An entertaining yet astute look at family, self, story, and connections.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, three generations of Rockwell women sift through their histories—real, imagined, rumored, and written—and discover that, like storms, life is impossible to control.
Three sisters’ lives are individually falling apart when they converge on their childhood home to help their mother, Augusta, rebound from the damage of Hurricane Sandy, only to discover that the destructive storm has unearthed a lifetime of secrets. Esme, Liv, and Ru were raised by an eccentric, wealthy single mother who answered their questions about their absentee father with wild stories of an international spy, a secretive family history that the sisters believed to varying degrees but which left them both emotionally isolated and oddly united in their separation. Now, as adults, the psychological effects of their strange upbringing are taking a toll, with each sister facing a turning point even as they wind up together in their mother’s home. Esme’s marriage is in a shambles, and her teen daughter has created a constant ironic Twitter stream that narrates her life while allowing her to avoid dealing with it. Liv is an addict with a string of failed marriages behind her. And Ru is a successful novelist and screenwriter who used a painful experience in Liv’s life as the main plot of her bestselling book but now has writer’s block. So when their mother decides to tell them the truth about their father, it will shed new light on some past experiences and force the sisters to re-evaluate the stories they tell themselves and each other about who they are and how they got there. Asher’s newest title spotlights her unique voice plus an affinity for quirky, wounded characters that are both realistic and likable. The jerky, ever shifting storytelling perspective among the characters would be disconcerting if it didn’t fit so well into the overall narrative and the subtle theme of how changing our stories can change us.
An entertaining yet astute look at family, self, story, and connections.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-34393-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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