Emily, Alone (2011) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

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Characters edit see section history

• Emily Maxwell: an elderly, lonely widow whose grown children have moved away
• Arlene: Emily's sole companion and sister-in-law who has a stroke
• Rufus: Emily's old dog, her companion, who she talks to

Quotes edit see section history

• “As they pressed on, surrounded by teeming green life, the bare stump nagged at her. Like the gussied-up garden ladies, they'd come to celebrate beauty and renewal, to worship perfection and pick nits, but now the falseness of the entire enterprise struck her. Where were the blighted and dried-up plants, the withered and sere? Hidden away, discarded.”

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• That was how time passed—waiting through everything else to do the thing you wanted.

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• At her age, it was dangerous to think the past was all she had, her life already defined, when every day was another chance.

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• She’d been lucky in so much, it had left her woefully unprepared for old age.

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• She could not stop these visitations, even if she wanted to. They plagued her like migraines, left her helpless and dissatisfied, as if her life and the lives of all those she’d loved had come to nothing, merely because that time was gone, receding even in her own memory, to be replaced by this diminished present. If it seemed another world, that was because it was, and all her wishing could not bring it back.

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• While she loved them all dearly, she’d forgotten how exhausting other people could be.

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• Or it might be, she thought, having lived long enough, she’d come to think of everyone close to her with a helpless tenderness, accepting that life was hard and people did their best. Certainly it was true of her mother. Was it a sin to extend that pity to herself?

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• she was struck by how long life was, and how much time had passed, and she wished she could go back and apologize to those closest to her, explain that she understood now. Impossible, and yet the urge to return and be a different person never lessened, grew only more acute.

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• Even after she herself was dead, Margaret would still be battling her, just as, occasionally, Emily still fought with her own mother, both guiltily and, being eternally wronged, self-righteously. Though everything faded, nothing was ever done.

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• It was funny how nature restored order to the world and made it easier to believe in grace. She could see how earlier people had worshipped the seasons.

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• The question of how she would be remembered was not one she wanted to contemplate. Her life had been happy, for the most part, her disappointments mild, common, yet when she recalled herself, she did so with a mix of self-righteousness and shame, holding up her worst moments against her best intentions. She would never forget the names she’d flung at Henry in her rages, or the times she’d made her mother cry. She came from a place and a generation that didn’t believe, as Margaret and Kenneth’s did, that you could—or should—forgive your own sins.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Pittsburgh
• Chautauqua, New York: where Emily has a summer family place

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Stewart O'Nan (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary