9780743212328. New condition. Trade paperback. Language: English. Pages: 240. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 240 p. When her mother dies, forty-two-year-old Ursula Gant is left shattered. Cocooning herself in grief, Ursula retreats behind a literal wall of beloved books. But not even the fictional barricade can safeguard her from a spell of hallucinations. When the wall collapses, Ursula bolts to the airport, abandoning her lover Daniel. Meanwhile, Daniel's wife Cissy, a fading beauty queen, is tormented by a different sort of loss. Devastated by her husband's betrayal, Cissy boards a plane to Athens - the same plane Ursula is on. The plane crashes. In the aftermath, one of Daniel's two fleeing women disappears, her body is never recovered. The other, horribly burned, regains consciousness. But without any memory, and with an unrecogisable face, she ventures into the world alone, unloved and unknowable.
How two women seek and embrace freedom is at the heart of Delsa Winer's stunning first novel
"At fort, Ursula Korfield Gant believes she is independent of the usual pleasure people seek and connections they covet. She lives alone, although there are men who've had, for a while, resident status."
Thus begins Delsa Winer's engrossing novel, at once terrifying and full of hope. When her mother dies, the shattered Ursula retreats for distant shores, abandoning Daniel, her lover, and the safe boundaries of her life. Meanwhile, Daniel's wife, Cissy, is tormented by a different loss -- she knows of her husband's betrayal -- and she, too, leaves. Both women end up in the same plane crash, and each ventures into the world unknowable and unable to return to the past. The mystery of their fates is the force that drives this emotional journey through the many faces of female identity in all its beauty, chaos, and compassion.
At once ironic and moving, Almost Strangers is a love story, a suspense story, and a novel about starting over.
