vanilla, sanitized cultural depictions of women over 40. As I was hitting these ages it wasn’t how I felt. This notion that we’re supposed to be downtrodden, over the hill, boring — all these adjectives attached to the middle-aged space. I felt that it needed a rebranding,” she says. Amazing Grace Adams is a wonderful debut novel and I found it to be a relatable story that stirred memories in me from long ago. By now I'm sure you realize that I think Grace Adams is simply amazing. I love Grace's story and I look forward to what this author comes up with next.

Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. It’s the man in the Audi. He has his window down and he’s raising his voice above the blast of horns starting up. She registers the threat in the pulse of the engines around her, the angry atonal soundscape, but she has the strange sense that she’s somewhere beyond it, that it’s separate from her. Thank you to the author Fran Littlewood, publishers Henry Holt and Macmillan Publishing, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of AMAZING GRACE ADAMS. Hellie signed me on a partial manuscript, the book I’d been working on during the course, and when I’d finished and it went out on submission to publishers, the response was ‘nearly but not quite’.A gripping story of joy, grief, stress, worry, love at first sight, parenting...frank, nuanced, and evocative.” Language plays an important role in the book, as both Grace and her husband are polyglots. How does being an acclaimed polyglot contribute to Grace’s midlife crisis? What other languages do you speak or wish you spoke? Who is the word nerd in your book club? Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. Speaking to TODAY.com, author Littlewood says her intention with “Amazing Grace Adams” was to write the book she had been looking for in middle age. For me this book was ok. I didn't love or hate it, it seemed a little chaotic at times with too much going on. The first half of the book could be confusing but by the end I did understand what has gone on. I had high expectations for this one because it was being compared to Elinor Oliphant which I adored but it just didn't live up to it.

A second narrative strand, covering the prior few months, unspools some of the incidents that have alienated mother and daughter. It’s a chilling but fairly clichéd tale of a teenage girl being lured into what may be a dangerous sexual relationship, getting bullied on social media, cutting classes, and refusing to talk to her mother or school authorities. In Grace, Littlewood says, she’s writing “the interesting and fun and funny, ambitious, nuanced woman” that reminds her of her “friends, sisters and the women (she) knows.” The “Now” narrative that launches the book is the most engrossing. Grace, a language teacher and translator, has decided that the only way to salvage her relationship with her daughter, Lotte, who is turning 16, is to personally deliver an expensive birthday cake to her estranged husband’s apartment, where Lotte has fled. When a traffic jam drags hopelessly on and on, Grace abandons her car in the middle of the crowded road and sets out on her searing walk across London. Though Grace Adams is, as the title suggests, amazing from the start. A polyglot who speaks five languages, Grace was once a TV personality before her unexpected pregnancy thwarted her course.Grace Adams is also the latest in a series of brilliant, beautiful and privileged protagonists (Amy Dunne, Bernadette Fox, Barbie) undone by the challenges of modern womanhood." — The New York Times Book Review I can’t remember the last time I read a novel with such unbridled enthusiasm. Amazing Grace Adams is a raw, uproariously hilarious portrait of parenthood, love, and family; it’s also a profound examination of the way language can both save us and fail us when we need it the most. I’d walk across London on the hottest day of the year with Fran Littlewood—hell, I’d walk anywhere with her. I’m begging you: read this book.” A redemptive story of womanhood, motherhood and marriage. You won't forget Grace Adams in a hurry Culturefly

The situations are (mostly) totally relatable, the raw pain and loss palpable and, at one point, I found myself stifling a sob! Grace, the main character, voices the feelings of many women, with humour and irony in the writing. The ‘out-of-control’ may feel exaggerated, but is it really? How many of us have felt out of our depth, dealing with teenagers who live in such a different world? I finished her story on a plane above the country, so full, and in tears. "Ma'am?" my seat-mate asked, "are you ok?" "Oh, yes," I answered. And gave him this book' SARAH BLAKE, New York Times bestselling author of The Postmistress and The Guest Book In a Nutshell: Started off wonderfully but then became farfetched. Some parts of it were really good but I wish the author wouldn’t have tried to throw in so many themes into a single plot. A decent debut work but not as good as it promised to be. I listened to this as an audiobook and Claire Skinner does a fantastic job at capturing Grace and all she is going through. Brilliant . . . a story of a midlife heroine seeking redemption and so much more Woman & Home, Book of the MonthAn angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. Family dynamics are well observed in a Falling Down-inspired tale of a mother's menopausal rage. Grace Adams is certainly a fighter Guardian This book made me laugh and cry a heart warming story of motherhood and dealing with grief and trauma. Never did I see coming the emotion that permeates Fran Littlewood’s debut novel. I went into Amazing Grace Adams expecting an almost absurdist, satirical portrayal of a middle-aged woman on the verge of snapping, and though I did find some of that, I was also rewarded with a thoughtful and sensitive story of a mother fighting to regain her family and her life. Early 2000s. Grace is a polyglot who has just proven how amazing she is by winning the title of ’Polyglot of the Year.’