THE BALLAD OF BIG FEELING

Watching an elderly parent become frail and ill is never easy, but it's even more difficult when the relationship is fraught.

The unnamed 33-year-old narrator of this unsettling debut not only has to help her once-neglectful and often haughty mom sell her house and downsize, she also has to deal with her mother’s physical decline. The two live thousands of miles apart, in two dissimilar but never-identified locales. The woman lives with her male partner in a cozy rental and both work in never-defined jobs that allow them a modicum of social mobility. The novel presents their relationship as comfortable, settled, and their day-to-day interactions unfold alongside the woman’s planned and random encounters with people known only as "the neighbor," an elderly woman dying of kidney disease; "the cousin"; "the hard stranger"; "the father" and "the stepmother"; "the coworker"; "the pretty-necked friend"; and "the bad-lucked friend." Who she is with each of these people varies, but self-doubt is never far from the surface. Her weight, always a source of discomfort, is a constant concern, but readers have no idea if the narrator is actually overweight or if this fixation is a delusion. Whatever, it creates tension, and it is only after the woman and her mother have readied the family home for sale that eating cupcakes together becomes a rite of release. Class and religious differences are alluded to, as well, since the father is Jewish and the mother is not, but the many possible meanings of these identifiers are left hanging. In the end, it is up to the reader to parse meaning from each and every incident, many of them bizarre and some of them shocking.

An original, compelling, and enigmatic first novel.