This book left me confused and baffled at times, but kept drawing me in. Though I did find it easy to leave and come back too, it's worth finishing.

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is unlike any other book I’ve ever read, and that’s a good thing. It opens up with some press releases about Joan Ashby. Her comeback as an author and about her previous works. I had to double check that this was indeed fiction, because it started out feeling a lot like non-fiction.

This is not a light read, this is a book you dive into. You become fast friends with Joan Ashby, you feel like you are a part of her life. The writing is wonderful and the character development so good, you want to take your time. Enjoy every bit of it.

Joan Ashby is a writer. She has no desire for children. She makes this quite clear to her husband Martin. He agrees that it will just be them two. So, when she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she is shocked at his delight and happiness. It feels like betrayal to her.

She puts aside her writing, just as she feared she would and proceeds to have two boys. Two boys, different as night and day. Her life becomes no longer her life, but her husband’s and her boys.

She finds time to secretly begin writing again. Things are looking like maybe they will turn out as she planned after all, until she is utterly betrayed.

This is such a wonderful book. The kind that leaves you almost exhausted at the end because you feel like you have given to it as much as it as given to you.

I received an ARC of this book.

A brilliant, epic, wonerful novel not to be missed. Totally believable characters, motherhood, sibling rivalry, genius, love, writing, creativity, betrayal and starting over. A truely heartfelt book, Just great!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/art-matters-when-books-can-save-your-life_us_59a95ba2e4b0d0c16bb52451

✪ The rapturous advance praise for Cherise Wolas’ assured meta debut, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, doesn’t do it justice. This ambitious first novel introduces us to an elusive artist with a stratospheric cult following—only to unravel her life, as the blessings of divine inspiration battle the curse of earthly love. Lawyer and film producer Wolas has forged an audacious balancing act whose betrayals come from the least expected corners, submerging readers in a dazzling universe we hate to leave.

This book was unlike anything I've read before! I loved reading it....sometimes. Other times, I got a little impatient as it seemed to drag on. I picked it up because I saw a review that said something like "this book does for motherhood what Gone Girl did for marriage." Well, Joan Ashby definitely explores motherhood in ways that other books don't, maybe because they are afraid to. But I wouldn't ever repeat that Gone Girl line to anyone as a reason to read the book. Aside from the fact that Joan Ashby is not a thriller even a little bit, it's also a much more sensitive, subtle, and well-rounded character study. I would recommend this to literary and domestic fiction fans who love a strong female character, are committed and patient readers, and are interested in the lives of artists.

Joan Ashby is a wildly successful young author, a sort of wunderkind with 2 super well-received fiction collections under her belt and enormous literary promise. Her fiance is a doctor and also ambitious. They decide they will not have children and will focus on their careers when they marry, but then presto, Joan gets pregnant right after the wedding. One child becomes two (this seems to be a foregone conclusion for some reason), and Joan's dreams of living a life committed to writing are pretty much dashed.

It's the "why" the dreams are dashed that is explored in such an amazing and nuanced way that make this book special. Joan's not just too busy to write. And it isn't that she's unhappy, at least with the first child. She falls in love with Daniel right away. Then the second child, Eric, comes along, and her relationship with this child is a whole different animal. Eric won't be parented, and there's something un-connect-able about him from the beginning. The reason for this quality leads him to completely colonize Joan's life in his early teenagehood (and no, don't worry, he is not a psychopath!).

This review is already pretty long and I've really only described the first quarter of the book! I loved the author's refreshing take on biological motherhood, the concept that it isn't all joy, and a child can come out a perfect stranger to its parents despite being their own flesh and blood. The entire lengthy book explores Joan's relationships with her boys, and her husband, and explores the winding road she takes to come to terms with her decisions. This includes grappling with regret and sorrow around how her denial of her own destiny as a writer perhaps destroys her relationship with her beloved oldest child, but allows her relationship with her estranged, damaged younger boy to blossom unexpectedly in his adulthood, as she finally "resurrects" herself halfway across the globe. Gorgeously written, if a bit long.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2087873620

I loved the idea of this novel and I was super excited to receive access to the e-galley. The first parts were great but after Joan has her second child it became too bogged down for me. The writing is incredible and I enjoyed reading the parts that were "Joan's work" but there wasn't enough movement in the plot for me. Even though I completely sympathize with Joan about not wanting a family and feeling torn between what you want for yourself and what you must give up for your kids I was a bit annoyed because she is much luckier than most. She has a full time nanny a supportive husband and an independent income; I felt like I couldn't really feel too bad for her if I'm being completely honest. This novel could have easily been at least 200 pages shorter. I really wanted to like this book much more than I did. The writing was incredible and I will definitely keep an eye out for more from this author

This book was far, far too long and meandering. I think the author thought all the asides with examples of the writing of the protagonist, an essayist and novelist, and that writing's themes of isolation, familial dissolution, and satisfaction and fulfilment in artistic creation would be very clever, since those are also the themes of the main plot. But these asides became very obvious and repetitive, and eventually only served to draw out the story to interminable lengths—if Joan Ashby were a real novelist, I'd stop reading her work pretty quickly.

Wow. I'm not even sure where to start except to say I wept at the end of this book; not because it is sad but because it is so incredibly beautiful. For a debut novel, it has the loveliest prose and encompasses so much about motherhood, human nature, marriage, deceit, and loyalty (to name just a few). It is a little (emphasis on "little") like Eat, Pray, Love but on a much grander scale and on literary steroids! Reading about Joan Ashby's writing career, her marriage, her reluctant motherhood, her betrayals, and her final reinvention of herself was a catharsis of the very best kind. This is a book that bears rereading (and I never do that) and should take the world by storm when it is released. It certainly deserves more than 5 stars!

4.5 stars, rounded up

I’m having a hard time writing this review because I know that nothing I say will be able to do justice to how great this book truly is. I don’t feel it’s an exaggeration to say that this book was a “masterpiece,” a uniquely exquisite work that I am overjoyed to have been given the opportunity to experience and savor. From the very first chapter, up until the very end, and even now, having finished the book, one thought that has consistently entered my mind is the fact that this is Cherise Wolas’ debut novel. I am absolutely blown away by how much this book does NOT read like a first novel by an inexperienced writer, as the writing was very polished and engaging, the prose was beautifully rendered, the story was extremely well-written, the characters were well-developed and very very realistic. I also loved the stories within the story – the excerpts from the main character Joan Ashby’s short story collections and novels, all of them so different and unique. I can’t help but wonder whether, like her character Joan, perhaps Wolas also started writing at a young age, continually perfecting her craft over the years, leading to this spectacular debut novel that reads nothing like a debut. Whatever the case, one thing’s for sure – Wolas is an immensely talented writer!

Plot-wise, I don’t want to give away too much, though to be honest there really isn’t a whole lot to give away in the first place, since there isn’t really much “action” that takes place given that this is primarily a character-drive story. The main character Joan Ashby is an extraordinarily talented writer, a voracious reader, magnificent storyteller since youth who, in her early twenties, becomes a literary sensation after publishing 2 short story collections that instantly hit bestseller lists and rake up various awards. Having led a solitary life up to that point, Joan unexpectedly falls in love with Martin Manning, an eye doctor who later becomes famous in his own right, and Joan agrees to marry him under the condition that they enter a pact never to have children. However, things don’t go according to plan and not long into their marriage, at the height of her fame as a writer, Joan finds out that she is pregnant – when she sees how happy her husband is at the prospect of becoming a father, Joan makes a decision that alters the course of her life forever: she decides to give up her successful career and dedicate herself to becoming a full-time mother. She eventually raises 2 sons, Daniel and Eric, and it is not until decades later, when both her sons are grown, that she gets the chance to reignite her career, but then a devastating betrayal shatters her hopes and dreams, causing her to rethink all the past choices she made. Even though the story is told from the third person point of view, we get to know Joan Ashby intimately, as we are given the chance to dive deep into her mind as a writer and as a mother, get to understand her innermost thoughts, the motivations behind her actions as she contemplates certain decisions she has to make, etc. We also witness her inner struggle with keeping the “writer” part of herself alive while still devoting herself to a family she did not want but decides to embrace wholeheartedly.

With Joan Ashby, Wolas created a character so vividly real and complex that I truly felt like I was reading a memoir of a real-life writer rather than a fictional story. In fact, I was so invested in Joan’s life and journey that, by the time I got to the end of the book, I was a bit saddened at having to say goodbye, as despite her many flaws, I had grown to like Joan and wanted to continue the journey with her -- it was as though a close writer friend I had grown up with suddenly decided to move away, taking with her the fascinating, unfinished stories that she never got the chance to finish telling me. I wanted to continue reading those stories she had written, to read them in their entirety, to get to know the characters more intimately, to know how the stories end – I especially loved the story about Paloma Rosen and to be honest, I felt a little disappointed that I didn’t get to read the rest of that story.

Speaking of the excerpts of Joan Ashby’s stories, that brings me to the one “complaint” of sorts that I had with this book – minor in the scheme of things for sure, but it still made me struggle with the rating, ultimately settling with 4.5 stars rather than 5. I obviously loved the “stories within the main story” written by the main character Joan, however the part that I didn’t really like was how the stories interrupted Joan’s life story itself. It was a little distracting to me to be reading about Joan’s life for a good number of pages, then all of a sudden there is a long excerpt (at times several pages worth) from one of the stories she wrote, then it picks back up again with her life story. Perhaps because I was so engaged in Joan’s own story that I wanted to know what happened next with her and her family without having to be sidetracked by different stories – especially with those stories having such great merit on their own. Maybe having a more structured format with those stories (technically excerpts of the stories) at the beginning or end of the chapters would have been better so that the flow of the main story would’ve felt less interrupted? I guess it also didn’t help that I was reading an ARC version of the book and for some reason, there was no physical differentiation between the main story and Joan’s stories until the last third of the book or so when Joan’s stories were italicized so I knew where they started and ended. Regardless of this minor issue with the book’s format though, I still loved the stories as I said earlier and felt that they really gave me insight into Wolas’ range as a writer (since Joan is a fictional character so Wolas technically wrote those stories) – they were indeed fascinating stories, way different from the tone of the book itself in some places!

I don’t usually round up when I rate books but I made an exception in this case because to be honest, this book was well-deserving of 5 stars! This was a gem of a book, one that I highly recommend and am actually contemplating buying a physical copy myself once it publishes on August 29th. Oh and if Ms. Wolas ever decides to publish Joan’s collection of stories and/or novels in their entirety someday, I will absolutely be one of the first in line to buy them (especially the Paloma Rosen one, which I desperately want to read)!

Received advance reader copy from Flatiron Books via NetGalley

For me, this book was sort of the road not taken. Like Joan, I never wanted children. Joan, a prodigy writer gets married and after making her husband promise they would never have children, she finds herself pregnant. And decides to keep the baby to make her husband happy.

The writing here is delicious, language to be savored and mulled over. It's an interesting style in that Joan's works are interspersed throughout the novel. In the beginning, I liked this technique because it showed Joan's style and you could appreciate her talent. But as I got more invested in Joan’s story, it started to irritate me. I saw the stories as detours away from Joan's life. And thus the roller coaster ride began. I loved the story about Joan and savored those parts, underlining away. Then I would get to one of her stories and start to skim. Others may feel differently and be able to appreciate the two halves to the book. For me, editing out some of Joan’s stories would have made for a much more concise, better flowing book.

This is a book about betrayal and forgiveness, about the ability to move on. It's also a book about parenting and how much to subjugate your own life to the process of raising children, especially when those kids are gifted. I found the conflicts between Martin and Joan concerning parenting differences especially apt.

I struggled with Daniel. I could sympathize with him in one sense, feeling like the only ungifted member of his family. But otherwise...no. So, at the end, I'm torn on how to rate this. I loved it, it bored me. It really needed a better editor to get a five star rating. As it is, I'm going with 3.5 stars, rounding up for the incredible language.

My thanks to netgalley and Flatiron Books for an advance copy of this book.

What a gem of a book this was! I loved Joan's use of "words" that she uses to describe what is happening around her. I loved how the characters were so well developed throughout the story. This was a wonderfully written debut novel! I am going to look forward to more books by Ms Wolas.

My thanks to netgalley and Flatiron books for this advanced readers copy.

When I was nine years old my best friend asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be an author. In a few years, I was writing stories and then poetry. I tried to get published for a while, then didn't try but kept writing. Then the poems dried up.

What happened? Life. Marriage, jobs because we needed money, a child.

"If I told you the whole story it would never end...What's happened to me has happened to a thousand woman."--Ferderico Garcia Lorca, Dona Rosita la Soltera: The Language of Flowers
This quote appears at the beginning of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, along with a quote from Olive Schreiner advising "live for that one thing" which is your aim in life. I recognized the story. I am one of the thousands who did not 'live for one thing.' But I do not regret my decision to put love first.

Joan Ashby, the heroine of Cherise Wolas' novel, was sidetracked away from her 'one thing,' that which she was born to be, which she had single-mindedly worked for and achieved before she allowed her life to be claimed by others and their needs.

This is the story of how Joan allowed love to determine who she was, and how love betrayed her, and the journey that brought her back to herself.

Within pages, I was mesmerized by Wolas' writing. The beginning of the novel recalled to mind an old movie, like Citizen Kane, with clips of news stories giving one an idea of the person they are going to explore. The novel begins with an article in Literature Magazine entitled "(Re)Introducing Joan Ashby" in which we learn that Joan was a prize-winning writer in her early twenties, a genius, but that it has been three decades since she last published. Next, we read several of Ashby's stories and excerpts from an interview with Joan.

"Love was more than simply inconvenient; it's consumptive nature always a threat to serious women." Joan Ashby
When Joan meets Martin Manning she tells him right away that her writing will always come first and that she has no need to be a mother. Martin is smitten and appears to support her wholeheartedly. But when two months after their marriage Joan finds she is pregnant, Martin tells her, "I've never been so happy."

Martin makes her happy. Does Joan grant him this baby, which obviously will lead to another child? Or should she hold fast to her commitment and dedication to her art, have an abortion, even if it means losing her newly wed husband?

The decisions Joan makes over the next thirty years put her husband and children's needs before her own artistic life. She does love them, but they take everything she has and offer back little.

She feels a kinship with quiet Daniel and his love of books and story telling, but who opts for an unsuitable career. Eric is brilliant, testing the limits, achieving early success which he cannot handle. She is drained by their need, while longing to return to the one thing she wanted and needed above all else: the solitude of the creative life.

After a horrible betrayal, Joan packs up and leaves her life behind to find out who she is and what it is she wants. In India, practicing yoga, Joan contemplates her marriage and her children, and the role of motherhood in all its manifestations, slowly growing into an understanding of how she wants to spend the rest of her life. The 500+ page book, for me, slows in this last third as Joan goes on an internal journey, including sections of the novel she is writing.

Joan's passivity and inability to carve out what she needed is a great part of her failed life. She is not completely a likable character when she accuses her husband of selfishness, for she did not stand up for herself and give him a chance to accommodate her needs. Their lack of communication indicates a flawed marriage. And Joan's need for secrecy about her writing life, novels and stories written in hours when she was alone, ends up harmful.

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is an outstanding debut. I adored the nontraditional story telling which incorporated Joan's stories. The theme of the female artist's struggle to combine love and work will appeal to many women. I will be thinking about this book for a long time, and expect I will return to read portions as I grapple with my understanding of Joan.

I thank the publisher for a free ARC and ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby combined two things I love, which made it a unique reading experience for me. She delved into a serious & relevant issue as most women struggle with identity questions once they become a mother, but she also gave us some darkly beautiful & transportive stories within the story. Each woman's journey is unique and extremely personal but we can all find a commonality with Ashby, I believe.



I even found myself completely engrossed with the stories within the story, and that is a rarity.

This was extremely disappointing. The first part of the book was so good. The writing was beautiful and I believed that we would have this amazing female character who was strong and smart and difficult and wonderful. Instead she became a spoiled, whiny, and over privileged woman doing the exact same thing that so many other female characters in literature do. Joan simply complains about how unfulfilled she is while taking an extended trip to India to rediscover herself. What could have been a modern day A Room of Ones Own, ended up Eat, Pray, Love for literary sect.

What if she could travel across the sky for the rest of her days, never landing, too far up to be touched by what has transpired in her life, set up perfectly in her little corner of space, with her face pressed up against the window?

Mothers are creators in their own right, birthing children, supplying a nurturing environment. Some women want to create something other. What does it mean for a writer, the possibility of having children and a husband to tend to, life tackling from every direction and sucking dry every free moment? To be a mother is to sacrifice freedom sometimes vital in the blossoming of one’s work. So it is with Joan Ashby, hot on the heels of success, an unexpected and unwelcome pregnancy forces upon her the struggle- does she extinguish this unborn life or does she embrace her pregnancy. The choice she makes alters the course of her career, her entire universe. Just how much can a woman be diluted? Joan boxes up her glorious words to raise her family with no idea how her hidden writer’s life will set the stage for family betrayal.

Exploring the burden of genius there is also the envy, the insecurities birthed of those living in the shadow of a sibling’s gifted ease. Intelligence, for someone knowing only what they lack, can look like enchantment. The horror of being witness to endless possibility, wealth- a magical life that you can never attain, and try as you might through sweat, blood and tears- there is a ‘ceiling’ you will never surpass, while around you others are shooting stars. For Daniel, in this nest of brilliance he is a naked bird, winged but without flight. What happens when the one thing that was yours was only illusion? Who do you blame? Your mother, of course.

Just when Joan is ready to have a second life of sorts, to make a great return with her literary genius, it is stolen from her. Though her children are grown, it’s not going to be an easy transition from motherhood to writer. Each of her son’s are collapsing, even when they are making grand strides. Joan’s stories are sprinkled throughout the entire novel, at times it’s wonderful but it does make for a much longer read. What hits home is how much is put upon Joan, how her husband isn’t quite as involved as he comes and goes, spreading his brilliance the world over and here she is, left carrying the children on her shoulders, watching the danger slowly making it’s way to her youngest- somehow a woman always the one left to clean the messes, buzzing with all that talent inside her mind but stuck helping others realize their future. It’s an old story, a woman full of promise, about to show the world just what she is made of, gets pregnant and to the back of a dark closet goes her dreams. What happens when one of her children pokes and prods her past? Joan destroys without even knowing it- how could she know? Why is it so poisonous for a mother to have an identity?

As much as I enjoyed Joan, I actually felt more for her damaged son Daniel, nurtured on her breast with stories but also the beginning of a stopping point in her own writing. Daniel, who takes everything he learns about his mother and has to chose between jealousy and ruin, or inspiration and creation. I could spend hours talking about this novel, and it’s certainly one for serious readers. Let’s not leave Eric, the youngest son, out. Eric has a brain that is boundless but timing, maturity, and the heart- all things that must be accounted for, are brushed away to his detriment. Eric seems to reject his mother as soon as he is born, and Daniel seems so much a part of her. Who could predict the turn of events? I just keep thinking ‘Want to hear God laugh?’ ‘Make a plan.’ If you’re not religious, ‘Want to hear the universe laugh…’ well you know.

Some people may got lost in the stories within, find them a distraction. For the majority of Ashby’s work, I felt the tales within lent much to Daniel and his dissection of his mother. Sometimes it was too much, and I am a lover of wordy, lengthy literature. Wolas is one to watch, because I had moments of euphoria, if it were edible I’d be in a food coma. However, there were moments too I felt some of the book could be extracted and it would still be beautiful.

Would that we could watch our life, remain untouched by all the accidents (happy and otherwise)- we cannot, not mothers anyway. We carry the blame, even if your home is full of progressive thinking, the world isn’t- not really. Somehow when children fall apart, the world looks to the mother. If you can’t handle lengthy books, it may not be for you but it explores more than just motherhood and I think anyone can enjoy it. I’m interested in what Cherise Wolas write next, because she is a hell of a writer. In fact, I felt some of Ashby’s stories would make novels I would devour. Yes, pick this one up!

Publication Date: August 29, 2017

Flatiron Books

Mesmerizing? Enchanting? Masterpiece? Extraordinary? I am not certain of all the adjectives that I would use to describe this incredible novel. Like a "wheel within a wheel" there is so much to be found within the pages that it is hard to begin.

Most importantly, it is the story of a woman, Joan Ashby who has her brilliance subsumed by the years of being a wife and mother. Despite her earlier astounding success as an author, Joan becomes the victim of "theft" on so many levels. Her genius is ignored, her promise is strangled, her life becomes ordinary.

Yet, she is punished for all she has sacrificed. Her brilliant husband becomes a world famous surgeon, her sons have unlikely issues and she is faced with the ultimate perfidy of her much beloved older son.

I felt as if I had read several books, stories within stories, segments of Joan's life. This book has a richness and an originality that is rare to find. I honestly could not put it down (it is not a short book) and I yearn for people to discuss it with. I especially enjoyed the last segment, her unlikely resurrection, and the beauty of hope for that which she has lost or been denied.

The reader is granted the chance to read the stories, within the stories, those that brought her fame and those that brought her hope. This is a unique experience, not to be missed.

Alert to all book clubs, put this on your fall reading list and make sure to leave ample time for the deep discussion this book deserves.

I tried to like Joan Ashby , her family and friends, but this novel just didn't work for me. I have to admit that I skimmed a great deal of it, because I quickly lost interest. It went on way too long and after a while, I just didn't care.