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    The Rest of Her Life
    The Rest of Her Life
    The Rest of Her Life
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Rest of Her Life

    Written by Laura Moriarty

    Narrated by Julia Gibson

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In The Rest of Her Life, Laura Moriarty delivers a luminous, compassionate, and provocative look at how mothers and daughters with the best intentions can be blind to the harm they do to one another.

    Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy—the effects of which not only divide Leigh's family, but polarize the entire community. We see the story from Leigh's perspective, as she grapples with the hard reality of what her daughter has done and the devastating consequences her actions have on the family of another teenage girl in town, all while struggling to protect Kara in the face of rising public outcry.

    Like the best works of Jane Hamilton, Jodi Picoult, and Alice Sebold, Laura Moriarty's The Rest of Her Life is a novel of complex moral dilemma, filled with nuanced characters and a page-turning plot that makes readers ask themselves, ""What would I do?""

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 7, 2007
    ISBN9780061546365
    The Rest of Her Life
    Author

    Laura Moriarty

    Laura Moriarty is the New York Times bestselling author of The Chaperone, as well as The Rest of Her Life, While I’m Falling, The Center of Everything, and American Heart. She received her degree in social work before returning for her MA in creative writing at the University of Kansas, and she was the recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. She currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where she is a professor of creative writing at the University of Kansas. Visit her online at www.lauramoriarty.net.

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    Reviews for The Rest of Her Life

    4/5

    57 ratings39 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The beginning of the story was good but as I kept reading it ,it got slow and boring. The author wrote more about Kara's mom, Leigh, then Kara. The Churchhill family is tested when their 18 year old daughter Kara, drives through a cross walk and kills a fellow classmate, Bethany Kletcha.
    • 3/5
      Jodi Picoult fans will likely enjoy this book, with its themes of family relationships, tragedy, and the unknown of everyday life -- although Moriarity's writing is slower moving, less accomplished, and ultimately less gripping.
    • 3/5
      Interesting story about a family dealing with the tragedy of a teenager's death. Bethany was accidentally run over by 18 year old Kara. What makes this book so interesting is that it is told from the perspective of Kara's mother, Leigh.Leigh's own mother lacked empathy and Leigh struggles to have a close relationship with her own daughter, Kara. This is a story of family relationships, parenting and forgiveness.
    • 4/5
      This was a gripping and thought-provoking book about how one careless mistake changed the lives of a family forever.
    • 3/5
      A storyline similiar to the ones of Jodi Picoult, Ms. Moriarty is a relatively new author who gives us a story about how the course of one's life can change in an instance; a story about how our pasts help shape our response to the world around us; a story about how our world is what we make it. The story is engaging but, the writing drags on in parts, thus my lower rating.
    • 3/5
      I was expecting a little more substance from this book. As a parent and an educator I'm not sure the fall-out from the accident was accurate. Leigh was a little bit over the top for my taste. I wish the novel would have focused more on Kara and Justin.However, it was a good summer read and overall, I did enjoy it.
    • 2/5
      The story revolves around the deadly car accident and the profound changes that result. Kara is a beautiful, proficient, popular senior whose life is drastically altered when she accidentally runs over another student. Her mother, Leigh, has always felt left out of Kara’s life, although she does relate best with their awkward and ostracized son Justin. It’s her husband, Gary, who Kara gravitates toward for all support and companionship. We learn about Leigh’s troubled upbringing, her strained friendship with the town gossip and her loyalty toward her older but less successful sister. Leigh’s teaching and choice of books is questioned by the conservative town and her whole life seems to be crashing in. Ultimately, the crisis serves to bring positive change to most of the characters. Although the basic story is OK and the writing is fine, I just didn’t feel connected to any of the characters. I also strongly object to the relaxed attitude all the characters have about Kara’s best friend’s breast implants and their benefit as a self-esteem raiser! Because of the family issues and the moral debate I would suggest this book to Jodi Picoult lovers.
    • 2/5
      This book was okay. It was well written and the characters were well developed, but I thought it lacked something. It also ended without giving the reader full closure, something I always find frustrating. I would check out her other novels, but wouldn't read this one again.
    • 3/5
      The Center of Everything was a book I raved about, a book I pushed on to unsuspecting people, a book I adored. The Rest of Her Life is much more formulaic, more like a Jodi Picoult novel, with a sad problem revolving around human dynamics. Kara, a young girl about to graduate from high school, accidentally hits and kills a pedestrian. The book centers on Kara and her family and friends and their attempts to come to terms with what happened. The scenes with Leigh, Kara's mom, with her own mother are the most vivid. Moriarty seems to do best dealing with the poor, with single moms, with disappointed people. But somehow the ending all falls flat; though Leigh works through her relationship problems, she never seems to draw lines between the black dots in her life. It was a perfectly acceptable book of women's fiction, but it was no Center of Everything.
    • 5/5
      The angst of the mother-daughter relationship is thoroughly examined in this novel through the telling the story of a family in a time of crisis. The reader is informed at the very beginning of the story that the daughter was the driver of a vehicle that struck and killed another young girl. The mother wants to be supportive to her teenage daughter to help her through the crisis. But her daughter doesn't want to talk to her. It seems to the mother that everything she says is taken in the wrong way. The story's narrative then proceeds by delving into the mother's own childhood history, and we learn that she has managed to escape from a disadvantaged background by being everything that her own mother wasn't. She has done a very good job of fostering a supportive family environment for her own husband and children. But now in this time of crisis some the psychological scars from her childhood are coming back to haunt her in her relationship with her daughter. The book is easy to read, and the reader's interest is maintained. The story is told in first person by the mother so the reader is pulled into the story in a very personal and introspective way. Another nice thing about the book is that all members of the immediate family (father, mother, daughter and son) are nice people who are easy to identify with. They don't have all the personality problems that so many characters in novels need to have in order to make the story interesting. Even the husband of the family loves his wife, is loyal to her, and goes out of his way to be a present and good father to his children. I mention the husband in this case because it seems to me that there a too many novels who describe unfaithful or absent fathers in order to make the story interesting. Now I'll admit this story does contains some characters outside the immediate family who make the story interesting by being a bit less civilized and prudent in their behavior. But overall, this story is more of an exploration of the psychological dynamics of family relationships than a story about physical actions taken. It's a credit to the author be able to write a book about good people working through their problems, and still manage to make the story interesting to read.
    • 4/5
      Moriarty's latest novel is a brilliant study in the relationships between mothers and daughters. Leigh Churchill's relationship with her daughter Kara is a perfect example of how even the best intentions may not be good enough when it comes to loving another person. Leigh strives, with Kara, to make up for the things that her relationship with her own mother was lacking - kindness, concern, and understanding. Only in the midst of the tragedy of Kara's taking a classmate's life while driving carelessly, does Leigh begin to understand that in trying to be the perfect mother she never had, she is ultimately failing to give her own daughter the love and understanding she desperately needs. In the meantime, Diane, the mother of Kara's slain classmate, struggles to come to terms with her loss under the watchful eyes of Leigh, who often seems to feel more concern for the dead girl and her mother than for her own daughter. Diane grieves the daughter she knew and loved deeply, while Leigh mourns the daughter who stands beside her, but whose thoughts and feelings are impenetrable to her. The best part of this novel, by far, is watching as the characters begin to build bridges and come to understand each other, finding appropriate places for their confused thoughts and sympathies. While it is a struggle to read about each character’s frustrations in their efforts to connect with each other, when the walls between them finally begin to crumble, it’s a breath of fresh air. This novel deals mercilessly with the realities of relationships, but ultimately gives us cause to believe that even amidst difficulty, there is hope for those that keep on trying to know and to love each other.
    • 5/5
      Having never read anything by this author before, I was unsure of what to expect. I was hooked from the first paragraph.This book deals with the concept of Fate....how one simple action, one simple distraction, can cause an entire life, in fact many interconnected lives, to change direction in an instant.A young girl gets behind the wheel of her parents car one day with her friend, and when a series of things happen in a matter of a few minutes, before the short ride is over.....a person who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time loses her life. This is the story of a family who is devastated by tragedy, and what each person involved in the tragedy does to come to terms with that elusive thing called fate. What price does a person have to pay when in a split second, they unintentionally alter the course of so many lives, including their very own? What price do we pay for an accident that we cause, that results in a terrible outcome?A finely written, beautifully crafted, tragic story that shows how one family learned to heal. Would highly recommend.
    • 2/5
      Librarythings's "Will You Like It?" steered me wrong on this one. I really didn't like it. The mother, Leigh, wasn't a fun person to be inside of as I didn't like her personality or tone. She seemed kind of whiney and selfish. I think the author was attempting a true reality of how a family would react to a life-changing moment, and I guess she met her objective. It just wasn't enjoyable to read.
    • 4/5
      Although it is true that this book starts off with the tragedy from which the rest of the events flow, even that does not explain why, from almost the first sentence, the words seemed to be practically dripping with despair.“The Rest of Her Life” is seemingly focused on a terrible accident that takes one young girl’s life (Bethany) and forever alters that of the young girl (Kara) that hits her in a car accident …but which, at least in my humble opinion, delves far deeper into the life of Leigh Churchill, Kara’s mother.While she is trying to deal with all of the effects of the accident upon herself, her family, her emotions…we learn that Leigh is in deep denial about herself and her relationship with her daughter. Prior t the accident, she internally reflects that she is happy, that her family is happy, but that hardly seems true. There seem to be far too many unspoken frustrations between her and her husband, Gary. Gary and their son, Justin, have a very strained relationship, and it appears at times that Justin is almost afraid of his father. Leigh and Kara seem to do little more than inhabit the same house.This is a story of a seemingly perfect small town family…one mom, one dad, a son and daughter…picket fence and all. Yet that fence certainly does not surround a happy home. Gradually we find out that the reason Leigh is unaware of this is that her childhood and her relationship with her mother was barely functional to start with, and ended when her mother left her at 16.Some of Leigh’s thoughts about and reactions to her daughter seemed nearly implausible to me. She simply doesn’t know how to talk to or react to or even look at her daughter. It seems as if her detachment with Kara stemmed from either Kara being her first child, or possibly due to Kara being a girl and Leigh’s unconscious replication of her own mother’s attitude.“The sadness she was feeling, she decided, was for Kara, for the sense of having already lost her. The arrival of the college catalogs made their impending separation seem real and imminent, and Leigh had the sense that she’d run out of time without accomplishing a task she couldn’t quite name, failing them both in some important way.”But then with Justin, the universality of her motherly instincts floored me.“Watching (Justin) from the window, Leigh felt a surge of unaccountable and overwhelming love. She wished she could be invisible for a moment. She would go outside, put her hands around Justin’s waist, and without his knowing, lift him high enough so he could easily drop the ball into the hoop.”There are few people, other than Gary and Justin that Leigh has anything approaching a real relationship with. Her one friend, Eva, is kept at extreme arm’s length. Her co-workers…”I keep to myself, she had more or less told them, with every averted glance and fleeting smile, with every lunch break she spent reading at her desk or talking to Gary on her cell phone. She couldn’t say, for certain, why she had taken pains to shut them all out. It wasn’t something she had planned on or even thought about – her behavior felt instinctive, somehow linked to her very survival.”The car accident is her daughter’s. Although many of Leigh’s thoughts afterward start out with Kara, they invariably turn to her. Everything she feels and thinks is ultimately about her. At the heart of it, she only knows, trusts, has herself.“She had to lean against the counter for a moment, overwhelmed by self-loathing and sadness. She was within thirty feet she loved most in the world, and she’d never felt more alone.”In “The Rest of Her Life”, a tragedy takes the life of a young girl, and forever alters another young girl, but ultimately is the most ironic type of gift to Leigh. It reveals that her emotions and relationships are on the brink of destruction, and she is able to reach a level of self-awareness and strength that allows her to pull back from the edge and choose a different path. Where she had no real life before, now she has a rest of her life, one she no longer has to live alone.“This was perhaps what it was like to mother anyone, Leigh decided, far away or close. You could only try your best, then wait to see if what you sent was needed or even wanted. If it wasn’t, then you packed a new box, and tried again.”
    • 4/5
      Laura Moriarty's latest book examines the effects a tragic accident has on the mother of a teenage girl. After her daughter Kara strikes and kills another teenager with her car, Leigh Churchill reflects on her relationships with both her mother and her daughter. Leigh's mother abandoned her when Leigh was only 16 and Leigh can't seem to connect with her daughter Kara. Leigh is ultimately shocked to discover that she shares some of the same traits as her own obviously flawed mother. While I wouldn't go as far as to say I couldn't put this book down, when I finished it I realized that even though the pivotal event occurs in the first few pages and nothing really happens after that, I felt a compelling need to keep reading.
    • 3/5
      A Jodi Piccoult wannabe. The premise was okay, and the book held my attention, but I felt that Laura Moriarty's writing ability was just shy of sweeping me into the emotional ride her characters were taking. I would, however, read her next effort. I think she has promise.
    • 3/5
      Eighteen-year-old Kara accidentally kills a classmate. The tragedy exposes problems in her fragile family. Kara's mother, Leigh, has never really connected with her daughter. Likewise, Kara's father has difficulty relating to their son. Leigh's own troubled background with a single mother practically devoid of maternal instincts explains some of her coldness. But she does love her daughter and, ironically, it takes the consequences of a tragedy for them to finally understand each other.A quiet, somber story of parent-child relationships and the power of guilt and grief.
    • 5/5
      Such an enjoyable book! I was so impressed that I looked up the author's website, wrote her a fan letter, and was very pleased to receive an answer that very day!Leigh is a wife, mother, and teacher who is dealing with a lot of personal and family issues. Coming from a very disadvantaged childhood herself, Leigh isn't quite sure of her relationships with her children who are living a much more privileged lifestyle. As the story begins, a car accident occurs with Leigh's daughter Kara at the wheel. This accident very profoundly affects everyone in the family. As the book unfolds, we can see how each person finds his or her way through the fallout from the accident. This was very compelling reading for me; I can just imagine how something like this could happen to any family and tear it apart. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I wanted to like this book. I read the whole thing, in fact, and the ending was fairly satisfying. However, I became rather frustrated with the main character, Leigh. She is difficult to understand - although one comes to understand a few things when it is recounted how her mother abandoned her when she (Leigh)was 16. However, I find it difficult to understand how her mom could in fact abandon her like that. I don't see how a parent could ever do that!
    • 4/5
      This book came to me from Harper Collins First Look program. I was really excited to receive this book because I had read Laura Moriarty's first novel, The Center of Everything, a few years ago and thought it was excellent. This story is told by Leigh Churchill, a grade school teacher in Danby, Kansas. She is married to Gary, a professor at the local college, and they have two children, Kara and Justin. Kara is 18 and about to graduate from high school. Justin is younger, pre-teenage, but I don't know if his actual age is ever mentioned. At the outset of the story, Kara hits a 16 year old girl with the Suburban she has been driving since she got her driver's license. The 16 year old, Bethany Cleese, dies instantly. Leigh comes home from the last day of school to find Gary, Kara and Justin sitting in the living room looking shell-shocked. The book progresses throughout that summer and we learn how that accident affects everyone in the family. Laura Moriarty really knows how to get inside someone's head. Although she mentions her own daughter in the acknowledgements, I'm pretty sure she has never been the mother of someone who has killed someone else. Nevertheless, her exploration of Leigh's reactions ring absolutely true. And it's not just Leigh that we come to know through this book. Kara and Justin seemed real to me too as did Leigh's best friend, Eva. This is the kind of book that makes you think "What if that happened to me? How would I react if I killed someone by accident? What would I do if my child killed someone by accident?" This book would be an interesting read for a book club because it could provoke lots of interesting discussion.
    • 4/5
      I found Leigh, the main character, difficult to sympathize with, because she's always worrying about the wrong things, and assuming everyone dislikes her. But once I read about her childhood with her own mother, it made sense. And unlike Leigh's mother, Leigh grows and changes and learns how to develop healthier relationships with the people she cares about. The author has a lot of insight into growing up raised by a narcissist. I enjoyed that that aspect wasn't the main storyline, though. If you don't know narcissists, you probably wouldn't realize why Leigh has so much trouble acting 'normally'. It's something you learn by trial and error, and you misinterpret other people's actions all the time, assume malice where there isn't any. It takes years to unlearn all of it.
    • 4/5
      This story is so Jodi Picoult-ish, so it is good, in my opinion. A young girl hits and kills a classmate during their senior year. This story tells of the impact of this on the family with flashbacks to the mother's growing up. But the story is all about the mother...her family history as well as her relationship with her husband, daughter and son and with her friends and acquaintances in the community. I do not think I am doing the book justice. It is a good read!
    • 4/5
      Reminded me of "We Need to Talk About Kevin" - a mother feels she hasn't bonded with her eldest child and feels the husband is against her and doesn't believe her feelings. The tragedy that happens to this family isn't nearly as terrible as what happens to Kevin's family. And the ending is much more clear and positive.
    • 5/5
      Unfortunately, it's hard to escape knowing at least someone who hasn't had a similar experience that forms the basis of this novel. As an audio it was gripping from the first few sentences. You can see every single facial expression and body movement---through the tone of voice Julia Gibson, the reader, expresses with the different characters. You are right there, feeling the overwhelming emotions but also the understandings of human beings trying to relate to each other under these incredible but all too common experiences.
    • 4/5
      Love family stories like this where you can see cause and effect echoing between the generations. Thought-provoking without being too difficult to read.
    • 4/5
      This is my first Laura Moriarty book - and I could not put it down. Very readable!Kara, an 18 year girl runs over another girl by accident. The story is really about the relationship of the family around this incident - specifically with her mother.Found it compelling, well written, and look forward to more by this author.
    • 5/5
      The little description on the back doesn't do the story any justice. And it doesn't really tell you what it's about. This is the story about Leigh, a mother of two, and what happens to her family when her daughter accidentally runs over another teenage girl, and killing her. Leigh and her daughter, Kara, has a tense and awkward relationship despite evidence that they used to be close and intimate. This novel goes into the relationship between the two, and Leigh's relationships with everyone else as well.This book was truly amazing in capturing the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship. Leigh's insistence on becoming a better mother than her own has caused her to lose sight of what's truly important with her own daughter. This rift between them eventually starts to heal, despite the unfortunate circumstances that have to happen in order for this to happen. Leigh's husband, Gary, is seen to be the "better" parent in the beginning, but you soon realize that even he has his faults and is blinded by his love as a father.The honesty and emotions in this novel are raw and touching. It is a story that speaks to me and makes you question yourself about our roles in life, be it as a mother, father, daughter, son, uncle, aunt, or friend. Recommended for all to read. =)
    • 4/5
      This story starts with a car accident resulting in the death of a teenage girl. The driver of the vehicle is the daughter of a women with a difficult past. The story revolves around the mother and her troubled past. I found it to be well written. It was a page-turner and while sad also enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      This was a great book. It kept me wondering all through the book and even after, what would I do, how would I react.
    • 4/5
      The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty is about Kara, who in a moment of carelessness causes an accident that changes her life and the lives of those around her, forever.I can't imagine what it would feel like to kill someone, even if by accident. The grief, to me, would be so overwhelming and to be the parent of the person that caused such pain, would be very difficult to deal with as well. Moriarty does an excellent job of portraying what such a situation would feel like. She looks at it from all angles and doesn't take sides.The scenes between Kara and her mother, Leigh are filled with tension but as flawed as Leigh is, I can relate to her on so many levels. She is like the "mom that tries too hard". Tries too hard without seeing who her daughter really is.Although I found myself crying a couple of times while reading it (and this hasn't happened in years) I did find this to be a story about hope. The hope of something better to come. The hope that one day you will be forgiven. The hope that with each day, the pain of loss will lessen a bit. Although this story has to deal with the dynamics between mother and daughter, I don't feel that you need to have children in order to appreciate what each character is going through.I've never read anything by Laura Moriarty, but she has instantly become one of my favorite authors. I thank Jennifer over at Book Club Girl for sending me the book. Jennifer also hosted an on-air radio show with Laura Moriarty. I found the discussion to be very thought provoking. The Rest of Her Life would make a wonderful book club pick and it would be interesting to see how the other members relate to each character. I highly recommend it.