My Only Story A stunning tale of redemption filled with humour and heart edition by Monica Wood Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : My Only Story A stunning tale of redemption filled with humour and heart edition by Monica Wood Literature Fiction eBooks 
MY ONLY STORY is a moving, funny and bittersweet novel by Monica Wood, the acclaimed author of THE ONE-IN-A-MILLION BOY, sure to appeal to fans of Sarah Winman, Anne Tyler and Maggie O'Farrell.
'Wood's command of voice holds a reader all the way through to the last page' San Francisco Chronicle
Rita Rosario has a gift, a way with people. She listens to them and really sees them for who they are - warts and all. Women, even men, come to Rita's beauty shop for perms, town gossip, and makeovers of their very lives.
John Reed first appears to Rita in one of her dreams. When they meet at a town gathering a few days later, she immediately offers him a haircut, and a heart. As they share stories, Rita helps John fill a void by reconnecting him to his only family - a young niece he nearly lost in a heart-breaking tragedy.
While inspiring John out of loneliness and into reconciliation, Rita begins to come to terms with events in her past... and discovers things about herself she never realised, including her own intimate role in John's unfolding story.
What readers are saying about MY ONLY STORY
'Monica Wood is a beautiful writer and can convey complex emotions in the most beautiful and simple ways. The book stays with you long after you finish it, as do the characters'
'An enchanting book. Wood's mastery of the language creates beautiful, sometimes poetic prose. Her ability to express both human pain and human hope is very refreshing. This book is a treasure'
'One of the best kept secrets of the literary world'
My Only Story A stunning tale of redemption filled with humour and heart edition by Monica Wood Literature Fiction eBooks
I must confess that I just finished reading "My Only Story" for the second time. Why does it strike a chord with me? Is it because it's about the complicated relationship sisters have? (I'm the oldest of four sisters) Is it because I love the narrator/protagonist Rita and wish I could meet her? (Yes) Is it because Monica Wood is the writer I strive to be--poetic, succinct, humorous, natural, and filled with heart? You bet! And because she tells a great story. I'm glad it's not "her only story" :-)Rita wants to help people, heal them, and she's good at it. Little does she know, she needs a healing makeover herself. She's in a rut: divorced, yearning for a child, and fighting a fight she can't win to save her town. When she think she's found happiness and purpose after dreaming of a crippled dog she needs to help, she learns she's only half-way there. Fixing other people isn't enough, you still have to fix yourself, and forgiveness goes a long way. Life is a glorious trip!
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My Only Story A stunning tale of redemption filled with humour and heart edition by Monica Wood Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Simply a good story well told. Unpredictable, insightful and honest.
Monica is a writer who knows how to depict the quirky world we live in and the twists and turns that relationships take. I enjoyed this story.
An emotional read.....Sad about the ending....but it shows the resilience of the human being...love Monica 's books.
I read this book based on reading "The One in a Million Boy.'' This author knows how to draw the reader in with well-drawn characaters.
My Only Story is an enchanting book. Wood's mastery of the language creates beautiful, sometimes poetic prose. I fell in love with her characters, who were all engaging and winsome. Even the "bad guys" were compelling, fully realized, struggling with their own devils while hurting the protagonists. The ending was inevitable and believable, and I was sorry to say goodbye to the characters.
Wood's ability to express both human pain and human hope is very refreshing. I look forward to reading every word she writes from now on. Also, I strongly recommend her other novel, Secret Language.
This lovely novel tells the story of broken people and their search for redemption in life. Rita, a lonely and reflective haridresser, befriends John, who is suffering from his own demons. John reveals that he has a long-lost neice with whom he is estranged due to a family tragedy. Rita encourages John to reconnect with his neice, and this sets in motion a chain of events that will change all of their lives. During the course of the novel, Rita also reconnects with her estranged sister, who had been living in a cult.
While this plot line may seem absurd from this description, it is refreshingly normal. This story is really about love, loss, forgiveness, family, and finally acceptance. Monica Wood is a stunningly beautiful writer and can convey complex emotions in the most beautiful and simple ways. The book stays with you long after you finish it, as do the characters.
"It's wrong to erase things," Rita Rosario says near the beginning of "My Only Story". Wrong to erase the old town that's being gentrified out of existence, wrong to erase memories of the past, and wrong to erase people who are inconvenient to how we wish to live our lives.
With more determination than skill, Rita sets out to right those wrongs as she fights the developers in her home town, refuses to forget the sister who seems determined to disappear, and tries with all her heart to help John Reed paint himself back into the life of his small niece.
With "My Only Story", Monica Wood brings us a conundrum. If people try to start over in life ("People do begin anew. They begin and begin."), does it mean they have to erase the unbearable past? Or see it as a bad dream, rather than a reality with which they can live? If there is only one story in each of our lives, is it a story that superimposes itself on everything we do?
Rita pushes John toward the reformation of his life, the meeting with the sisters of the woman his brother murdered. Laura had been one of the four Doherty sisters, forever going through life with arms linked. Their family was close, tight. Tight as a fist, no way in or out, and John's brother had shattered that by killing his wife, the hub, the one who held everyone together. Now, only Aileen, John's niece, kept the stitches from ripping out of that family quilt.
"When I was a child," Rita says, "there was more of a connection between what you thought your life was and what it actually was. That I miss." Rita, too, is dealing with a torn and broken family. As she and John seem to be putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, along comes Darla, Rita's sister, trying to wedge herself into the picture. It's a truth that none of us marries one person. We marry their family as well, and sometimes we find we can't breathe.
"My Only Story" doesn't offer any pat answers or comfy endings. As Rita realizes at the end, it's possible sometimes to try too hard to shape the world to our desires. Sometimes you just have to hold out for a while, waiting for the sweep of time to make things - if not right - at least balanced.
What I liked about this book was how drawn into it I became. Like John and Rita, I was attracted to the Doherty family; I wanted Rita to be the healer and the one who gave them a second chance. Ms. Wood's ability to write the story in many levels made it the kind of book that you keep thinking about, weeks after you read it, and little phrases keep coming back to you. In particular, for me, the phrase "It's wrong to erase things." Even though it was Rita who said it, even she is guilty of it, trying to erase her sister's life in a commune by denigrating the people she lived with. "I wasn't in a coma for all those years, Rita," Darla argues. "I lived there. I had friends. People loved me." Rita, who had made a life alone for herself, thinks she understands, but she really doesn't. "Rita," Darla cries, "I LOST something."
You see? This is what makes the book good. No matter how much each of us thinks we understand things, we still don't. We each have limits and blind spots but, as Rita says, life is long. One story runs out, another begins, and there is nothing to do but marvel at the slow, glorious sweep of time.
I must confess that I just finished reading "My Only Story" for the second time. Why does it strike a chord with me? Is it because it's about the complicated relationship sisters have? (I'm the oldest of four sisters) Is it because I love the narrator/protagonist Rita and wish I could meet her? (Yes) Is it because Monica Wood is the writer I strive to be--poetic, succinct, humorous, natural, and filled with heart? You bet! And because she tells a great story. I'm glad it's not "her only story" -)
Rita wants to help people, heal them, and she's good at it. Little does she know, she needs a healing makeover herself. She's in a rut divorced, yearning for a child, and fighting a fight she can't win to save her town. When she think she's found happiness and purpose after dreaming of a crippled dog she needs to help, she learns she's only half-way there. Fixing other people isn't enough, you still have to fix yourself, and forgiveness goes a long way. Life is a glorious trip!
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