A novel about hard choices and doing the right thing that is modest, moving and true.
In this beautifully observed debut, a son wrestles with the possibility of assisted suicide for his mother, stricken with Alzheimer’s.
Responsibility was the watchword for Ellen from the get-go. The oldest of five, she began taking care of her siblings when she was only ten; her otherworldly parents were in church. At 16, she decided to become a nurse; during her 30-year career, she wrote a successful nursing textbook. Now, still only 56, this good woman is a near-vegetable in a Buffalo, N.Y., nursing home, muttering nonsense words; her moments of lucidity are rare. Four years earlier, at the onset of her disease and understanding what lay ahead, she had confided in her son James that she was considering suicide; aghast, he had dissuaded her. But the 28-year-old, now trying gamely to connect with his mother, is having second thoughts. James, the narrator and protagonist, had left Buffalo for Brooklyn and a job writing greeting cards. Back home for Thanksgiving, he is thinking seriously about a mercy killing, but his father Rodney, a retired office manager, is dead set against the idea. Rodney is a stand-up guy, a stoic witness to his wife’s condition (he visits every day) and a decent if uncommunicative father. James had been a rebel with a drinking problem and is only now settling into adulthood. His more self-confident sister Kate is also back for the holiday with her lesbian partner; family dynamics are all-important here. Ames skillfully counterpoints James’s nursing-home visits with boozy reunions with old friends and sprinkles in interviews with Buffalo locals taken from an oral history James once compiled. These interviews highlight a strain of exuberant eccentricity in the otherwise dour city, and they provide bright splashes of narrative color. The satisfying and credible resolution, lightly foreshadowed, will come as a surprise.
A novel about hard choices and doing the right thing that is modest, moving and true.Pub Date: April 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4013-0980-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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