{"product_id":"9780060784744","title":"The Scenic Route : A Novel","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eThe Scenic Route\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Binnie Kirshenbaum\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eDivorced, alone, and unexpectedly unemployed, Sylvia Landsman flees to Italy, where she meets Henry, a wistful, married, middle-aged expatriate. Taking off on a grand tour of Europe bankrolled with his wife's money, Henry and Sylvia follow a circuitous route around the continent—as Sylvia entertains Henry with stories of her peculiar family and her damaged friends, of dead ducks and Alma Mahler. Her narrative is a tapestry of remembrances and regrets...and her secret shame: a small, cowardly sin of omission. Yet when the opportunity arises for Sylvia and Henry to do something small but brave, the refrain \"if only\" returns to haunt her, leaving Sylvia with one more story of love lived and lost.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e“Tremendously readable...miraculously, Kirshenbaum avoids sentimentality.”\u003cbr\u003e“Spiked with wit, scrubbed free of sentimentality, these tales of love and loss, courage and cowardice, transport us back into the pages of our own lives and our own families ...[The Scenic Route is] a perfect companion for summer.”\u003cbr\u003e“It takes skill and assurance to pull off this beguiling narrative-by-digression, a love story-cum-family history-cum-confession of sins, and Kirshenbaum has both in plentiful supply…there are no happy endings here; instead, Kirshenbaum delivers capital-T truths.”\u003cbr\u003e“[A] moving, bittersweet novel.”\u003cbr\u003e“Introspective, mordant and entertaining, The Scenic Route is a road-trip drama that eloquently articulates its characters’ conflicting desires.”\u003cbr\u003e“It doesn’t get much more summer than road trips and ill-advised flings, and Kirshenbaum’s great new novel has both, a perfect story told with a huge heart.”\u003cbr\u003e“Binnie Kirshenbaum’s witty, insightful European road novel turns the midlife-crisis-romance genre on its head.”\u003cbr\u003e“Binnie Kirshenbaum is a fearlessly unsentimental storyteller, a gifted comic writer and a thoughtful archeologist of family life. The Scenic Route is warm, wise, and very difficult to put down.”\u003cbr\u003e“I’m much impressed with Binnie Kirshenbaum’s THE SCENIC ROUTE, an idiosyncratic and totally winning ‘romance,’ in which sentiment and cynicism are poised in a most virtuoso performance.”\u003cbr\u003e“The Scenic Route is a witty and poignant, and also an extremely interesting and acute, novel. Ms. Kirshenbaum mines a very rich seam that’s entirely her own. This is first-rate writing by a novelist who gracefully defies classification.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780060784744\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Ecco","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":41057037746382,"sku":"9780060784744","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/9780060784744.jpg?v=1648264076","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780060784744","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}