Anne shook her head. “It was good of you to go.”
“Well, I only showed up for one reason.”
The seventeen-year-old Flannery might have spoken this suggestion indirectly, or at an angle. This one gazed right into Anne’s eyes as she spoke, and it was Anne, actually, warmed by the words, who found she had to look away.
Pages for Her
What happens to the love of your life if you’ve lived most of your life without her?
Pages for Her is the story of two women, Flannery and Anne, each at a personal turning point, and the circumstances that lead to their reunion. Twenty years after their brief but passionate affair, chronicled in Sylvia Brownrigg’s earlier novel Pages for You, Flannery has the chance once again to meet Anne, who opened young Flannery up to the possibility of love—then left her heartbroken.
Having long ago put their love behind them, they live now on opposite coasts. Anne has been in a deep, childless partnership with a fellow scholar, Jasper, who recently left her. Flannery, to her own surprise, married a charismatic artist named Charles, with whom she has a young daughter. Submerged by her husband’s demands and personality and her adjustment to motherhood, Flannery has lost sight of herself and her work. When the two women meet at a conference, they find that the passion and understanding between them has endured, though it has been hidden. In rediscovering each other, they are able to rediscover themselves.
Pages for Her is an exhilarating, passionate work that explores marriage, sexuality, and the transformative power of love over time.
Praise
“Sharp observations about motherhood and womanhood. . . . [A]udacious, confident, smart, seductive.”
—Sophie Gilbert, The New York Times Book Review
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“Reading Pages for Her is like going on the perfect date.”
—Diva Magazine
“Captivating. . . . Brownrigg, who lives in Berkeley, animates her sequel with love, marriage, feminism and ‘the knife-edges of sexuality.’”
—Paul Freeman, The Mercury News
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“Reading Brownrigg’s novels feels like entering a fictional world that is less fussy, more real. Mainstream fiction could do with substantially more fiction about romance between teenagers and between middle-aged women. . . . For now, we have these pages.”
—Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic
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“Pages for Her is filled with such rich considerations—of meaning, direction, comparative ways of being—in restless, sensuous prose. . . . We’re glad to come to know these women, and to be taught by what happens between them.”
—Joan Frank, The San Francisco Chronicle
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“A lot has changed since Pages for You, Brownrigg’s novel of teacher-student lesbian romance, was published in 2001—both for the world and for its lovers. Marriage is legal for all in this belated sequel, but by now Flannery and Anne have both been married to men. Flannery is a novelist, wife, and mother, but old love flares up when she joins a panel moderated by Anne, now a prominent Yale scholar. As sharp as the original . . . Pages for Her is a fascinating bookend that’s sturdy enough to stand on its own.”
—Boris Kachka, Vulture
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“Emotionally authentic and sincere.”
—Ron Hogan, Dallas Morning News
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“A complex portrait of two women’s sexuality . . . an absolute pleasure.”
–Alice Sebold
“Completely engrossing… In this intense, compelling novel, Sylvia Brownrigg writes vividly about passion rekindled in mid-life with the force of a tsunami. Pages for Her, the sequel to Pages for You, stands as a beautiful testament to human complexity, reminding us that fierce love comes in many forms, none of them mutually exclusive.”
–Claire Messud
“Nuanced, assured, and razor-sharp, Pages for Her is both a bittersweet story about rekindled love and a profound meditation on what it means to be alive.”
–Christina Baker Kline
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“Pages for Her takes on all the Big Questions in women’s lives: what it means to have “enough” in love, sex, work, motherhood; what we deserve; what we long for; how we get trapped; how we can break free. I found myself reading with pen in hand, compelled to underline both Brownrigg’s gorgeous prose and her astute insights.”
–Peggy Orenstein, author Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
“Sylvia Brownrigg’s Pages for Her is a complex portrait of two women’s sexuality… In Pages for Her, Brownrigg gives us two accomplished women who, coming together after decades apart, understand that truth laid bare is best beguiled.”
–Alice Sebold
“With Pages for Her, Sylvia Brownrigg has achieved the seemingly impossible, a gorgeous and piercing book that is both a huge gift to the many readers who loved its predecessor Pages for You and an exquisitely intelligent stand-alone novel about the intertwined arcs of time and love. ”
–Ann Packer
“With Pages for Her, Brownrigg does open-heart surgery, probing the deep chamber where unfinished love resides, untouchable by time, still beating.”
–Carol Ansha