Life Before Her Eyes — Laura Kasischke

A “hauntingly original” psychological thriller about innocence, memory, and the effect of a moment of violence (O: The Oprah Magazine).

In the girls' bathroom, Diana and her best friend, Maureen, are stealing a moment from the routine drudgery of high school when a classmate enters holding a gun. Suddenly, Diana sees her life -- past, present, and acutely imagined future -- dance before her eyes.
 
Through prose infused with the dramatically feminine sensuality of spring, readers will experience sixteen-year-old Diana's uncertain steps into womanhood -- her awkward, heated forays into sex; her fresh, fragile construction of an identity -- and, in exhilarating detail, her life-not-lived as a doting mother and wife of forty. Together with the sights and sounds of renewal are the tasks of Diana's adulthood: protecting her beloved daughter and holding on to her successful husband.
 
This “poetic” novel encompasses both the truth of a teenager's world and the transformations of midlife (Vanity Fair). Resonant and deeply stirring, The Life Before Her Eyes finds piercing beauty in the midst of a nightmare that echoes like a dirge beneath each new spring, in a story that “takes on deep matters of life and death; conscience and consciousness; family, love and friendship” (Los Angeles Times).
 
“Evokes terror and redemption, shadows and light. Kasischke treads a delicate line with the precision and confidence of a tightrope walker. She reminds us to look hard at life, to notice its beauty and cruelty, even as it flashes before us and disappears.” -- The New York Times
 
“Mesmerizing.” -- Chicago Tribune