ISLAND CITY

Debut novel from the award-winning author of the story collection Hardly Children (2018).

“Anything can become the story of your life if you let it and I suppose this became mine.” It turns out that the story of this unnamed narrator’s life is her father’s death. The description of this loss—and the time leading up to it—is described with emotional precision and a lyricism that feels unforced. Adamczyk finds language for experiences and states that are universal but difficult to articulate. She describes her narrator’s dissolution after her father’s death with a similar artistry. His demise is neither quick nor easy. He endures both cancer and dementia. He disappears physically and mentally. The narrator erases herself with alcohol. She alienates herself from her mother, her sister, and everyone else. She quits her job, gives away everything she owns, and moves back to the hometown she knew she had to escape to survive. It’s all eloquently sad and makes for compelling reading. The problem is that the event that becomes the story of the narrator’s life occurs about three-quarters of the way into this novel. Everything that comes before feels shapeless in that it’s not clear that this story is a story—that is, that it’s moving toward any kind of well-defined ending. Fiction takes all sorts of forms, of course, and it’s not necessary that a story have a point. But Adamczyk uses a frame story, a device that always feels a bit creaky and is at odds with this type of realism. Her narrator is sitting at a bar telling her tale to her fellow patrons—strangers—and every time the author reminds us of this the reader is invited to wonder why anyone would listen to this monologue rather than move a few stools down or find another place to drink.

A powerful—if lopsided—depiction of family, grief, and trauma.