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Book Summary and Reviews of Remedies by Kate Ledger

Remedies by Kate Ledger

Remedies

by Kate Ledger

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  • Aug 2009, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A captivating new voice in women's fiction delves into the haunted past of a physician's seemingly perfect marriage.

Simon and Emily Bear look like a couple that has it all. Simon is a respected doctor. His wife, Emily, shines as a partner in a premier public relations firm. But their marriage is scarred by hidden wounds. Even as Simon tends his patients' ills, and Emily spins away her clients' mistakes, they can't seem to do the same for themselves or their relationship.

Simon becomes convinced he's discovered a cure for chronic pain, a finding that could become a medical breakthrough, yet he is oblivious to the pain that he causes at home. Emily, struggling to move beyond the devastating loss she and Simon suffered fifteen years earlier, realizes she hasn't felt anything for a long time—that is, until a lover from her past resurfaces and forces her to examine her marriage anew.

In a debut novel on par with today's top women writers, Remedies explores the complicated facets of pain, in the nerves of the body and the longings of the heart. Depicting modern-day marriage with a razor-sharp eye, Remedies is about what it takes, as an individual and as a couple, to recover from profound loss.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. An impressive portrait of a family in crisis, executed with finesse and assurance." - Publishers Weekly

"Ledger makes medical science interesting and accessible, but her triumph is the creation of Simon, a deeply flawed and magnetic character." - Kirkus Reviews

"Beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking. My copy is fat with all of the corners that I folded down on pages that I will want to read again." - Elizabeth Evans

"This is a taut and elegant book, and an impressive literary debut." - Roxana Robinson

This information about Remedies was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Bonnie Brody

A Troubled Marriage
The Bears lost their 6 week old son to meningitis early on in their marriage. Since then, they both have turned inwards and do not communicate about their feelings with each other or anyone else. This is ironic because Emily is a public relations specialist dealing with spin and how to get large corporations out of trouble. Simon is a doctor with a large practice and a loyal patient following. His specialty is pain relief and he believes in prescribing magnanimous doses of opioids for chronic pain sufferers. He knows this is the best relief and that it is the only thing that will work for some of his patients. As both of the Bears are lost in their professional concerns, their daughter Jamie struggles alone to find herself. Friendless and floundering, she is either oppositional or silent with her parents. This is a wonderful book, one that I highly recommend.

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Author Information

Kate Ledger

Kate Ledger received an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Arizona and works as a freelance writer, specializing in health and medicine.

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