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How do you go on living when your whole life has been one big lie?
Once, a long time ago, Grace Benedict had friends. Good friends. In college she and her roommates Tess, Lovey, and Liz, had been inseparable. And even though life has taken them in different directions, they’ve stayed in touch. For thirty years they’ve kept a circle journal, sharing with one another the ups and downs of their lives, their celebrations and victories, their struggles and heartaches.
Grace’s life hasn’t been easy. And now, as she faces a diagnosis of cancer that shakes her to the core, she needs her friends more than ever.
There’s just one problem. Grace has been lying to them. For thirty years, she’s been fabricating a life, creating a fiction of the way she wished things would be. Love, success, family, fulfillment—she’s had it all. In her imagination, anyway.
If she’s ever going to reclaim those friendships, she needs to tell the truth. About herself, about her needs, about the sadness and unfulfilled longing that has marked her life. She’s running out of time.
Telling the truth just might change everything. But can she find the courage? And more importantly, can she unravel her true self from the tangled web of deception that has held her captive?
- Sales Rank: #204641 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-05-31
- Released on: 2013-05-31
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
In the same vein as her novel The Blue Bottle Club, Stokes again presents a story of four women friends and the twists and turns their lives take. The women—Amanda "Lovey" Love, Grace Benedict, Liz Chandler and Tess Riley—are thrown together in a college philosophy course, charged with answering the question, "What is truth?" In their diversity (the moralist, the activist, the cheerleader, the aspiring author) they forge a close friendship. Stokes's books usually have a concrete motif of sorts (The Amber Photograph; The Treasure Box; The Wishing Jar; The Memory Book), and in this novel the object is a "circle journal" that the women pass around and contribute to for 30 years. However, each woman fails to tell the complete truth about her life in the journal, especially when she encounters failure or disappointment. When desperate circumstances cause Grace to bring the quartet back together again, telling the truth is in order, but they find that risking truth with one another is a daunting proposition. Stokes is a competent writer who knows how to craft a well-paced story. Although this book is more adventurous than her earlier fiction—CBA fans will be surprised to discover profanity and a lesbian character—Stokes's fans will find the same type of plot, faith themes and characters that they've enjoyed in her previous novels.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The day they graduated from college, roommates Amanda, Liz, Tess, and Grace vowed to stay in touch, knowing they were embarking on a journey that would stretch and test even the best of friendships. They decided to keep a collaborative journal, one that would be passed from woman to woman, and for 30 years the leather-bound notebook has kept a vigilant record of their thoughts, tragedies, and triumphs. Then, when it makes its way back to Grace the day she's diagnosed with cancer, Grace faces a crisis nearly as devastating as that of her terminal illness. Needing her friends' support in her final days, Grace realizes she must reconcile the deceptive image contained in the journal's pages with the life she's really lived. As her friends gather for one final reunion, Grace discovers that she's not the only one who made the journal a work of fiction rather than fact. With abiding warmth and moving sensitivity, Stokes crafts an inspiring tribute to the power of true friendship. Carol Haggas
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Penelope Stokes has written the perfect story of enduring friendships. It is compelling, truthful, and poignant. You'll want to buy several copies of this book, one to keep for yourself, the others to give to the women friends you are fortunate enough to include in your circle of grace."
--Lynne Hinton, author of The Last Odd Day and Friendship Cake
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"A beautiful novel of dreams gone awry,� truths forsaken, and the blessings and redemptive power of womens' friendships. The dialogue is fast paced, intelligent, and heart wrenchingly honest. The writing is clear and concise and speaks to the truths of our connection to the universe and to who we really are."
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Joan Medlicott, author of The Ladies of Covington Send Their Love and The Spirit of Covington
Most helpful customer reviews
23 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
An Absorbing Story for Readers of Faith Fiction
By FaithfulReader.com
After penning nine novels, Penelope Stokes knows how to craft an interesting story, and she raises the bar a bit higher for herself in CIRCLE OF GRACE.
Four mismatched college classmates craft an unlikely alliance in this tale, then drift apart over the next few decades, connected only by their "circle journal," passed around by mail for each woman to update the others on how her life unfolds. However, most of the women can't resist embellishing their accomplishments, hiding important life events, or brushing aside their failures, so the entries in the circle journal are mostly a charade.
Grace Benedict (whose name has several interesting connotations) had thought of the foursome as "the Four Corners" or "the Compass Points" in college because of their diversity of perspectives when challenged in a philosophy course to answer the question, "What is truth?" The heart of Stokes's novel lies in the answer to this question.
Liz Chandler, a dyed-in-the-wool atheist who, as a student, believed love was overrated, goes on to find true love with a surprising person --- but she isn't sure she is ready to be honest with her old friends about her new life. Amanda, or "Lovey," is the vacuous, agnostic blonde Southern cheerleader whose dream marriage to football player Bo Tennyson has slipped away over the years into an expensive, polished fa�ade. But can she confront Bo with the truth about their relationship? Tess Riley, the daughter of an Episcopal bishop, has become a successful writer with two Newbery Medals and three Horn Book Awards. But she keeps the truth about her identity a secret.
And Grace, the moral compass and "truth teller" of the foursome, believed in college that "the truth will set you free...truth enables us to become the people we were created to be." But thirty years later, Grace is perhaps the worst at coming clean, spinning a fantasy life in the circle journal for her friends that bear no relationship to reality. Grace has been burned in the "truth telling" department before. Her parents' marriage had a dark side that she discovered after her father's death. It was then that truth ceased to be an abstract concept for Grace. As Stokes beautifully writes, truth then "had a color, a taste, a smell. A dark red hellish light, a bitter burn like acid on her tongue, a scent of smoke and ash and the rotting remains of half-cremated dreams." Her mother tells her, "We always think we want the truth, Grace. But the truth isn't always pleasant or noble, and it's certainly not painless."
Now, diagnosed with a terminal illness and long past believing her college credo that "the truth will set you free," Grace must decide if she will finish life the same way she has lived it, or be willing to be painfully honest with her friends about her own deceptions and her need for a relationship.
Readers who dislike their authors deviating from what they have come to expect will enjoy CIRCLE OF GRACE, which echoes THE BLUE BOTTLE CLUB in its object motif and follows some familiar Stokes formulas. In this sense, CIRCLE OF GRACE is like settling in for a conversation with an old friend. However, more conservative Stokes fans will discover that the author has taken some risks in this novel: allowing her characters to use some profanity, and letting one of the friends "come out of the closet." What is most unmistakable about this novel is how Stokes's writing, always proficient, sparkles in places, and she proves she knows how to turn some lovely phrases ("Liz's questions, along with so many of her own, hung out there like loose threads on a badly-woven sweater. Pull one, and everything might unravel.").
This novel, with its lovely writing and themes of truth, loss, friendship and redemption, will provide an absorbing story for readers of faith fiction.
--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
A really good book
By Betsy Sue
I thought this was a very good book and was disappointed in some of the reviews. I wonder if they failed to see the spiritual aspect of the book. Did they not read the part where Grace was in Church when they were receiving communion and Grace, who had not believed for so long, thought,"We are the bread, gathered and sifted together. We are the wine,pressed and mingled and distilled. Henri Nouwen, a Christian writer stated that we are the bread, broken and given to others, through Christ.
There was a lesbian couple and I wondered if perhaps the negative reviewers would have had Tess stay with a cheating, lying man instead.
I have given the book to two friends to read, both of whom enjoyed it as I did.
I will continue to read Ms. Stokes books and recommend them to others.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A lovely book
By L.E.S.
This is a beautiful story about love and faith and, yes, grace. It may not be what readers of Christian fiction expect, but it exemplifies how most Christians I know and respect in the real world strive to be. When most Christian novels are more about political agendas than God, and most mainstream novels have no interest in faith at all, this book is a wonderful gift.
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