A captivating and uplifting tale about the essence of self-reliance and the unsung benefits of modern families.
A middle-aged woman who was adopted as a baby searches for her birth family as she simultaneously struggles to care for her own chronically ill daughter.
Ten-year-old Kylie Anderson suffers from food allergies, joint pain, headaches, skin irritations, and other symptoms of a mysterious chronic illness. Her mother, Ally, is at her wits' end attempting to adequately respond to her daughter’s ailments. Ally and her husband, Matt, have also recently separated, torn apart by the emotional and financial strain of caring for a sick child. When a new doctor tells Ally that Kylie’s disease might be genetic, Ally accepts that Kylie’s condition necessitates a genealogy search even though she never wanted to know about her own past. With the minimal effort of completing an at-home DNA test, Ally quickly locates a biological family member who lives less than an hour away. Unfortunately, Ally’s adoptive mother, Sophie, can’t stand the idea of reconnecting with the family that gave Ally away. As Ally attempts to piece together a medical history for Kylie without destroying her special relationship with Sophie, she also struggles to understand her feelings for her now-estranged husband. The couple dances around each other, worried for their daughter and nostalgic for what they’ve lost with each other. Circumstances grow increasingly complicated, and Ally must determine how to best move forward as a daughter, a mother, and a wife. Through Ally’s complex journey toward self-determination, this engaging, plot-driven tale examines what it really means to be part of a family. With the book told entirely from Ally’s perspective, the self-deprecating, girlfriend-y tone will draw readers right into Ally’s inner circle as she wrestles with questions about parenting, friendship, love, and loss. Replete with details about conventional and alternative medicine as well as quaintly humorous small-town moments of school board elections and run-ins with neighbors, the novel is engrossing throughout. Moments of self-doubt and embarrassment abound, but they are tempered by messages of hope and palpable love that hit just the right note.
A captivating and uplifting tale about the essence of self-reliance and the unsung benefits of modern families.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0643-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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
A subtle, mature reflection on the loop of life from a unique writer of deserved international stature.
When the four adult Madigan children come home for Christmas to visit their widowed mother for the last time before the family house is sold, a familiar landscape of tensions is renewed and reordered.
Newly chosen as Ireland’s first fiction laureate, Enright (The Forgotten Waltz, 2012, etc.) showcases the unostentatious skill that underpins her success and popularity in this latest story of place and connection, set in an unnamed community in County Clare. Rosaleen Considine married beneath her when she took the hand of Pat Madigan decades ago. Their four children are now middle-aged, and only one of them, Constance, stayed local, marrying into the McGrath family, which has benefited comfortably from the nation’s financial boom. Returning to the fold are Dan, originally destined for the priesthood, now living in Toronto, gay and “a raging blank of a human being”; Emmet, the international charity worker struggling with attachment; and Hanna, the disappointed actress with a drinking problem. This is prime Enright territory, the fertile soil of home and history, cash and clan; or, in the case of the Madigan reunion, “all the things that were unsayable: failure, money, sex and drink.” Long introductions to the principal characters precede the theatrical format of the reunion, allowing Enright plenty of space to convey her brilliant ear for dialogue, her soft wit, and piercing, poetic sense of life’s larger abstractions. Like Enright's Man Booker Prize–winning The Gathering (2007), this novel traces experience across generations although, despite a brief crisis, this is a less dramatic story, while abidingly generous and humane.
A subtle, mature reflection on the loop of life from a unique writer of deserved international stature.Pub Date: May 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-24821-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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