Lea Carpenter. (2013). Eleven Days. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Lea Carpenter. 2013. Eleven Days. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Lea Carpenter, Eleven Days. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.

Lea Carpenter. Eleven Days. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Carpenter, Lea
   • bioText:

     Lea Carpenter lives in New York with her husband and two sons. This is her first novel.
     

   • name: Lea Carpenter

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2013-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Eleven Days

fullDescription

Powerful and lean, Eleven Days is an astonishing first novel full of suspense that addresses our most basic questions about war as it tells of the love between a mother and her son. When the story opens on May 11, 2011, Sara’s son, Jason, has been missing for nine days from a Special Operations Forces mission on the same night as the Bin Laden raid. Smart, young, and bohemian, Sara had dreams of an Ivy League university for Jason that were not out of reach, followed by a job on the Hill where there were connections through his father. The events of 9/11 changed Jason’s mind and Sara accepted that, steeping herself in all things military to better understand her son’s days, while she works as a freelance editor for Washington policy makers and wonks.
Now she knows nothing more about Jason’s fate than the crowds of well-wishers and media camped out in the driveway in front of her small farmhouse in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, waiting to hear news. In a series of flashbacks we learn about Jason’s dashing absentee father, a man who said he was a writer but whose career seemed to involve being in faraway places. And through letters Jason writes home from his training and early missions, we get a picture of a strong, compassionate leader who is wise beyond his years and modest about his abilities. Those exceptional abilities will give Jason the chance to participate in a wholly different level of assignment, the most important and dangerous of his career. At the end Sara will find herself on an unexpected journey full of surprise.
This is a haunting narrative about a mother’s bond with her son; about life choices; about the military, war, and service to one’s country. Lea Carpenter, a dazzling new talent with the kind of strong and distinctive voice that comes along all too rarely, has given us a thrilling and unforgettable story. 
This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide. 

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Ron Charles, The Washington Post
   • content: "A novel of stillness and reflection...Carpenter's greatest accomplishment here may be her success at creating an Olympian warrior who seems entirely human, modest and decent...Carpenter's intelligence and sincerity find powerful expression in the novel's sophisticated structure...this story reminds us that each of these warriors, no matter how brave and tough and deadly, is still some woman's beloved son."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Andrew Ervin, San Francisco Chronicle
   • content: "Lea Carpenter's debut novel, Eleven Days, tells a story that is at once timeless and also grounded in the very real vicissitudes brought about by current events...The level of realism here is superb, and Carpenter does a masterful job...She has written a tremendous novel that serves as a valuable contribution to our nation's literature about warfare."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The New Yorker
   • content: "Graceful and assured."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "Filled with characters who exist on the edge of emotion...poignant prose and an impeccably structured narrative."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Matt Gallagher, The Daily Beast
   • content: "Carpenter's incisive, graceful novel is certain to vault to the top of any list of high quality literature about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: "Eleven Days lingers on the cold inevitabilities of conflict, which makes it a highly moral anti-war novel without noisily announcing itself as such...This well-turned story packs plenty of emotion...with equal measures of intellect and heartbreak...Among the smartest of the batch of recent American war novels."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of Keeping Faith with our Values in a Dangerous World
   • content: "Eleven Days is a powerful, moving read: Jason and his Argonauts reborn as Navy Seals. But it is far more than just a compelling story; it's a window onto the new world of 21st century warfare. I would assign it in any high school or college class on international politics or national security."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Toni Morrison, author of Home
   • content: "A compelling story made memorable by the strength of its elegant prose."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
   • content: "What Denis Johnson did for the Vietnam War in Tree of Smoke, Lea Carpenter does for Iraq and Afghanistan in her superb Eleven Days. She drills deeply into the culture and lore of special operations warfare, and just as deeply into the minds of the people--the military-intellectual complex, if you will--who ultimately determine the American way of making war. But at the core of this extraordinary novel is the love of a mother for her child. That's the story of us all, and that's the story that may well break your heart."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
    • content: "Eleven Days is an extraordinary accomplishment. Written with an elegant precision, this book is at its core a story about love: between a mother and a son, a son and a father, and a special group of men for each other and the imperfect country they choose to serve. I highly recommend it."
11. • premium: False
    • source: Alexandra Styron, author of Reading My Father
    • content: "Every soldier was, once, someone's child. With this ineluctable truth at her story's core, Lea Carpenter has crafted a beautiful, and original, work of art. Eleven Days manages to be both a meditation on courage and a gripping read. Scholarly and stylish, displaying a capacious mind and even greater heart. A magnificent debut."
12. • premium: False
    • source: Doug Stanton, author of In
    • content: "Not only a dramatic, affecting and wholly original story about war from a woman's point of view but an incisive look at the experience of special operations."
13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 17, 2013
      A woman falls into the national spotlight when her Navy SEAL son goes missing during a highly classified operation in Carpenter's debut novel. Sara, an art student who landed a secretarial job in D.C, and David, a mysterious government official 30 years her senior, find themselves expecting a child during a complex love affair. Sara elects to keep the baby—naming him Jason—and becomes a single mother when David dies in the Middle East of undisclosed causes. She raises Jason with help from various "godparents", David's friends and coworkers who predispose the naturally brilliant child to the military at the youngest of ages. After the September 11th attacks, Jason's decides to attend the Naval Academy , marking the beginning of a sacrificial quest that, after nine years, he plans to end after one more mission—the mission in which he disappears. The novel profiles the first eleven days of Sara's grief journey, and is filled with characters who exist on the edge of emotion. With poignant prose and an impeccably structured narrative, Carpenter's novel is the sweet pitch before the violin screeches; the concluding state of reverence for a world we can't control and a song for the war in Afghanistan that provides comfort without reason.

14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 1, 2013
      A mother considers the fate of her son, a Navy SEAL, with equal measures of intellect and heartbreak in this debut. Carpenter introduces Sara, the lead of this assured novel, in a state of high anxiety: Her son, Jason, has been missing after a mission went awry, and though his fellow soldiers and military brass are supportive, details are scarce. With too much time to think, she considers her affair with Jason's father, a high-ranking diplomat, and her son's unlikely transformation into a top-tier warrior. Carpenter alternates between Sara's perspective and Jason's, the latter allowing her to display the depth of her research into brutal special-ops training and the curious equipoise that great soldiers possess. Indeed, the novel contains a lengthy bibliography, underscoring the story's chief flaw: Its descriptions of life in the Special Forces at times obscure Jason's character. Yet Carpenter isn't piling on factoids a la Tom Clancy, and her prose throughout is elegant and considered. When Sara's wait for news ends, the story picks up more drama and tension, but the emotional temperature ticks up only a degree or two; this is ultimately a novel about how everyone, from soldiers to diplomats to parents, semisuccessfully attempts to keep their balance amid the wild inexplicability of war. In the process, Carpenter explores the mythmaking elements of warfare, from training folklore to the dissembling that authorities reflexively engage in. In that regard, the relative coolness is an odd but welcome shift in the war novel. Stripped of either satire or extreme violence, it lingers on the cold inevitabilities of conflict, which makes it a highly moral anti-war novel without noisily announcing itself as such. Though clinical at first glance, this well-turned story packs plenty of emotion. Among the smartest of the batch of recent American war novels.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

15. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 1, 2013
      Tension builds in Carpenter's spare debut as single mother Sara awaits news of Jason, her Navy SEAL son, missing in action on a top-secret mission. Their story is reduced to very nearly its barest bones, told mainly via Jason's letters home and his and Sara's reminiscences. Carpenter succeeds in making Sara an Everymother as she tries to reckon how her bookish, poetry-loving son could choose a career path that puts him in mortal danger with every overseas tour. She eventually reasons that she had not lost a son on 9/11; she lost him later to something she could not provide at home. But it is clear that what she and Jason's deceased father each did give their sonwhose teammates nicknamed him Priestprepared him for nothing less than personal greatness, the kind of personal greatness that makes the best Navy SEAL. Subtle clues and a couple of plot twists sustain the story's tautness until its emotive climax.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

16. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      January 1, 2013
      

      A founding editor of Zoetrope and a former deputy publisher of the Paris Review, Carpenter shows off her own writing with this debut about a woman whose son has gone missing after a SEAL mission.

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

17. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from July 1, 2013
      

      Debut novelist Carpenter, a founding editor of Zoetrope and a former deputy publisher of the Paris Review, tells the story of Sara, a devoted single mother whose son Jason has gone missing after a Navy SEAL operation in early May 2011. (Tellingly, though the raid occurred at that time, bin Laden's name is never mentioned in this suspenseful novel.) Jason's enigmatic father, a supposed Washington insider and older man, disappeared from the family years ago, and so Sara must cope alone. Through her recollections, Sara reveals how Jason chose and then qualified for the arduous path of special ops warfare. Not an exercise in simplistic flag-waving, Carpenter's engrossing, rather somber novel keenly examines an elite contemporary warrior class. VERDICT A powerful first novel and inside look into the making of a Navy SEAL and a portrait of the strength and courage of both mother and son. Highly recommended.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

18. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      July 1, 2013
      

      Debut novelist Carpenter, a founding editor of Zoetrope and a former deputy publisher of the Paris Review, tells the story of Sara, a devoted single mother whose son Jason has gone missing after a Navy SEAL operation in early May 2011. (Tellingly, though the raid occurred at that time, bin Laden's name is never mentioned in this suspenseful novel.) Jason's enigmatic father, a supposed Washington insider and older man, disappeared from the family years ago, and so Sara must cope alone. Through her recollections, Sara reveals how Jason chose and then qualified for the arduous path of special ops warfare. Not an exercise in simplistic flag-waving, Carpenter's engrossing, rather somber novel keenly examines an elite contemporary warrior class. VERDICT A powerful first novel and inside look into the making of a Navy SEAL and a portrait of the strength and courage of both mother and son. Highly recommended.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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Powerful and lean, Eleven Days is an astonishing first novel full of suspense that addresses our most basic questions about war as it tells of the love between a mother and her son. When the story opens on May 11, 2011, Sara’s son, Jason, has been missing for nine days from a Special Operations Forces mission on the same night as the Bin Laden raid. Smart, young, and bohemian, Sara had dreams of an Ivy League university for Jason that were not out of reach, followed by a job on the Hill where there were connections through his father. The events of 9/11 changed Jason’s mind and Sara accepted that, steeping herself in all things military to better understand her son’s days, while she works as a freelance editor for Washington policy makers and wonks.
Now she knows nothing more about Jason’s fate than the crowds of well-wishers and media camped out in the driveway in front of her small farmhouse in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, waiting to...

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