Winner:

2003 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction

Finalist:

Lambda Literary Award

Finalist:

Society of Midland Authors Award

Nora and Fern are just like any other mother and daughter - their relationship is tumultuous, marked by brooding silences and curt exchanges. For Nora, Fern is an enigma - incomprehensible, unfindable. For her part, Fern has never really forgiven her mother for leaving her marriage to live with her lover, Jeanne. Their story is a contemporary one, in which mothering is a mapless journey and children are left to form themselves in the shadows cast by loving, but idiosyncratic parenting. Here, too, is the reality that perfectly reasonable people will find some way to throw a wrench into the smooth, well-oiled workings of their lives.

Nora's relationship with Jeanne has settled into domestic stability, triggering a familiar restlessness that leads to an affair. When Fern intuits her mother's indiscretion, she looks to those she depends on most: her uncle Harold and her best friend, Tracy, who is currently overwhelmed with raising a baby. As Fern begins to take on more of the baby's care herself, she discovers some of the powerful ambiguities of parental love - and starts to find her way back to her own mother.

"Carol Anshaw is an ingenious and generous-souled storyteller, deliciously funny while she's being serious (or is it the other way around?). Lucky in the Corner complicates its portraits of mothers, daughters, friends, lovers (and dogs), with profound shadows that make them wholly real and, in spite of - or maybe because of - their confusions and conflicts, mightily endearing." Rosellen Brown

"...a real lesson in the art of fiction"

Brian Hieggelke, New City

"A tender comedy of contemporary manners...Not a false note anywhere in a story that's as entertaining as it is wise. Anshaw just keeps getting better."

Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"a fresh appreciation of... significant, vitally offbeat relationships."

Lisa Shea, Oprah Magazine

"Anshaw presents a magnetic cast of complex characters and nimbly covers a great swathe of land-mined social terrain in this shrewd, sexy, and hilarious family-drama-cum-comedy-of-manners."

Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred)

"the kind of work that readers love to savor, anxiously reading ahead but regretting that it must come to an end."

Caroline Mann, Library Journal

"...it's Anshaw's just-this-side of-dry prose and sly insights that make this novel a moving revelation."

Elizabeth Lenhard, Chicago Magazine

"undeniably sexy"

Miriam Wolf, San Francisco Chronicle

"Anshaw understands obsession..."

Valerie Miner, Women's Review of Books