Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Good-bye and Amen: A Novel
    Good-bye and Amen: A Novel
    Good-bye and Amen: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Good-bye and Amen: A Novel

    Written by Beth Gutcheon

    Narrated by Joyce Bean

    3/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Beth Gutcheon's critically acclaimed family saga Leeway Cottage was a major achievement: a vivid and moving tale of war and marriage and their consequences that enchanted readers. Good-bye and Amen is the next chapter for the family of Leeway Cottage, the story of what happens when those most powerful people in any family drama, the parents, have left the stage.

    The complicated marriage of the gifted Danish pianist Laurus Moss to the provincial American child of privilege Sydney Brant was a mystery to many who knew them, including their three children. Now, Eleanor, Monica, and Jimmy Moss have to decide how to divide or share what Laurus and Sydney have left them without losing one another.

    Secure and cheerful Eleanor, the oldest, wants little for herself but much for her children. Monica, the least-loved middle child, brings her youthful scars to the table, as well as the baggage of a difficult marriage to the charismatic Norman, who left a brilliant legal career, though not his ambition, to become an Episcopal priest. Youngest and best-loved Jimmy, who made a train wreck of his young adulthood, has returned after a long period of alienation from the family surprisingly intact but extremely hard for his sisters to read.

    Having lived through childhoods both materially blessed and emotionally difficult, with a father who could seem uninvolved and a mother who loved a good family game of "let's you and him fight," the Mosses have formed strong adult bonds that none of them wants to damage. But it's difficult to divide a beloved summer house three ways and keep it too. They all know what's at stake-in a world of atomized families, a house like Leeway Cottage can be the glue that keeps generations of cousins and grandchildren deeply connected to one another. But knowing it's important doesn't make it easy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 24, 2008
    ISBN9781400179817
    Author

    Beth Gutcheon

    Beth Gutcheon is the critically acclaimed author of the novels, The New Girls, Still Missing, Domestic Pleasures, Saying Grace, Five Fortunes, More Than You Know, Leeway Cottage, and Good-bye and Amen. She is the writer of several film scripts, including the Academy-Award nominee The Children of Theatre Street. She lives in New York City.

    More audiobooks from Beth Gutcheon

    Related to Good-bye and Amen

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Plunge Into Summer With The 10 Best Books Of July

      Jul 7, 2020

      Whether you’re hitting the road or staying put, a bumper crop of summer reads offers a welcome distraction. Dig right in.

      2 min read

    • Article

      TV Pieces Of Her

      Mar 24, 2022

      TV Pieces Of Her
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Millions Top Ten: July 2019

      Aug 8, 2019

      Benjamin Dreyer graduates to our Hall of Fame, making room for new Colson Whitehead, while Sally Rooney pulls off the extremely rare double listing. The post The Millions Top Ten: July 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Preparation, Iowa

      Jan 28, 2020

      Preparation, Iowa
      3 min read

    • Article

      Secrets Of The Seamstress

      Apr 20, 2022

      Secrets Of The Seamstress
      8 min read

    • Article

      New Year New Books

      Jan 1, 2020

      Hill Women by Cassie Chambers (Ballantine Books) Before graduating from Yale College and Harvard Law School, Cassie Chambers grew up in the hollers of Eastern Kentucky. Surrounded by poverty and decay, Chambers managed to beat the odds and explore li

      1 min read

    • Article

      March’s BOOK CLUB

      Feb 2, 2023

      Other Women by Emma Flint (£16.99, HB, Pan Macmillan) Bea Cade can’t resist the charms of Tom Ryan. Any time the attractive and enigmatic salesman visits the offices where Bea works she goes weak at the knees. But Tom is married to Kate. While it’s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Shipstead, Ryan, Walker, and More

      May 17, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

      5 min read

    • Article

      Family-Focused Farmhouse

      Nov 9, 2021

      Family-Focused Farmhouse
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Lives of Bryan

      Jun 1, 2023

      The Lives of Bryan
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Creator Of ‘Duchess Goldblatt’ Finds Herself – And Twitter Fans

      Jul 16, 2020

      In the memoir, “Becoming Duchess Goldblatt,” the anonymous author shares her struggles – and the online community that saved her.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Grandad, We Hardly Knew You

      Apr 5, 2023

      Prince Harry seems to be jolly pleased with the progress of his life – bestselling memoir, lovely wife, sweet kids, dogs, chickens, Hollywood glamour and endless opportunity for psychotherapy sessions. He feels he's now so emotionally connected, and

      3 min read

    • Article

      MY ENGLISH HOME Jilly Cooper

      May 1, 2019

      MY ENGLISH HOME Jilly Cooper
      4 min read

    • Article

      Nurse Alcott

      May 21, 2019

      MOST PEOPLE KNOW Louisa May Alcott as the bestselling author of books such as Little Women (1868), Little Men (1871), and Jo’s Boys (1886). But her greatest role may have been as a nurse during the rebellion. In Louisa on the Front Lines: Louisa May

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Good-bye and Amen

    3/5

    42 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Disappointing follow-up to the very enjoyable Leeway Cottage. The last third of the book was interesting but definitely not for anyone who hasn't read Leeway.
    • 3/5
      Well written family story but I was a bit bored by it.
    • 3/5
      3.5 STARS.....i enjoyed but i would not suggest anyone rush out to buy it sad to say. I read Leeway Cottage awhile back and am glad i did, it's almost a necessity.Fiction based on fact including pictures, this is a generational story about a family and a summer home in Maine. Good story! But there were so many references to people from the other book, the past, that it made the reading a wee bit confusing.THAT SAID: I WOULD read another by this author.
    • 1/5
      Had to give this one up too. It was written like a play. Too many characters all fighting over their dead parents stuff. Ugg. Why can't I pick up a good book!
    • 3/5
      If you have not read Ms. Gutcheon's novel, Leeway Cottage I fear you will be hard-pressed to make a lot of sense out of this book. However, if you were a fan of that earlier novel, you'll enjoy catching up with Sydney & Laurus' children as they try to divide their inheritance in Dundee, Maine after the death of their parents.Told through the voices of the many participants in their lives, and a little bit like reading random Facebook postings, the novel is a bit like fitting a jig-saw puzzle together & I ended up being grateful for the glossary of characters that the author supplied at the end of the book.I don't think this novel really worked stylistically, but I so enjoyed the book that it's a sequel to, that I kept reading all the way to the end.
    • 3/5
      Goodbye and Amen is a contemporary family drama with a large cast of characters. It begins as three adult children are dividing up the family heirlooms following their parents’ deaths. The story follows all three families, including the spouses and children, and pulls in assorted neighbors, friends, coworkers, and assorted bystanders along the way. The format is unusual. The story is told in little “bursts” of one or a few paragraphs from a particular character, and then switches to another character. It took me a few pages to get used to it, but I found it quite enjoyable. The phrasing of each “burst” is very conversational – I could almost “hear” each character talking to me. I got the sense of being at a party, milling around collecting the gossip from various people. Or of watching a montage of television interviews, getting just the sound bites without the interviewer’s questions. Each character’s personality really comes through just in their perspective of events and the wording they choose.There is one character who has passed on, and is sharing his lofty wisdom from the great beyond. I didn’t enjoy this perspective as much as the other characters, as it didn’t seem to fit with the daily concerns and everyday personalities of the rest of the ensemble. Perhaps that was the point, and it was just lost on me. I may have appreciated this voice more had I already read Leeway Cottage (the prequel).
    • 2/5
      This was a disappointing follow up to Leeway Cottage. The format is ambitious and interesting, with the characters taking turns in telling the story. The format wasn't the problem with this novel, it was the fact that the characters were pretty uniformly uninteresting and shallow. The dismantling of an estate, with the siblings vying for favorite belongings and keepsakes, isn't necessarily the most sympathetic way to portray characters. The members of the Moss family essentially come across as self-satisfied and privileged. The most interesting sections of the book, and the shortest, were the observations and comments from the people who were not family members but who had to deal with the self-absorbed and selfish Mosses. Somehow, in Leeway Cottage, Gutcheon managed to make this group appealing while still showing their many shortcomings. This time around, not so much. This was disappointing to me since Gutcheon's past efforts have always struck me as readable and entertaining.
    • 2/5
      Disappointing follow-up to the very enjoyable Leeway Cottage. The last third of the book was interesting but definitely not for anyone who hasn't read Leeway.