Rules For Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
Rules For Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
"We all know someone like May Attaway—smart and interesting, but maybe a little more invested in her work/inner life than in her relationships. When May receives an unexpected leave from her job as a gardener, she visits four old friends whom she hasn't seen in awhile. Her journey is surprising on many levels, and Kane has a lot to say about what friendship means to these in midlife, and how it has (and hasn't) evolved. This is a warm and thoughtful story that will absolutely have you wanting to call your long-lost friends to discuss." - Recommended by Erika
At forty, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she's turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm's length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends. She knows they will never have a proper reunion, so she goes, one-by-one, to each of them. A student of the classics, May considers her journey a female Odyssey. What might the world have had if, instead of waiting, Penelope had set out on an adventure of her own?
RULES FOR VISITING is a woman's exploration of friendship in the digital age. Deeply alert to the nobility and the ridiculousness of ordinary people, May savors the pleasures along the way--afternoon ice cream with a long-lost friend, surprise postcards from an unexpected crush, and a moving encounter with ancient beauty. Though she gets a taste of viral online fame, May chooses to bypass her friends' perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them in their messy analog ones.