Click on image to enlarge.
|
Ordinary Miracles [Secure Microsoft Reader/Adobe]
eBook by Grace Wynne-Jones
| |
Regular |
|
 |
|
Club |
| Reduced From: |
$13.87 |
|
|
|
$11.79 |
| You Pay: |
$12.99 |
|
|
|
$11.04 |
| Micropay Rebate: |
10% |
|
|
|
10% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$11.69 |
|
|
|
$9.94 |
| You Save: |
10.01% |
|
|
|
23.48% |
eBook Category: Romance/Romance
eBook Description:  Jasmine Smith: forty next month and not ready for it; married to a man she likes and not prepared to give up on love; smothered by life's mundanity, and yet drawn towards its mystery. She wants the sort of love that makes her feel more alive, she wants wild sex in stalled lifts with film stars. She wants something else.... Jasmine Smith is in desperate need of a miracle. And with the help of an adventurous school friend, a man called Charlie and a pig called Rosie she is about to find one. A sharp, funny, moving novel and an exhilarating invitation to step out of quiet desperation and re-discover the magic in life and in love.
eBook Publisher: Accent Press/Accent
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2007
Available eBook Formats [Secure Microsoft Reader/Adobe - What's this?]: SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT [351 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More., SECURE ADOBE FORMAT [1.5 MB]
Secure Adobe: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN, Adobe Acrobat Reader ISBN, MobiPocket Reader ISBN: 1905170645
 
I CAN?T BELIEVE I?LL be forty next month.
Forty seems something you should be ready for ? not
something that lands smug and like-it-or not in your life ?
along with Gillian McKeith.
Bruce bought me one of her books to boost my morale.
It?s not the kind of publication I would have purchased
myself. I tend towards books with embarrassing titles
such as No Need to Panic: Courageous Acts of Change in
Women?s Lives. Still, it was a kind thought. One of the
occasional small acts that show Bruce may still love me
in his way, though there isn't much romance left in our
relationship. ?You know what, Jasmine,? he announced
happily on our nineteenth anniversary, ?one of the great
pleasures of marriage is being with someone you can fart
with.?
When he came he used to shout ?Oh God!? These days he
just says ?Ah?. He scarcely glances at me when I?m in the
shower. When we first got married he used to love the way
I squeezed spermicide around the inside of my diaphragm. I
did it with such fierce concentration, he said, that I looked
like I was making an airfix model. Now he likes watching
me watch television. He says I make funny faces without
knowing it.
I like that he likes that. And I like that he thinks he can
sing when he can?t. But like doesn't make my heart leap.
Like isn't what that woman felt when that photographer
from the National Geographic landed on her doorstep in
Madison County. Of course it?s nice to day-dream that
exactly the same thing might happen here in Glenageary
but, frankly, there aren't enough bridges. There are lots of
burned ones all right, but you can't photograph those.
Now that my daughter Katie?s at college in Galway the
mornings seem very quiet. I miss that moment when, having
got her off to school, I made myself a cuppa and turned on
the radio. Back then time to myself was something I snatched
and savoured ? now there?s a lot of it about and I must
work out what to do with it.
Of course I have my animal rights and adult literacy,
and then there?s the housekeeping and fantasising about the
actor Mell Nichols. And there?s missing people ? missing
myself even ? that takes up a lot of time.
Sometimes, when I feel like this, I go upstairs and open the
cupboard where I keep Katie?s toys. I gave some away but
I?ve kept the ones I liked. I wind up the little hen and watch
her pecking her way along the carpet and falling over, and
then I give Teddy a hug and tell him not to be lonely, that
I still care.
You wouldn't think to look at me that all this stuff is
going on in my head. Apparently I appear very settled and
cheerful ? not at all wistful. The thing is I don't think I can
keep all this to myself much longer.
I think it may start leaking out.
It?s time for my morning cuppa. I plug in the kettle and
turn on the radio, where a woman is talking about how her
husband urinates in the bath. Then the news comes on and
I remember I?m supposed to be meeting Susan and Anne at
eleven. I wonder if I should change out of my jeans, but I
don't have time.
I haven't seen Susan in years. She?s been a nurse in
Africa. She?s been leading the kind of adventurous,
wandering life I said I was going to lead too. I really,
really, don't want to see her.
|
)
