The Life Before Her Eyes

A Novel

Laura Kasischke

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780547541457
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A "hauntingly original" psychological thriller about innocence, memory, and the effect of a moment of violence ( O: The Oprah Magazine ). In the girls' bathroom, Diana and her best friend, Maureen, are stealing a moment from the routine drudgery of high school when a classmate enters holding a gun. Suddenly, Diana sees her life—past, present, and acutely imagined future—dance before her eyes. Through prose infused with the dramatically feminine sensuality of spring, readers will experience sixteen-year-old Diana's uncertain steps into womanhood—her awkward, heated forays into sex; her fresh, fragile construction of an identity—and, in exhilarating detail, her life-not-lived as a doting mother and wife of forty. Together with the sights and sounds of renewal are the tasks of Diana's adulthood: protecting her beloved daughter and holding on to her successful husband. This "poetic" novel encompasses both the truth of a teenager's world and the transformations of midlife ( Vanity Fair ). Resonant and deeply stirring, The Life Before Her Eyes finds piercing beauty in the midst of a nightmare that echoes like a dirge beneath each new spring, in a story that "takes on deep matters of life and death; conscience and consciousness; family, love and friendship" ( Los Angeles Times ). "Evokes terror and redemption, shadows and light. Kasischke treads a delicate line with the precision and confidence of a tightrope walker. She reminds us to look hard at life, to notice its beauty and cruelty, even as it flashes before us and disappears." — The New York Times "Mesmerizing." — Chicago Tribune