Full name: Hello, I Must Be Going: A Novel

Author: Christie Hodgen Year: 2006 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780393061390 9780393330182 0393061396 0393330184

It's the early 1980s, and tomboy Frankie Hawthorne's world is overturned when her beloved father--a Vietnam amputee who masks depression by playing comedian--shoots himself. Frankie's neighborhood, in a down-at-the-heels industrial city near Boston, has had its own happier times. Left behind along with Frankie are her mother, Gerrie, a waitress at Friendly's, and a sweetly innocent younger brother, Teddy. Soon, Frankie decides not to talk, resisting the overly ebullient school psychologist, and comforting herself by drawing cartoons. Gerri, now chain-smoking and addicted to television--Doris Day! Rock Hudson!--wears an imaginary charm bracelet of disappointments. The once-adorable Teddy runs wild and is frequently summoned to the principal's office. Finally, with some unlikely help, Frankie understands the possibility of growing beyond grief. Balancing perfectly between funny and sad, this poignant novel is about the tenacity of ghosts and the stubbornness of love. Similar books: Elegies for the Brokenhearted by Christie Hodgen Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde Empire Falls by Richard Russo Anne of Windy Poplars by Lucy Maud Montgomery The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson 2666 by Roberto Bolano Buying the Farm by Kimberly Conn Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver Harbor of the Heart by Katherine Spencer We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates Everyman by Philip Roth The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton South of Broad by Pat Conroy Old School by Tobias Wolff The Big Free by Martha B. Boone The Risk Pool by Richard Russo Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle Fathers and Forefathers by Slobodan Selenic