{"id":41401,"date":"2021-08-24T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=41401"},"modified":"2021-08-10T11:33:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-10T16:33:56","slug":"early-morning-riser-by-katherine-heiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/early-morning-riser-by-katherine-heiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Katherine Heiny’s novel<\/strong><\/em><\/a> doesn’t fit into a neat box. It starts out as a rom com; it’s a fairly predictable pairing\u00a0 of two attractive, charming people, surrounded by their eccentric friends.<\/p>\n

Jane and Duncan meet, have a relationship of sorts, and break up, which isn’t fatal to HEA (Happily Ever After). However, the book begins to take a darker, messier turn. This is when it really starts to get unpredictable and \u00a0much more interesting.\u00a0 Jane, a grade school teacher in a small Michigan town, gets some of what she wanted but not necessarily in the way she wanted.<\/p>\n

A highlight is Heiny’s skill in capturing kids and adults with\u00a0 delightfully brief character sketches or with\u00a0 telling anecdotes.\u00a0 I looked forward to the work life passages, and the insight into the second- grade mind. Boyne City is populated with\u00a0 quirky residents and Heiny has fun with the dynamics of rural life.<\/p>\n

It turns out that, perhaps, the most pivotal relationship of Jane’s life is with Jimmy Jellico. He’s a sweet and naive man who nominally works for Duncan in his workshop.\u00a0 Jimmy has always had difficulty understanding how to navigate in the world, and hasn’t mastered even the most basic of adulting skills. Jane becomes more and more involved in Jimmy’s daily life, and despairs that he’ll ever find a love of his own. Jane’s friends, family and co-workers are very imperfect, as is Jane, but they evolve and create a fascinating community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katherine Heiny’s novel doesn’t fit into a neat box. It starts out as a rom com; it’s a fairly predictable pairing\u00a0 of two attractive, charming people, surrounded by their eccentric friends. Jane and Duncan meet, have a relationship of sorts, and break up, which isn’t fatal to HEA (Happily Ever[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[680,3681,192],"class_list":["post-41401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-relationships","tag-small-town","tag-teachers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-aLL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41401"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41509,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41401\/revisions\/41509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}