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  <id type="integer">2555550</id>
  <isbn>0375424741</isbn>
  <isbn13>9780375424748</isbn13>
  <text_reviews_count type="integer">35</text_reviews_count>
  <title>
    <![CDATA[The Three of Us: A Family Story]]>
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  <average_rating>3.32</average_rating>
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    <![CDATA[This is the story of three people: Julia Blackburn; her father, Thomas; and her mother, Rosalie.  Thomas was a poet and an alcoholic who for many years was addicted to barbiturates, which would often make him violent.  Rosalie, a painter, was sociable and flirtatious; she treated Julia as her sister, her confidante, and eventually as her deadly sexual rival.  After Julia’s parents divorced, her mother took in lodgers, always men, on the understanding that each would become her lover.  When one of the lodgers started an affair with Julia, Rosalie was devastated; when he later committed suicide, the relationship between mother and daughter was shattered irrevocable.<br/><br/>Or so it seems until the spring of 1999, when Rosalie, diagnosed with leukemia, came to live with Julia for the last month of her life.  At last the spell was broken, and they were able to talk with an ease they had never known before.  When she was very near the end, Rosalie said to Julia, “Now you will be able to write about me, won’t you?”<br/><br/><em>The Three of Us </em>is a memoir like no other you have read.  The writing is magical, and the story is extraordinary, not only for its honest but also for its humor and its lack of blame.  Ultimately, this is a tale of redemption, a love story.  It will surely become one of the classics of that genre.]]>
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    <author>
    <id>11944</id>
        <name><![CDATA[Julia Blackburn]]></name>
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    <average_rating>3.52</average_rating>
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  <date_added>Mon Sep 22 06:33:09 -0700 2008</date_added>
  <date_updated>Mon Sep 22 06:36:20 -0700 2008</date_updated>
  <read_count></read_count>
    <body><![CDATA[Good God...just when you think you've read it all here comes Julia Blackburn.  What a good writer, story, recall and history.  In the back of my mind I was always feeling incredulous as to how someone grows up under such strange circumstances.  Unusual memoir filled with bits of history via photos and diaries.  I can't wait to read her other works based on her knowledge and command of language.]]></body>
    
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