About this item
Acclaimed author Jennifer Gilmore's intimate and achingly beautiful novel deftly explores the role that chance and choice play in shaping the lives of two teenagers who are separated by sixteen years, but whose lives are intertwined."This emotional, visceral novel haunted me in the best ways. Jennifer Gilmore has written something of real depth, which will leave readers thinking for a long time about the lives that other people lead, as well as the ones they might have led. If Only is gripping and shiveringly beautiful; a true achievement." - Meg Wolitzer, bestselling author of The Interestings and BelzharBEFORE: When Bridget imagined her life at sixteen, it didn't look like this. She didn't think that her boyfriend would dump her for another girl. And she certainly didn't think that she would be pregnant.With just a few months until she gives birth, Bridget must envision an entirely new future - one for her baby. But as she sifts through the many paths and the many people who want to parent her child, she can't help but feel that there is no right decision.AFTER: Ivy doesn't know much about her birth mother. She knows that she is now the same age Bridget was when she placed Ivy for adoption. She knows that Bridget was the one who named her. And she knows that fifteen years ago Bridget disappeared from Ivy's and her adoptive moms' lives.Ivy wants to discover more about herself, but as she goes to find Bridget, she can't help but feel that the risks might far outweigh the benefits of knowing where she comes from and why her birth mother chose to walk away.
About the Author
Jennifer Gilmore's first novel, Golden Country (Scribner) was published in September '06 and in paperback (Harcourt) in 2007. The novel was a New York Times Notable Book of 2006, an Amazon.com Top Ten Debut Fiction of 2006, and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Something Red, her second novel, was published by Scribner in Spring of 2010, and was a New York Times Notable Book. It was published in Paperback by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Spring 2011. Her third novel, The Mothers, is forthcoming from Scribner in April 2013.Jennifer received her B.A. from Brandeis University in 1992, where she majored in English and Creative Writing, and minored in Women's Studies. After college, she moved out to Seattle, and became the producer and host of the radio program, "Talking Fiction" on KCMU, and the Senior Book Columnist for The Stranger.In 1997, she received an M.F.A. in Fiction on a scholarship from Cornell University. There, she was an editor at the literary magazine, Epoch, and went on to teach creative writing and literature. After moving to Brooklyn in 1998, she freelanced, and worked for The Leonard Lopate Show at WNYC (it was called New York & Company back then) and as the book club host for A&E.com. From 2001-2007, she worked in publishing, as the publicity director at Harcourt.Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines and journals including the Alaska Review, Allure, BookForum, the Lincoln Center Theater Review, Los Angeles Times, Nerve, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review,Vogue, SELF, Salon, the Stranger, Tin House, Vogue and the Washington Post. Her personal essays have also been included in several anthologies including More New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of the New York Times, The Friend Who Got Away, Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave and How to Spell Chanukah.Jennifer has been a MacDowell Fellow, and has taught creative writing and literature at Cornell University, New York University, Eugene Lang College at the New School and at the 92nd Street Y. Currently she teaches at Barnard College and Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.Want more info? Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @jenwgilmore. Or please visit her author page on Facebook.
