Count the Ways

A Novel

De: Joyce Maynard

Narrado por: Joyce Maynard

In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times best-selling author Joyce Maynard returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of her most acclaimed work in a mesmerizing story of a family - from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their lives.

Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a redheaded son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin, and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted - summer nights watching Cam’s softball games, snow days by the fire, and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family.

Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a young new partner.

Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives - through the gender transition of one child and another’s choice to completely break with her mother - Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past and find redemption in its darkest hours.

A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.

©2021 Joyce Maynard (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Enthralled and uplifted

Joyce is a master story teller and I agree that in Count the Ways she brings the best of her gifts. Love her delivery here too. Well worth the listen. 👌

Great writing

I don’t write reviews very often but this book was very well written I felt like the characters were real. It was hard to stop listening

Great story

i enjoyed the story even though it was sad at times and thin were a struggle you still could feel the mothers love.

A Gem

This was my first Joyce Maynard book. I am not sure why, but I heard her tell a story on The Moth. The message in that story was so profound, I scrambled to get more views and understandings from her. This book takes the long view of real life, from its beginnings and through (not quite to the end, at least let’s hope not). Joyce Maynard writes about the ordinary in an extraordinary manner. She also takes the potholes and blind siding devastations and gives us all the strength to carry on through our own with the same grace and humanity of her character. Without soppy drama. My favorite take away was crazy land.

If there is a redeeming JD Salinger quality, it was his ability to spot a gem of a writer when he read her writing.

Count the Ways

This, by far, is my favorite listen. I think because the author was the reader. Amazing writing & delivering it the way she meant & felt it! Thank you

It’s humanity

Loved the honesty of the writer. Her inclusion of the good bad and ugly sides of each character . They were neither villains nor hero’s ..only human .with life experience including pain and loss , joy and forgiveness , the main character especially develops a depth of insight which gives the reader hope for growth in relationships with self and others . I think most readers identify with her story on a deep level . Listening to Joyce’s story made me feel more human and compassionate

Loved listening …

Count The Ways has been a long awaited book from my favorite author. I have been following Joyce Maynard for over thirty years, delighted, at first, with Domestic Affairs. Joyce is the best storyteller, and her narration was simply wonderful. Loved this book on Audible!

My letter to the Author and Future Readers

This was an AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL book
Heart in it 100% the entire time!

I don't think the author knows the term...Parental Alienation. I didn't either until last summer when the poop hit the fan, so to speak, in the actions of my children... as I embarked on year 5 of trying to be divorced.
This book is a very kind version of Parental Alienation, but her pain and actions after divorce via her children are similar to most, yet..this book gave hope to all of us who are Alienated.
Thank you for that♡

I also learned of Ho'ponopono last year, but I say it like this....
Please forgive me.
I forgive you.
Thank you.
I love you.

(in Hawaii, where Hollywood originates..they believe if someone is ill it is because q family member has a 'grudge'. So they will bring in all of the family they can find to see who has ill feeling twards the sick person, then create a forgiveness)

When I posted on Facebook I was doing this...Ho'ponopono...
my friends reminded me to START WITH MYSELF!
So...I did. It took more then a month to just Ho'ponopono myself...all the personal guilt, the mommy guilt, etc and so on.

I will recommend this book to other alienated people.

Beautiful

If you are in your 50's like me, you will most likely really relate to this book. Someone younger might find it too sad or gloomy. To me, however this is an honest and beautifully written and narrated novel. Joyce Maynard did a wonderful job not only writing this heartwarming story, but also reading it in her own voice (a skill on it's own). It's not a mystery or a thriller, but instead a touching and well written novel about life, it's struggles, disappointments, joys and rewards. It takes a profound look at marriage, rearing children, the tragedy of divorce, forgiveness and renewal. This is the kind of book that I didn't want to stop listening to and that says in ones heart and mind for a long time after it's over. I liked that the story spanned almost five decades and that it included and intertwined history within the plot. I will miss the characters and think of them often.

She had a lot to learn

It took a long time for Eleanor to grow in so many ways. Her relationship with her husband was uneven in that one was a dreamer and the other practical. She built up resentment which came to a head with tragedy. I feel the book was too long.