CARRY THE DOG

The daughter of a famous photographer confronts her mother's difficult legacy and the challenges of aging.

"The brink of sixty, it's rough terrain for anybody, time to take stock of your life even if you didn't have Miriam Marx as a mother," writes her daughter Bea, who's working on a memoir at a glacial pace. Miriam is a very dark version of a Sally Mann character—a photographer who made her reputation with nude pictures of her children that continued into puberty, pictures that sound disturbing enough to merit the charges of child pornography they engendered. Since Miri's suicide when Bea was a teenager, which came just months after the death of one of Bea's older twin brothers, her oeuvre has garnered more and more attention. Now both Hollywood and MoMA are knocking on Bea's door, and despite her understandable wish to let sleeping dogs lie, she needs the money. The Hollywood connection comes through Gary Going, Bea's ex-husband, a Lou Reed–style rock star now in his 70s. After making his fame with songs Bea wrote but was inadequately credited for, he remains her sole financial support and closest friend. Gangi, who thoroughly entertained readers with her debut novel, The Next (2016), spins a much darker story here. The greatest achievement of the book is the character of Bea. Having been focused on for her appearance since infancy, she is having a tough time with what she sees as the loss of her beauty and sex appeal. Yes, she is damaged, but her heart is big—she's practically adopted not only her neighbor's dog, but her father's adopted daughter from a second marriage; a standout section takes the two of them down to visit him in assisted living in Florida. The final act of the novel is overcrowded with terrible reveals as Bea finally opens her mother's archive and decides what to do about her past and her future.

A smart, sophisticated, lively read with the dysfunctional frosting laid on a little thick.