My Only Story

by Monica Wood

Book Overview

An unconventional love story frames this graceful, funny, and moving novel by a writer of exceptional talent. Rita, a hair stylist in her 20s attuned to the suffering of others and the ways that she can help, meets John Reed who, she observes, though not yet out of his thirties, "...seemed old, the way all sad people do." As they come to know, trust, and eventually love one another, John tells Rita "his only story," the one story that each of us tells...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811827143
• ISBN13: 9780811827140
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Oprah: Here's Your Next Book Club Selection!

It's time for Monica Wood to become a star. My Only Story is a beautiful tale of compassion, generosity and hope like no other story that has been told. The plot opens with Rita, a small town hair dresser, who dreams of an injured dog. This dream takes the form of John, a deeply wounded man struggling to connect with his life, the man that Rita believes she is meant to heal. We soon become enamored with Rita, and as she hopes to direct John's grief into happiness, we learn of Rita's own troubles and her steadfast optimism through all she encounters.What I loved about this book was the decency of it and its characters. The people are real. They love, they fear, they hope. It's a story free of flash and drama - a real story, an honest story. It is one you will not want to put down and one that you will want everyone to read. Note to Monica: Please don't keep us waiting. You are one of the best kept secrets of the literary world.

love and redemptive forgiving prevail in compassionate novel

Monica Wood's stirring "My Only Story" is an elegant, convincing and captivating novel which focuses on the well-intentioned choices regular people make in their quest for family and love. Wood's storytelling talents are so fine and evocative that her powerful treatment of the themes of hope, possibility, obligation and family tends to be submerged. A novel which promises both real insight into the human heart and provokes the reader to introspection and empathy is a work to be cherished. "My Only Story" maintains pace and believability throughout its wrenching narrative.The author deftly and lovingly introduces a series of characters whose lonely lives reflect fractured families and frustrated dreams. The protagonist, clairvoyant hairdresser Rita Rosario, struggles with her past, one which includes a family at odds with itself and a fruitless, failed marriage which leaves Rita yearning for completion. Living in the distressingly recognizable small town of Ashton, Massachusetts, suffering its own loss of identity through its capitulation to late twentieth-century corporate America, Rita refuses to relinquish her sense of what her community ought be. This steadfast adherence to principle leads to a chance encounter with John Reed, himself a broken, desolate middle-aged man whose life simply has floundered as a consequence of his brother's suicide after having murdered his wife.The ensuing promising romance between Rita and John inspires both hope and possibility. Readers will discover a deep empathy for John and Rita as they grapple with the intractable chains of duty and responsibility, John with his adorable niece, Aileen, Rita with her fiery, conflicted and bereft sister, Darla. Wood's treatments of Aileen -- smothered by a frightening, controlling love of her mother's sisters' families -- and Darla -- beautiful, rebellious and cult-bound -- are remarkable as is her depiction of Beth, another "sister" whose role develops with extraordinary irony, pride and forgiveness."My Only Story" is not simple. The author's deep respect for common people and her commitment to an honest exploration of the texture of love and family, hope and resignation, joy and duty are hallmarks of his important novel. Readers will treasure the depth of humanity permeating this honorable work.

Bravo!

Bravo! What a wonderful fiction! MY ONLY STORY reads with smooth, long lines punctuated with giggles of inspiration, sweet humor, deeply felt wisdoms, and a charming, easy harmony that made me feel as though I was part of a larger picture that's reading in chorus with people I've known the better part of my life. Get this book; you'll rediscover the meaning of compassion.

My Only Story is a Gem

"Either people shrink with age, or short people live longer," I heard myself say the other day. Where had I heard that? Then I remembered: from Rita Rosario. The main character in Monica Wood's newest novel, Rita is a hairdresser who collects various people's hair snippets, and stores them in a glass jar, creating "a mix of love and betrayals and partings and death." This could also be said of My Only Story -- it's a mixture of love and partings and betrayals, but it is also a romance, a mystery, and a novel about coming to terms with past, making peace with the present, and forgiving and staying connected to the people. And it's a book about Rita, whom I cannot get out of my head. That's the problem with Wood's characters; I couldn't ditch Faith and Connie-- from Wood's other novel, Secret Language-either. Rita's a hairdresser; her shop looks like the sort of place people's mothers "used to take them for their grade-school haircuts." She, however, is no stereotypical Marge of Marge's Clip-n-Curl. Nor does she like it when people try to pigeonhole her based on either her job or appearance-- flashy nails and flouncy dresses. She's read Canterbury Tales, for example. She's also a healer, a Tarot card reader, and a fixer: "People come to me after the fact.... Fix what's broken, that's what I do all day long." Throughout the novel, Rita struggles to fix what is broken and to make the connection between what she thought her life was and what it actually is. Even thought I couldn't put the book down, I'm loathe to recommend this book to other readers. I want to keep Rita for myself. However, My Only Story is the kind of book worth sharing, which is why I'm recommending it to everyone I know.

A Literary Gem

MY ONLY STORY is a gem of a book. Like all good literature it's about rising from the ashes. Some of us do it more readily, some more gracefully, but mostly we all do it because we must. Lifelines are found in the most unexpected moments and sources. Author, Monica Wood, has mastered the element of the unexpected and created a mesmerizing story. Rita is the lovable, gaudily bespangled, unconventional hairdresser who narrates the story. She calls herself "a healer." She "fixes things": broken hair, broken hopes, broken lives. Her passion to heal the world generates the story. MY ONLY STORY is many stories. John Reed has suffered inscrutable loss and walks "with his hands knuckled into his pockets, clutching the lining lest someone fleet by and make off with his clothes." A beguiling eight-year-old child, the darling of the family and the niece that John wants to bring back into his life, carries her own secrets. The formidable and loving Doherty sisters with their husbands and bevy of children, "that man-eating creature of a family" Rita calls them, have ostracized John because of his brother's unforgivable crime. The story is very much about those inextricable ties that bind families, from the most dysfunctional to the most visibly united. Never simplistic or sentimental, the story is an affirmation that each of us has a story to tell. Unusual twists and turns replete with humor, radiantly precise language, and engaging characters make MY ONLY STORY a most satisfying and engaging novel.