FORGIVE ME
From the beloved author of How to Be Lost, the story of a free-spirited woman learning how to be a mother.
"I traveled to South Africa as I was finishing the first draft of the book, and that trip changed everything. I spent a few nights in a township outside Cape Town, and I really didn’t feel safe. I had a new baby at home, and for the first time, I thought: I can't do this anymore. I heard my son telling his future therapist, 'My mom went to the slums of South Africa when I was a baby,' and I lay awake thinking, 'Can I be a good mom and travel? Can I look at the dark side of life and still create a safe world for my son?' It was a long night with lots of dogs barking outside and this tinny music coming from the bar nearby, and by morning the book had changed and so had I."
— Amanda on Forgive Me
REVIEWS
Feature article in the Austin American Statesman, and the Dallas Morning News. Excerpts can be read in the Austin Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News.
”Inspired by the true story of Amy Biehl, an American Fulbright scholar who was, while in South Africa, viciously stoned to death while she drove her student home from class, "Forgive Me," the latest from author Amanda Eyre Ward ("How to Be Lost," "Sleep Toward Heaven"), is taut, powerful and deeply melancholy, a message of memory and responsibility. Ward's prose is elegant and dramatic without beating you over your head with sentimentality-this is a story, it seems, she needed to tell. Nadine Morgan, a world-traveling journalist, hasn't returned to South Africa since she suffered great loss, until she hears of Jason Irving, a young American student who was beaten to death (this all occurs during the height of apartheid). The boy's parents, years later, are devastated to find that their son's killers have now applied for amnesty. The three venture to a land of chaos and tortured remembrance. Ward's book, lovely and exhausting, should be devoured.”
— Tom Lynch, NewCity Chicago
“With her characteristically clipped prose, Ward dramatically conveys Nadine's hardened character..."Forgive Me" meditates on many complex issues surrounding race and globalization.”
— Michelle Quint, San Francisco Chronicle
“Emotional distance and the price it extracts drive the thoughtful and compulsively readable "Forgive Me." Amanda Eyre Ward chronicles one woman's tenuous journey along a road of self-forgiveness to salvation, taking the reader along an unpredictable path. Ward's prose is clean, and the story moves efficiently forward, with enough detail and dialogue to make her points without unnecessary fluff. The resulting novel is a quick and impacting read. The characters and situations are resonantly drawn, so much so that this is a novel that is over much too soon.”
— Robin Vidimos, The Denver Post; Editor's choice
“Amanda Eyre Ward writes novels that are intellectually, emotionally and morally satisfying. She tackles tough subjects, such as the death penalty, child abduction and, in this latest novel, apartheid, and brings the complexities of these issues to the surface through the eyes of her often ambivalent characters . . . The novel starts slowly, but ultimately readers will find this book compelling and deeply satisfying in a way that is uncommon in contemporary fiction.”
— Pat Macenulty, Charlotte Observer
“In Amanda Ward’s cinematic third novel, Forgive Me, the Austin writer beautifully spans the physical and social divide between Cape Town, in the waning days of apartheid, and Cape Cod, where journalist Nadine Morgan wrestles with the all-consuming ambition that finds her both single and childless but desperately wanting to return as a reporter to South Africa. The tale jumps through time and distance: Flash back to Nadine on assignment in Cape Town, where her lover, Maxim, is killed while photographing a gun battle and an American teacher, Jason Irving, is murdered by a youth mob that includes fifteen-year-old Evelina Malefane. Flash forward to Nadine fleeing Nantucket (and her best chance at settling down) in the hopes of interviewing Jason's parents at Evelina's amnesty hearing before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Ward avoids glib answers, preferring to question the differences between perpetrators and victims-and ask who deserves to be forgiven.”
— Texas Monthly
“Upon finishing Ward's tantalizingly spare yet precisely powerful novel, readers will want to start all over again, looking for the clues they missed the first time around when Ward, like a cunning magician, so deftly led them astray. So adroit is Ward at throwing readers off the track throughout this piercing tale of one emotionally wounded woman's attempt to reconcile the gut-wrenching decisions she makes in the name of professionalism with the heartbreaking choices she faces in her personal life, that its sinewy, often mysterious, subplot doesn't reveal itself until almost the very end. An aggressive foreign correspondent driven by her need to repudiate her provincial New England background through her headstrong pursuit of stories set in the world's most perilous locations, Nadine follows a local couple to post-apartheid South Africa, the site of their greatest tragedy and her greatest love. She is fleeing a new relationship, running headlong into her past, while they are about to face their son's killer, a young black girl who is begging for their mercy. Mercy is hard to come by in Ward's world, but when it is, finally, granted, its deliverance is sweet and sure.”
— Booklist, starred review
“Amanda Eyre Ward tells a compelling story in Forgive Me--full of hard truths, and no easy answers. This is a book readers will fly through--but also one that will linger and haunt.”
— Dani Shapiro, author of Family History
“As rendered through Amanda Eyre Ward’s impeccable prose, two stories, past and present, join to create an engrossing, mature, devastating work about motherhood and remembrance. Forgive Me is an exceptional novel, infused with a deep emotional intelligence.”