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    Waiting For Spring
    Waiting For Spring
    Waiting For Spring
    Audiobook18 hours

    Waiting For Spring

    Written by R.J. Keller

    Narrated by Caroline Shaffer

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The pain in Tess Dyer’s heart stems from a lifetime of rejection: by her distant mother, by a string of one-night stands, and by her husband, Jason. He promised to love her forever, yet here she is, divorced and shunned in her own town. She tries everything to dull the pain: sex, work, and endlessly cleaning the house. Finally, in a fit of despair, she abandons the small town of Brookfield, Maine, for an even smaller town, determined to start over with a clean slate. But she can’t run from the demons in her head, and she soon falls back on her old habits, this time with the help of her sexy new neighbor Brian. Though she tells herself he is just a warm body to dull the pain, his kindness has a soothing effect on her bruised heart. But the fear of losing his love is always there, and before long, Tess’s past threatens to destroy her fragile new happiness. Ultimately, she must make a choice: continue drifting through life, or confront the cruel realities of her past and start living. A dramatic departure from contemporary chick-lit, Waiting for Spring is a moving novel about a real woman struggling to find her place in the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateDec 18, 2012
    ISBN9781469201023
    Waiting For Spring
    Author

    R.J. Keller

    R. J. Keller lives in central Maine with her husband, their two children, and the family’s cats. She enjoys gardening, rooting for the Boston Red Sox, and watching other people cook. Waiting for Spring is her first novel.

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    Reviews for Waiting For Spring

    3.5/5

    21 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I got this book as a Kindle freebie back in 2011, and it was worth every penny. OK, that’s kind of a snarky thing to write, but it’s hard to think of fresh ways to say, “Well, it didn’t make me retch.” It’s not a bad book, and if you prefer your romances to be light on romance and heavy on mundane reality and damaged psyches, you might love it. For myself, I found the characters were a little flat, the plot was a little insipid, and the sex all started to sound the same after a while. On the other hand, it didn’t make me retch …
    • 5/5
      A hauntingly beautiful novel.
    • 4/5
      It’s been a long time since I threw common sense to the wind and stayed up to finish a book knowing how much I had to do the next day, but not resenting it the next day because it was totally worth it.This book has no spiffy genre classification. After some thought, I think I’d call it “literary romance.” I don’t know what “women’s fiction” is and I’m not sure I really even know what “chick lit” is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not either of those. And you know, lately, I’ve been very happy with the books that haven’t been easily classified.Here’s the blurb: It’s not the kind of pain she can see and smell and wrap with an ace bandage. It’s the kind she tries to numb with sex and work and cleaning-cleaning-cleaning the house. The kind that comes from enduring a lifetime of rejection. First from her mother–whom Tess knows would have aborted her had the law allowed it–then from a string of men whose names she can never remember. And finally, at age thirty-four, from her husband of ten years; the man who once promised to love her forever.You want angst? I gotcher angst right here, pal. And this is the good stuff, the kind that jerks you around and bashes you over the head and makes you come back for more to see how it all ends. In my experience with literary fiction (one of which was an Oprah pick—sue me), there seems to be some sort of unwritten rule about writing angst, which is to understate it, to let the subtleties of the angst dawn on the reader like a sunrise behind storm clouds.Problem with that approach is that A) I don’t ever get to know or care about the characters enough to care about their angst and B) their angst isn’t that big of a deal anyway; if the characters clearly don’t care about their angst, why should I? So I’ll read literary fiction, don’t get me wrong, but later, I’ll scratch my head and say (if asked), “Yeah, I think I read that book, but I don’t remember the name or the author.” I just remember dipping my toe in the wading pool of that world once upon a time.The main character, Tess, has angst and she doesn’t seem to care about her angst, either. But I cared about her angst from the very first paragraph: They say actions speak louder than words. Maybe. But words do a hell of a lot more damage. Even well-meaning words spoken by well-meaning people. People like Sister Patricia Mary Theriault. She was my catechism teacher when I was seven years old. Until she ruined my life. [...:] Then she told us about the bad soil. [...:] But the only bad soil I heard about was this: “As the Sower was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on and–” Path. Trampled. Bad soil. [...:] “Don’t let your hearts become trampled down, children. Keep them soft and fertile so you can feel God’s love inside of you.” Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit. The kind that even Sister Patricia couldn’t do anything about.The twin hyperbolic allegories of “until she ruined my life” and “Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit” are not, actually, hyperbolic or allegorical, but the reader doesn’t find out why or how until far, far into the book. You might be tempted to point out that this is simply excellent fiction infrastructure, to which I would say…yeah, I know. But I don’t see that a whole lot anymore. As far as I can tell, the current writing fad is to make me, Random Reader, ask the question and then never let it linger like a good combination of spices on my tongue or let me savor the moment of enlightenment when/if it happens. Instead, it will ask the question and proceed to answer it for me 2 pages later and sometimes, even worse, will over-explain it in case I didn’t get it fast enough or thoroughly digest all the layers of subtext. I’m very tired of being treated like an idiot in my fiction and, further, I hate that I actually have to call attention to this amazingly annoying trend.There are quite a few laugh-out-loud lines, sharp. Wry.When Tess, age 34, takes Brian, age 25, as a lover, they finish, talk, then begin again not long after. Tess observes, Ready again. Twenty-five. Gotta love that.Keller also gives the reader glimpses of the spirituality that’s woven all through the tale; they glimmer, like the gold threads in shot fabric: The stars, he said, were actually souls; all the souls that were too restless to be locked up in heaven. They were so restless that God let them stay outside at night to play.And when an 8-year-old girl about to take her first communion asks Tess if she believes in God, Tess says: “Yes, I believe in God. I just…I don’t feel close to him in church.” “Really? Why’s that?” I shrugged, even though I knew exactly why. I knew because I’d felt that way since I was a little girl, sitting in my church clothes, listening to the Mass. Trying to feel His presence. Struggling to feel His love. But there was nothing there. Nothing but words I didn’t completely understand and scary status. And then, one beautiful Sunday Spring morning when I was nine years old, something occurred to me. Something I never told anyone else. He’s not really in here. God doesn’t live inside a building, and that’s all a church is; just a building filled with lots of words. [...:] Because Anne [of Green Gables:] said that if she really wanted to talk to God, a real true prayer, then she’d have to go outside to do it. She’s need to surround herself with God’s creation, with His beauty; drink it in and let it fill her up. And then she could look heavenward and just feel a prayer.The narrative itself is choppy, with sentences and paragraphs written in fits and starts, which perfectly mirrors Tess’s personality and her coping mechanisms (particularly her “personality disorder”). In fact, a good portion of Tess’s internal dialog and her observations are written as wry asides to herself and she is inviting you, Random Reader, to chuckle along with her.And I did. Even while I had tears running down my cheeks.
    • 4/5
      Waiting For SpringByR.J. KellerThis book was one of Amazon’s Encore books…it just did not get noticed enough and that is quite sad. It told a really great story and the author did it in a spellbinding intense riveting sort of way. It is the story of Tess. She is a huge disappointment to her parents...and feels that her mother really intensely dislikes her. She has been unfaithful to her husband of 11 ½ years because his belief about having a family suddenly differs from hers. She does something unspeakable and her marriage is destroyed. She sets out on her own to a town in Maine that is even smaller than the town she already lives in. She is an artist who supports herself by cleaning houses, offices, whatever she can find. She refuses money from her ex husband and her father. She seems to shrink from owning anything more than she needs. We discover throughout the course of the book that this is the way she feels she needs to live her life. This was a reasonably long book and we follow Tess as she lives her life in this small town in a small apartment with her new neighbor…Brian…who soon becomes an integral part of her life. There are some weird unsettling things going on in this small town…issues with drugs and Brian’s sister and a final sort of show down with her mother. Tess tries to deal with everything that comes her way…ultimately having a final break up with her mother, a life and death ordeal with Brian’s sister and Tess’s own discovery of what she really wants from her life.I rather liked reading this book. I love stories set in Maine and this was where this took place. I liked Tess but did not like some of the things she did. I would not want to be her. I didn’t admire her in the beginning but I respected her at the end.
    • 4/5
      While this book doesn't fall into my normal reading genres, I'm very happy I went outside my comfort zone and read this book. I found the characters well developed, even the ones I didn't like. The story kept me engaged and I even engaged the text to speech feature (which I don't really like) so that I could "read" in the car. I was very moved by this book, both positively and negatively. I found myself saddened by some of the trials of the characters and filled with hope by others. Thank you RJ for your story. It was very enjoyable.