PARALLEL LIVES

Mutual animosity between two men stains their lives and many others’ in ensuing decades in this debut novel.

In 1980 Brookline, Massachusetts, sixth grader Alex Eastgard sticks up for new kid Patrick Close. He knocks down bully Hector Gonzalez and becomes good friends with Patrick. Alex and Hector’s ensuing hatred for each other mushrooms when Hector’s continued antagonism leads to Patrick’s accidental death in their senior year.Hector flees to New York City, where Alex later goes to medical school and lives with his wife, Helen Fletcher. Things seem to be going well until Helen reconnects with Hector, with whom she once had a high-school romance. The decisions they make have dire consequences as the years go by, affecting Alex and Helen’s son, as well as Hector’s daughter. Still others forge paths that intersect with Alex and other characters: Helen’s fraternal twin and investigative reporter, Kelly, pegs Hector’s father as a potential drug lord; and young Julia Kaiser dreams of getting out of Louisiana and into Harvard, eventually traveling to the other side of the world. Ferry’s contemporary epic is clearly inspired by Homer’sIliad, including a few character names and subplots. The author’s deliberate pacing gradually introduces an extensive cast and doesn’t skimp on characterization. This makes it all the more rewarding when main characters from one plotline pop up years later as minor characters in another. Even Hector invites sympathy when he plummets into drug addiction, and narcissistic Helen struggles with an overbearing mother-in-law. The book’s more scandalous turns can feel like soap-opera clichés, and readers will guess where some of the subplots are going. This hardly affects the searing melodrama, however, as characters lose loved ones, wallow in ill feelings, or suffer weighty guilt over their choices. Ferry also offers a gratifying and memorable finale.

A lengthy but worthwhile novel about the dangers of rancor and spite.