J’ai fini la lecture de ton livre que j’ai beaucoup aimé pour différentes raisons.
It’s a real journey for the reader, who really gets to experience what the narrator feels and goes through.
It is full of sensations, sensations of nature, sensations of water, of light, sensations of the body
The narrator is very generous in sharing what she feels, her vulnerability, her strengths–
I felt close to the other characters, the son, the father, the mother. I liked her a lot, she is so special, with such a nice spirit, sense of humor. I was very moved and touched all through the reading and of course at the end. It made me think about my mother and I wanted to be as good as the narrator is, to her.
The relations with men are also very interesting.
Also, the fact that the son is a man too, and is going to be another kind of man because he had such a great mother.
I really liked what the narrator says about the wound, this passage where she shares her research/work is very interesting.
I would very much like to read the thesis! If there is a possibility to read it?
So, wouaw, reading this book, Marianne, made me experience a bit of your experience and helped me grow as well. It is really a good book, that gives strength–strength to be vulnerable, strength to be what you want to be in life, strength to be free.
“Friend and author Marianne Maili’s I am home. is a page-turner and inspirational in describing both her life and the accessible pleasures open to us all if we are mindful enough to accept life’s gifts sprinkled among its challenges. Her lyrical and poetic depictions of nature–constantly present on the pages–place Maili’s memoir among pastoral as well as memoir masterpieces. Her previous award-winning novel, Lucy, go see. is also a must-read.”
Available in hardcover and paperback wherever books are sold.
One paperback and one hardcover left on the shelf at River Lights Bookstore! More will arrive – but you can still walk in and get a copy today, I think– maybe call first. Remember phone calls?
River Lights Bookstore – 1098 Main Street – Dubuque, Iowa
I am thrilled that it can move from my hands to yours!
The hardcover (ISBN – 978-0-9996631-7-2) contains color images (print, drawings, and photos) on white paper,
and the paperback (ISBN -978-0-9996631-4-1) contains all that in black and white on creme paper.
This beauty-filled book–written in so many beautiful places–explores what home means.
I hope it makes you feel glad to be alive.
It once had 432,000 words in it. Now there are 48,000.
The whole story is still there. In the end, there is so much we can leave unsaid, once we know what it is. It is a deep and light book, the brevity is best sipped slowly.
Here is what some folks have to say about it:
Maili’s uplifting text dances with elegant and fluid steps as it plays with form and forges its own-it is as much poetry as it is novel as it is remembrance. A composition of beautiful and poignant snapshots follows a sparkling and down-to-earth narrator as she returns to her hometown and engages friends, family, lovers, and herself in the events that lead to and from it. The movement and pace sweep readers near and far in place and back and forth in time without losing them or the focus on what it means to be home. Maili shares the deep pleasures open to all of us, which so many of us deny ourselves, and she does this through the painful experiences life also brings. This is the story’s power, and its structure is supported by and justifies the author’s choice to omit proper names-a namelessness that centers the work on transforming grief into beauty. It is one of the many ways Maili refuses to let the difficulty in the story darken it. And her humor is never far away.
In this moving account of loving, being, and becoming; and personhood, womanhood, and motherhood; grief is undeniable, but beauty wins.
-Reál Fillion, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Sudbury
In I am home. I hear a strong voice, a writer’s voice, all the way through. This novel-in-moments shows us someone who moves, spiritually and figuratively. I love Maili’s portrayal of the mother-daughter relationship and the book’s original narrative structure, the attractive way it travels in time and place, and the pleasant short chapters. Some of the shortest are real masterpieces.
-Dra. Marta Segarra, Research Professor (Directrice de recherche), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique- CNRS, Paris, France; Full Professor of French and Francophone Literatures and of Gender Studies
Maili’s I am home. is a crystal that refracts beauty, an imagistic prose poem about the act of turning heartbreak into love: love of place, people, and self. Artists will appreciate this painterly account of the turbulent years that lay behind the writing of her novel Lucy, go see.
-Terry Burns, Professor Emerita of English, researcher, writer, and translator of Renaissance alchemy and alchemical texts
The whole book encompasses a wideness of love, inviting reflections about a lot that most people don’t notice or pay attention to. I was enthralled with it and I love the way it moves in non-linear time and affirms that home is not where we are from and at the same time it is. The way Maili inspires readers’ reflections without offering them conclusions is remarkable. Another interesting aspect of the book is that it speaks to a wide audience of lay people and intellectuals. In the text, Maili tells of what she has come to see as “The American Years”. She shares her authentic self with the reader, exploring memory and forgiveness, the roles of women and men, parents and children, staying home or leaving, and how we live with and within ourselves. Her reflections are both universal and unique and while her perspective is that of someone who has traveled the world something remains that is “as American as apple pie”.
–Kirana Stover, Artist and Director of the Integral Yoga Center Barcelona Ribes
Lucy, go see. is now available to thousands of new readers in the state of California via Indie California, a collection of books from local indie authors available exclusively on the BiblioBoard Library mobile and web platform.
From World Radio Paris commentator Patricia Killeen : ‘Lucy, go see.’ – one of the best reads ever! And now the audio version, by the award winning author herself, is captivating – Maili is also an actress, which adds so much to the audio – Love how she interprets the voice of Bill, the sleazy agent in this excerpt- highlighting with humour, how Lucy’s scintillating path is also peppered with darker moments- the path of a woman who had the courage to ‘go see’ and Maili’s wonderful voice telling her riveting tale….
Lucy Pilgrim is as her name evokes: light and travel. A rebellious and whimsical young woman leaves her rural Iowa home to embark on an international modeling career. Her adventures take her from New York to Tokyo, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and finally Paris before bringing her back to her roots and cumbersome family secrets.
Lucy, go see. is the story of an initiatory quest, a journey that leads Lucy towards freedom, but also the acceptance of her past and her own desires.
Illustrations by Maili are interspersed throughout the novel (color/hardcover, black and white/paperback).
Winner of 2019 Eric Hoffer DaVinci Eye
Finalist, Women’s Issues, American Book Fest’s 2018 Best Books.
Finalist, Inspirational Fiction, 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards
In June 2021, Lucy, go see. is a selection in June Audiobook Month:
For this month only, the audiobook is available at 50% off in Nook Audiobooks “June Audiobook Deals”:
A soothing breeze. Stillness. Color. Space and time.
On a Spanish-named street, Calle Corte de Moda (that could be translated as Fashionable Street), I look up from writing and see the camel tattoo on my foot.
I am in the California desert on a Spanish-named street, finishing a story about leaving Spain.
I find myself repeating “Life is queer with its twists and turns” and the rest of this poem by John Greenleaf Whittier my mother sent to me in college that I still carry with me around the world:
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow –
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit –
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.
I’m in the very-close-to-final draft. Written in first-person, it is the story of a woman returning, with foreign husband and teenager son in tow, to the cradle of her civilization in Iowa after a quarter-of-a-century of fancy-living, working as a model and actress in foreign capitals, then settling in a Mediterranean village.
She aches for her dead father, cares for her ailing mother, is exasperated by a university teaching job with mostly uninterested students, and reacquaints herself with a family who are both glad she’s back and wondering how soon she will go again.
This test of her stamina takes readers, with humor, through a confused, open-hearted, yet on occasion close-minded Midwest, and a gorgeous seasonal landscape as the narrator deals with her ill and angry husband, their excited then depressed son, her relieved mother in misery, grateful siblings, funny and loving friends (false ones, too), and some local wooers. Traveling through time and space, playing with past, present, and future, the tale is often epigrammatic and aphoristic .
This is a journey that brings this unnamed woman ultimately home to herself, as she lets go of one dream and realizes others.
The characters are nameless to focus on relationship–with self and others–to explore how these connections move people.
This woman may have a different life from many on the outside, but like all of us, her interior search is one for joy and freedom, our truest home.
Patricia finds the book 
Marianne Maili 