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    Split Estate: A Novel
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    Split Estate: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Split Estate: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Split Estate: A Novel

    Written by Charlotte Bacon

    Narrated by Kate Reading

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Shortly after his wife, the mother of his two teenage children, ends her life by jumping from the window of their Manhattan apartment, Arthur King decides he must return with his family to his home state of Wyoming. There, his mother welcomes her wounded son and her bereft grandchildren to her much loved, but now quite diminished, ranch. But how long will they stay?

    In elegantly modulated, brisk, and engaging prose, Charlotte Bacon, a master dramatist of the interwoven crises of modern life, tracks the surviving Kings through the course of a summer as they try to come to terms with the new realities set in motion by Laura's inscrutable act. From the perspective of each protagonist in turn, we watch shy Celia and handsome Cam, distraught Arthur and his brave mother, Lucy, face themselves and their future in a Wyoming that is both beautiful and consoling, and yet beset by new threats of destruction.

    A split estate is a form of real property in which the mineral rights have been split off from the other land uses to which the owner is entitled. This practice has transformed the landscape the Kings love and, in truth, their very lives have become split estates. A novel very much about America today, both rural and urban, Split Estate is a heartrending depiction of an ordinary family trying desperately to reconnect in the midst of loss, and to find solace in the heart of despair.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 5, 2008
    ISBN9781415949276
    Unavailable
    Split Estate: A Novel
    Author

    Charlotte Bacon

    Charlotte Bacon is the award-winning author of Lost Geography (FSG, 2000) and A Private State, a collection of stories. She teaches English at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

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    Reviews for Split Estate

    3.5/5

    32 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      After the suicide of his wife, a father moves with his two teenage children from Manhattan to the place of his youth, a small town in Wyoming, to stay with his mother. Each long chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different family member and each has their own unique story to tell of how they live, work, and struggle each day with the sadness, anger and grief that remains in the aftermath of their loss. This is a very moving look at how we cope with the changes that occur in our lives and how our actions affect those around us. I found the sense of place to be especially strong; the windswept prairie of Wyoming was like another character. Although I found the ending to be a little abrupt, perhaps that was the point, and so as a whole, I would highly recommend this deeply affecting book. I didn’t realize just how lucky I was to receive Split Estate from the LTER program until I had started it. I surely would have missed out on reading it if left to my own devices.
    • 3/5
      After Arthur’s wife, Laura, kills herself by throwing herself off their balcony in New York, Arthur decides to take his two teenage kids to Wyoming, where they will all stay with his mother on what land she has left that she hasn’t sold (can’t really call it a ranch!). The kids have to learn how to fit in to this rural area, as well as figure out how to deal with their grief.It’s told from all four characters points of view: Arthur; his mother Lucy; his son Cam; and his daughter Celia. It’s kind of slow, but a decent story. I liked the different points of view that explored their new life in Wyoming, as well as thinking back on each of their relationships with Laura. I wasn’t real happy with the ending, though.
    • 4/5
      From its "split" cover illustration to its "split" chapters, the author, Charlotte Bacon, has fine-tuned the art of prose while dealing with a number of characters, locations, and points of view in her novel, "Split Estate". Though the title has its literal meaning, a reference to many Western ranches splitting their estate titles between the range land they possess for their livestock and feed and the mineral rights below ground that are sold and are often what sustain these slowly-shrinking estates, it might better describe the lives of the King family as being split between their life 10 floors up in a NYC apartment and the rest of the story which unfolds in the dusty western town of Callendar, Wyoming. The turning point comes in the book's opening event, Laura King, wife of Arthur and mother of teenagers Cam and Celia, has just jumped to her death from that fateful upper window, an event that succeeding pages painstakingly reveal was unstoppable and unpredictable to all of her loved ones. The "split" to Callendar, Wyoming, childhood home of Arthur and his stalwart mother Lucy, is only an escape that grows more fragile with time. Bacon's characters are allowed to reveal their feelings and hidden secrets in large , expansive narratives, giving the reader plenty of time to soak up the depth of emotions bottled up in each one. Her poetic language is evident throughout her storytelling, such as describing one of Arthur's childhood buddy's way of talking as, "His voice was all battered pickup." or an image of early morning near Lyon Creek when she writes, "Mist curled off the water like pencil shavings of moisture.". Her ability to reveal her character's inner thoughts are clear, but imaginative as she describes Celia, whose compulsive behaviors often get the best of her , in these words... "She also knew she could keep counting and counting and no number would ever mask what wasn't there, the open zero of no mother." "Split Estate" is a beautifully written book that will add to your library of reading , helping each of us cross the gulf we might each encounter when life goes astray. For like Cam and Celia and Arthur, we are often suspended between the past and the future....trying to connect the two sides just as Celia tried with her mother's beloved Pentax camera...for "There was still the widest of canyons between Laura alive and Laura dead. Celia was taking pictures so she could show them to her mother." Jennifer Mastricola
    • 4/5
      A powerful, quiet novel about the lives of the King family after Laura King inexplicitly jumps to her death from their tenth floor NYC apartment. Arthur King and his two teenage children have difficulty coping and he decides to relocate the family to Wyoming to live with his mother on the family ranch. The author tells a story in spare prose of despair, family and hope.
    • 3/5
      This is a story about grief and family and place. It is about feeling alone and uprooted. It is about the secrets we keep from each other and the tenuousness of well-being.The King family has experienced the worst kind of loss: Laura King has committed suicide by jumping from the tenth story window of their New York apartment. The story takes place during the first year after this loss; when widower Arthur moves himself and his two teenage kids back to Wyoming, where Arthur grew up. Misplaced in every way, this is a family literally torn apart with their grief. Arthur bumbles to do the right thing, which he thinks is a change of scenery. But he fails at clearly seeing the state of his kids, preferring to think that summer jobs and a lack of ten-story buildings is enough to keep them safe. For all of the Kings, there is a definite “running away”, which solidifies relational patterns that become harder and harder to surmount. For all these folks, there is movement toward hope of healing, while simultaneously, inner tensions over the reality of loss continue mounting.The Kings flirt with self-destruction; they utterly self-absorbed and jealous keepers of secrets. At times this feels overdone. What about the unrelenting human spirit? I know its there. That all of the Kings could be so completely without it is the characters’ biggest tragedy.Within a single paragraph she manages to both flash back in time and stay in the present moment simultaneously. Though this must be difficult to do as a writer, she makes it work. It is often the case that our thoughts operate on multiple levels at once. Bacon’s Wyoming imagery is lovely too. Dust and sky and clear light are referred to over and over again, as well as the presence of wildness – animals and weather and landscape. Her ability to evoke place is very good.So, there were things I liked and things I didn’t. For me, Bacon’s skills as writer on the one hand and a story-teller on the other, didn’t meet in an entirely satisfying way.
    • 3/5
      "Split estate" is a mining term, but it also applies to Arthur King and his family. After his wife jumps from their NYC high rise, he moves his two children to his childhood home in Wyoming, hoping to outrun the family tragedy. However, it only makes matters worse ... much worse.While I didn't enjoy this book, Charlotte Bacon is a talented writer who fleshes out a modern-day Shakespearian tragedy.
    • 4/5
      The author has a gift for describing both scenery and emotions as well as creating characters that I grew to care about. Each character handled grief and loss in their own way, learning as they went along how to deal with the tremendous shock of suicide in their family. The emotions were real and the writing insightful. I initially was put off by the abrupt ending (was my book missing the last chapter?), but after pondering the ending for a while came to terms with it not being wrapped up as neatly and happily as I had anticipated. Thanks LT for sharing this Early Reviewer selection with me.
    • 4/5
      After the suicide of his wife, a father moves with his two teenage children from Manhattan to the place of his youth, a small town in Wyoming, to stay with his mother. Each long chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different family member and each has their own unique story to tell of how they live, work, and struggle each day with the sadness, anger and grief that remains in the aftermath of their loss. This is a very moving look at how we cope with the changes that occur in our lives and how our actions affect those around us. I found the sense of place to be especially strong; the windswept prairie of Wyoming was like another character. Although I found the ending to be a little abrupt, perhaps that was the point, and so as a whole, I would highly recommend this deeply affecting book. I didn?t realize just how lucky I was to receive Split Estate from the LTER program until I had started it. I surely would have missed out on reading it if left to my own devices.
    • 4/5
      Talk about getting pulled right into the emotions of the characters---this is the way, from the first page of Split Estate. Beautifully written but heart-wrenching. You want to see this family "work," but it is so hard as the feelings of each of them are laid out--- like puzzle pieces that you just can't put back together again to complete the puzzle. Although you keep wanting more pieces to help, It just becomes a much more complicated puzzle---perhaps some families can work through such things, others cannot. The emotional pain in the words was incredible.
    • 4/5
      Charlotte Bacon delineates the pain and suffering of the King family with great clarity and compassion. Each of four characters has two chapters during which to sound their depths, to discover their strengths and weaknesses, to discover aspects of themselves they neither know nor like. Although connections and missed connections make up the detail of the story, the real subject is survival and the strange things humans do withstand love, loss, work, climate, and circumstance -- to survive (or not) the very fact of being human and knowing it.