Dreams of Rescue

This delicately written account of a lovely woman trapped in her awful marriage, is one of the best i've read in years. I found it a subtle satire on the movie business of Fem Jep (female in jeopardy) as well... My book club found it, and it has been a stimulating choice!

I'm a big Laura fan --Laura the original movie and this Laura, the author of so many divergent works. Here, my favorite author displays her haunting side, with the same intensity & dazzling prose that marks her other "greatest hits." Don't miss this saga of the troubled actress and her mysterious marriage. Kept me up two nights in a row!

While Juliana, the actress who narrates this gripping story, has become accustomed to playing fightened women in movies, it is another matter entirely when she must divorce her childhood sweetheart.A sophistocated examination of the differences between the artifice of film and the lucid truth of a woman's situation when she becomes afraid of her husband. An atmospheric jewel of a novel, crystalline prose. I found DREAMS OF RESCUE intriguing enough to seek out the author's other works, which are very varied --from plays to memoir, the classic Sleeping Arrangements, to another fiction treasure, Beautiful Bodies. Impressed at her range, I'm a new Cunningham fan, and applaud her diversity and courage in taking on the unspoken disaster that many "respectable" wives face alone. The romantic, Victorian setting and history are put to excellent, literary effect. I was transfixed. My book club chose this and it led to our most passionate discussion.

Kept me on my toes as the heroine goes from playing an endangered heroine to being one in "real life." Differences between "reel" and "real" make this an in depth character study. the heartache at the core is every disillusioned bride's story -- how love is lost, but the suspense is hair tingly and the depiction of small town life right up there with the author's "A Place in the Country." It did remind me of Hitchock movies; really a thrilling, serious read.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of this book, and disappeared into it like someone in a trance. Julianna Durrell is an actress best known for her victim roles in the TV subgenre known as FemJep (insider slang for "female in jeopardy.") As the book opens, Julianna is spending the winter in her summer home, with her marriage literally on ice after a violent encounter with her husband. With an order of protection that barely protects, she is thrust into the unfamiliar world of a gritty off-season resort whose small-town courtrooms barely resemble the TV version she knows so well. This is a smart literary thriller that both satisfies and reimagines the conventions of its genre. Cunningham writes like an angel -- her frozen landscapes are unforgettable.