An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories
She didn’t expect to miss them…
…but with a cat the kids left behind as her only companion, a divorced woman is blindsided and overwhelmed by empty nest syndrome.
That is why escaping from her cramped, messy apartment in the city sounds like a welcome change.
But can moving to the family cottage with her middle-aged sisters really be a good idea?
As she battles encroaching woodland creatures and noisy vacationers, her resilience wobbles. Can she grapple with the ghosts of her messed-up past? Will she drown in a sea of old relationships? Can she find tranquility in this season of turbulence?
This fearless portrayal of life beyond the empty nest will make you laugh in recognition. Poignant and mesmerizing prose, for lovers of short fiction for women, An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories is an ideal read for a summer’s afternoon.
Would you like to be transported to a summery lakeside cottage? Then read An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories now.
Reviews for An Empty Nest
An Empty Nest is the second novel that I have been honored to review by author Sandy Day. This piece is like a series of sketches put together by an author to represent one complete picture. you are served snapshots from the protagonist’s life whether it is of memories from her past as a child to glimpses of what the second half of her life looks like.
Harlyn Bryan, Author
Her children have moved out and on with their lives as has her ex-husband. The children, namely her eldest daughter, saffron, worry about her and try to fill the void with pets they promise to assist caring for but continuously fail at. Her sisters are checkered throughout her story as they and her parents undoubtedly influenced her life and though the sisters are different they all join together in the end for their next stage residing in a cottage near their mother.
There is a theme of both letting go and acceptance in this novel though every micro chapter is so subtle in nature. Day has a way with words, with creating a tone and picture, that carries such potency and depth in what others would see as mundane. I felt more than a connection to this character. I felt like we were one and the same. This could be me and it didn’t feel cautionary. just a very real future that we all inevitably, in some capacity, will have to face.
An Empty Nest is a cohesive collection of snapshots that humbles and gets you to reflect on your OWN life-where it has been and where it is going. we are all composed Of a million tiny pieces. Those pieces all together make us whole.
Splendid read!
I am so thrilled that Sandy Day offered me a copy of An Empty Nest to read and review because I absolutely loved this short story collection. At just under a hundred pages, I had assumed the book would be a swift read, but actually found myself lingering over certain stories and rereading others so I came away from the collection almost with the sense of having read a whole novel, and an emotionally charged one at that. This sense might also be because of how each story fits so beautifully into the whole work.
Set across the course of a single summer, An Empty Nest depicts one woman’s coming to terms with herself when there are suddenly no family members or pets to demand her time. At first angry and bereft at her abandonment, she gains perspective both from looking back into her past, and out into her present. I felt this book to be a coming-of-age story for women at a point in our lives when we are often overlooked. I loved the progression from our narrator’s fraught emotional state at the beginning, to a serene tranquillity at its close. In fact reading An Empty Nest, for me, had a lot in common with a meditation. I could feel myself calming and focusing in step with our narrator. I’m not sure I have ever experienced this physical reaction in quite the same way from a book before.
Day has a sensitive and evocative turn of phrase and I felt as though every word was here for a reason. Her writing is rich with observations and memory, but never feels bloated or padded out. Yet stories of less than half a page in length are just as satisfyingly complete as those of several pages. I admit to being envious of not only the summer cabin around which many of the stories take place, but also of Day’s ability to evoke this location! I think An Empty Nest is a stunning achievement. I would highly recommend it to introspective readers and women who, like me, are rapidly yet nervously heading towards that Certain Age.
Stephanie Jane (Literary Flits)
An Empty Nest is a series of short snapshots that all link to several months in the narrator’s life.
Suffering from the empty nest syndrome, the main character plans to make a move from a city apartment to a lakeside cottage. Her life is reversing; with her children and husband gone, she plans to spend the summer sharing a cottage with her sisters, then finally moving to be with her mother. Throughout the stories there is a process of shedding the past and embracing the future. As you join the narrator on her journey there is definitely a sense of metamorphosis at a poignant time in her life.
I particularly enjoyed the Canadian setting and the glimpses of life at the lake, especially the episodes with various wildlife. Each of the pieces of writing are well-written and succinct. I easily created the pictures in my head which often brought a smile to my lips.
I read this in less than an hour and could see it being ideal for a lunchtime book choice.
Rosie Amber
