I came across this title last year when it appeared on the
longlist of the Man Booker Prize, but I didn’t get around to reading it until
now, after a friend recommended it. I’m
glad I read it, though I understand why it didn’t make the shortlist.
June Reid loses her entire family on the eve of her
daughter’s wedding. Lost in a fire
caused by an explosion are her daughter Lolly; Lolly’s fiancé, Will Landis;
June’s much-younger romance interest, Luke Morey; and June’s ex-husband,
Adam. June feels like an untouchable,
“Not from scorn or fear, but from the obscenity of the loss. It was inconsolable, and the daunting completeness
of it – everyone, gone – silenced even those most used to calamity.” A reporter asks June how she’s surviving and
she replies, “No one survived.” The magnitude of her loss leaves June
emotionally overwhelmed with grief and guilt and she runs, driving away from
Connecticut and finally taking shelter in a motel on the Pacific Coast.
The novel, however, is not just June’s story. From multiple viewpoints we see the reactions
of a number of people, all connected in some way to the victims or their
families. Besides June, we hear
from/about Luke’s mother, Will’s father, one of Luke’s teenaged employees, the
wedding florist, the wedding caterer, the owners and the cleaner of the motel,
and George whose connection to the tragedy is initially unclear. Some sections are narrated in first person
and others, in third person; some sections describe the present and others, the
past.
The book becomes a series of character studies. We learn the back stories of virtually
everyone, even the secondary characters.
As would be expected, it is the parents who are most developed as more and
more details emerge. Lydia, Luke’s
mother, emerges as the most memorable.
Unfortunately, the characters given first person narratives all sound
similar since there is little differentiation among the voices.
The book is also a study of grief. There is a quiet, understated tone
throughout, a tone most apt to convey the numbness experienced by those
grieving. Sometimes silence conveys the
depth of one’s grief better than words:
one character observes that “There are no words precise enough to describe
how wide and empty the world is when you lose someone that matters to you” and
Will’s father mentions learning that “grief can sometimes get loud, and when it
does, we try not to speak over it.”
And how does one get through grief? The question posed by characters and the
reader is “How do you recover from
that? How would you even begin?” Luke’s mother concludes, “Rough as life can
be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. . . .
Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won’t see coming will
need you. . . . And it might be you never know the part you played, what it
meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all
make our way. I don’t think we get to
know why.”
The book is not flawless.
I found it very difficult to believe that Luke’s mother acted as she did
towards her son when he was a teenager, though there are news stories
describing extreme non-maternal behaviour.
The unsent letter that is discovered near the end seems too
convenient. Some of the epiphanies
experienced by characters are forced and trite, and many of these epiphanies
are announced the same way for different characters: “Funny
how disasters can make you see what you could lose” (Rick) and “Funny . . . how things change when you
look at them with older eyes” (Lydia) and “Funny
how you think people are one way or the other and most of the time you end up
completely wrong” (Rebecca) and “It’s funny
to think that the wind has a shape but it does” (Lolly) and “The truth will set you free. Funny,
she thinks . . . “(Lydia). And don’t get
me started on why there’s no question mark at the end of that awkward title!
Despite its weaknesses, this book is still a worthwhile
read. The depth of its character
development and its authentic examination of people experiencing unimaginable
sorrow will remain with you.
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