WHO YOU MIGHT BE

Spanning two decades and a continent, this novel traces the consequences of rash decisions made in youth.

It's 1997 in Southern California. When 14-year-olds Meghan and Judy sneak away to find Cassie—supposedly a model—whom they’ve grown to adore in a chat room, their disappointing mothers barely notice their daughters’ absences. This parental neglect and the girls’ lack of cellphones add a note of terror to what happens next. Cassie isn’t home, but her senile great-aunt is, and she locks Meghan and Judy in Cassie’s bedroom. In alternating chapters, a third-person narrator relates the girls’ plight—to amuse themselves in captivity, they read Cassie's diary—and Cassie’s story. Cassie seems unaware that visitors were coming and has embarked on a bus journey from California to find her own disappointing mother in a Nevada commune. All of this happens in the first of the novel's three parts, which function almost as separate novellas. The second follows brothers Miles and Caleb, whose wealthy family moves from San Francisco, where 14-year-old Miles was secretly involved with a male friend, to Detroit, where much-older Caleb gets involved in the city's underground graffiti scene via a fellow skateboarder named Tez. Soon Caleb ropes Miles into the dangerous fun. This portion of the book, set in 1996, culminates in a series of events that shed unflattering light on Caleb’s character. The third portion of the book, set in 2016 New York, asks whether former sinners change. Caleb is dating Judy, who now goes by Jude. As the action opens, Jude’s mother, Bonnie, is flying east to visit her daughter and finally make amends for her alcoholism and toxic relationships, which stained Judy’s childhood. To say too much about what happens over the course of her four-day visit would spoil the book, which ties up many (though not all) dangling plot threads. There are a few too many characters for comfort: Meghan, Cassie, Miles, and Tez all get outsized attention given their secondary roles in the arc of the novel. Until Part 3, it is unclear who will matter, and it can be disappointing when beloved figures are forgotten. Still, the prose is good, the plot progresses at a satisfying clip, and the characters are endearingly flawed (except for Judy/Jude, whose only moral flaw is having a bad mother, lover, and friend). Gallagher writes meaningfully about the intergenerational impacts of addiction, abuse, and sexual violence.

An earnest novel about the insecurities of adolescence and the impossibility of escaping one's past.