Frances and Bernard
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
In the summer of 1957, two writers are immersed in their craft at an artist’s colony nestled in upstate New York when chance brings them together. Frances, a country northerner, as committed to her solitude as she is her faith, and Bernard, a gregarious Bostonian with a propensity towards mania and grand gestures, find themselves forming a friendship, and then a courtship, as they each discover a kindred spirit beneath the obvious differences between them. But, as they become inexorably entwined in each other’s lives, they struggle with the dependence of their romance and the conflict it causes with their own dreams.
Inspired by the lives of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, who formed an unlikely connection after meeting at Yaddo in the late fifties, and told in a series of intimate letters between the protagonists, Frances and Bernard is a touching and bittersweet look at what happens when love, desire, hope, faith, and friendship collide.
“Recalling 20th-century masters like Graham Greene and Walker Percy . . . Bauer is herself a distinctive stylist who can write about Simone Weil or Kierkegaard with wit and charm.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Engrossing . . . Funny, sweet and sad. A lovely surprise.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A novel of stunning subtlety, grace, and depth . . . compos[ed in] dueling letters of breathtaking wit, seduction, and heartbreak.” —Booklist, starred review
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Carlene Bauer. (2013). Frances and Bernard. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Carlene Bauer. 2013. Frances and Bernard. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Carlene Bauer, Frances and Bernard. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
MLA Citation (style guide)Carlene Bauer. Frances and Bernard. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780547858258
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B006R8PGZS
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780547858258
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780544105171
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Carlene Bauer
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Frances and Bernard
- dateAdded
- 2016-06-09T23:24:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=1044100
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Frances and Bernard
- crossRefId
- 1044100
- id
- E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97
- starRating
- 3.5
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: FrancesandBernard_9780547858258_1044100
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 1598204
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780547858258
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 1
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 2/5/2013
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/frances-and-bernard?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: FrancesandBernard_1044100
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B006R8PGZS
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 2/5/2013
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/frances-and-bernard?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: FrancesandBernard_9780547858258_1044100
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780547858258
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 2/5/2013
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/frances-and-bernard?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: Literary
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Bauer, Carlene
- bioText: Carlene Bauer is the author of the memoir Not That Kind of Girl, described as "soulful" by Walter Kirn in Elle and "approaching the greatness of Cantwell" in the New York Post. She has written for the likes of n +1, Slate, Salon, and the New York Times.
- name: Carlene Bauer
- imprint
- Mariner Books
- publishDate
- 2013-02-05T00:00:00-05:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Frances and Bernard
- fullDescription
- A “dazzling and gorgeously written” novel of art, faith, and life-changing friendship inspired by the correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell (Ann Packer).
In the summer of 1957, two writers are immersed in their craft at an artist’s colony nestled in upstate New York when chance brings them together. Frances, a country northerner, as committed to her solitude as she is her faith, and Bernard, a gregarious Bostonian with a propensity towards mania and grand gestures, find themselves forming a friendship, and then a courtship, as they each discover a kindred spirit beneath the obvious differences between them. But, as they become inexorably entwined in each other’s lives, they struggle with the dependence of their romance and the conflict it causes with their own dreams.
Inspired by the lives of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, who formed an unlikely connection after meeting at Yaddo in the late fifties, and told in a series of intimate letters between the protagonists, Frances and Bernard is a touching and bittersweet look at what happens when love, desire, hope, faith, and friendship collide.
“Recalling 20th-century masters like Graham Greene and Walker Percy . . . Bauer is herself a distinctive stylist who can write about Simone Weil or Kierkegaard with wit and charm.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Engrossing . . . Funny, sweet and sad. A lovely surprise.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A novel of stunning subtlety, grace, and depth . . . compos[ed in] dueling letters of breathtaking wit, seduction, and heartbreak.” —Booklist, starred review - reviews
- premium: False
- source: New York Times Book Review
- content:
"A story of conversion, shattered love and the loss of faith, recalling 20th century masters like Graham Greene and Walker Percy...Frances is refreshingly down-to-earth in her spiritual convictions...Bauer gets right... the shifting balance of literary ambition and emotional need, Yeats's old choice between perfection of the life or of the work. Bauer is herself a distinctive stylist who can write about Simone Weil or Kierkegaard with wit and charm. A fresh voice thinking seriously about...
- premium: False
- source: Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys and Any Bitter Thing
- content: I had ten pages left as the bus pulled into my home station, and I wanted to murder the driver for rousting me from my seat. Instead of heading home, I stood in the parking lot and finished the book right then and there. I did not merely love Frances and Bernard; I worried myself sick over them. And the prose! So delectable you could eat it for dessert."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
September 3, 2012
Frances and Bernard are writers. She’s a novelist who studied at Iowa, Catholic, a bit prim, but tart-tongued. He’s a poet, descended from Puritans but a convert to Catholicism, prone to fits of mania. They meet in the late 1950s in a writer’s colony and become friends. If this sounds like Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, it should: Frances and Bernard are their fictionalized avatars, with Frances the more fictional, since she’s neither Southern nor suffering from an incurable disease. Short but satisfying, this epistolary novel covers roughly nine years, as Frances and Bernard grow closer, at first through letters, then visits, always fending off questions from themselves and others about whether they could be more than friends. If Bauer makes things better for O’Connor than they were in actuality, she does it without cheating on her characters, who, whatever their real life inspirations, are fictional and obligated only to work in that form. Bauer’s debut novel (after her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl) is well written, engrossing, and succeeds in making Frances and Bernard’s shared interest in religion believable and their relationship funny, sweet, and sad. A lovely surprise. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
July 1, 2013
Bauer's ("Not That Kind of Girl") latest imagines the relationship writers Robert Lowell and Flannery O'Connor might have had. Frances and Bernard meet one summer at a writers' colony and start an alliance of the mind, growing closer as they write letters over several years in which they discuss their writing, their faith, and the jobs each takes to provide food and shelter. Epistolary works can be difficult to imbue with emotion owing, in part, to the lack of dialog. The narrators, Angela Brazil and Stephen R. Throne, do a wonderful job; Brazil is especially skilled at conveying the emotional depth in Frances' letters. VERDICT Recommend to listeners who enjoy works of a meditative nature, or who like works such as Jonathan and Tad Richards's "Nick and Jake". ["This remarkable method of storytelling provides snapshots of the events that shape the story. This book will appeal to readers who enjoy plumbing the depths of the human condition," read the review of the Houghton Harcourt hc, "LJ" 9/1/12.--Ed.]--Suanne B. Roush, Seminole, FL Copyright 013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- popularity
- 34
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/e001f981-ba7d-4fad-b97e-4c2b81cf7b97/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- e001f981-ba7d-4fad-b97e-4c2b81cf7b97
- starRating
- 3.5
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{E001F981-BA7D-4FAD-B97E-4C2B81CF7B97}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fiction
- value: Literature
- value: Historical Fiction
- publishDateText
- 2/5/2013
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780544105171
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
- A “dazzling and gorgeously written” novel of art, faith, and life-changing friendship inspired by the correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell (Ann Packer).
In the summer of 1957, two writers are immersed in their craft at an artist’s colony nestled in upstate New York when chance brings them together. Frances, a country northerner, as committed to her solitude as she is her faith, and Bernard, a gregarious Bostonian with a propensity towards mania and grand gestures, find themselves forming a friendship, and then a courtship, as they each discover a kindred spirit beneath the obvious differences between them. But, as they become inexorably entwined in each other’s lives, they struggle with the dependence of their romance and the conflict it causes with their own dreams.
Inspired by the lives of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, who formed an unlikely connection after meeting at Yaddo... - sortTitle
- Frances and Bernard
- crossRefId
- 1044100
- publisher
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- bisacCodes
- code: FIC019000
- description: Fiction / Literary
- code: FIC041000
- description: Fiction / Biographical
- code: FIC071000
- description: Fiction / Friendship
