“Sadness is what holds our bones in place,” Yoli thinks. Toews deepens our understanding of the pain found in Coleridge's...
A Canadian writer visits her older sister, a concert pianist who's just attempted suicide, in this masterful, original investigation into love, loss and survival.
“She wanted to die and I wanted her to live and we were enemies who loved each other,” Yolandi Von Riesen says of her sister, Elfrieda. Toews (Irma Voth, 2011, etc.) moves between Winnipeg, Toronto, and a small town founded by Mennonite immigrants who survived Bolshevik massacres, where the intellectual, free-spirited Von Riesen family doesn’t share the elders' disapproval of “overt symbols of hope and individual signature pieces.” Yoli looks back over time, realizing that the sisters' bond is strengthened by their painful memories. The girls' father baffles neighbors by supporting Elf's creative passions and campaigning to run a library. His suicide and absence from their adulthood make him even more important to his daughters as their paths diverge. Elf travels around Europe, emptying herself into Rachmaninoff performances; Yoli writes books about a rodeo heroine, feeling aimless and failed. Elf’s husband appreciates her singular sensitivity as a performer, but this capacity for vulnerability dangerously underpins her many breakdowns and longstanding depression. Yoli’s men are transient, leaving her with two children. Toews conveys family cycles of crisis and intermittent calm through recurring events and behaviors: Elf and her father both suffer from depression; Yoli and her mother face tragedy with wry humor and absurdist behavior; and two sisters experience parallel losses. Crisp chapter endings, like staccato musical notes, anchor the plot’s pacing. Elf’s determination to end her suffering by dying takes the form of a drumbeat of requests for Yoli to help her commit suicide. Readers yearn for more time with this complex, radiant woman who fiercely loves her family but cannot love herself.
“Sadness is what holds our bones in place,” Yoli thinks. Toews deepens our understanding of the pain found in Coleridge's poetry, which is the source of the book’s title.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-940450-27-8
Page Count: 330
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
Love, grief, and forgiveness illuminate this compelling summer read.
Throughout college, Evvie, Maggie, and Topher were the best of friends. But time and the mistakes that come with simply being human may strain their love to the breaking point.
The daughter of a hardworking Jamaican immigrant and an abusive American banker, Evvie Williams grew up a child actor, ironically starring as an adorable daughter in The Perfect Family. That’s when her struggles with weight began, as her mother put her on her first diet at age 7. After her father hit her mother one too many times, she and her mother pulled up stakes and moved to London. Years of yo-yo dieting later, she heads off to college, where she meets Maggie Hallwell, the redheaded only daughter in a raucous and somewhat posh family from Sussex. They discover Topher, the son of the impossibly glamorous Joan Winthrop, while shopping for dorm furniture. Immediately smitten with each other, the three are inseparable, even rooming together for the last years of college. Of course, there’s also Evil Ben, so dubbed because he never smiled at Evvie, even when she began bartending at the same local pub. Nonetheless, Maggie falls head over heels in love with Ben at first sight. Green (The Sunshine Sisters, 2017, etc.) masterfully switches from one character's perspective to another's, devastatingly sketching their successes, showing how they're riddled with pain, and setting them on a collision course. Maggie eventually marries her beloved Ben, yet their seemingly perfect marriage is fractured by a lack of children and Ben’s catastrophic drinking, which Maggie desperately tries to keep secret. Topher embarks on a successful acting career and finds love. Yet he’s also struggling with a secret about his past. Evvie has not only lived a glamorous life as a supermodel, but also raised her son, Jack. And she, too, hides a few secrets. Thirty years later, the friends reunite, but one of their secrets threatens to destroy everything.
Love, grief, and forgiveness illuminate this compelling summer read.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-58334-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
While there’s little new ground broken, the missing child scenario, when done reasonably well, as it is here, is a reliable...
The search for a missing boy is seen through the split perspective of his frantic mother and the police detective determined to solve the case, despite its deleterious effect on his psychological health.
Newly divorced photographer mum Rachel Jenner thought she was giving her 8-year-old son, Ben Finch, a bit of freedom when she let him run ahead during a walk in a Bristol park. But when Ben vanishes, Rachel immediately blames herself, and the media is quick to paint her as a neglectful parent, too. Macmillan, in her debut, leans a bit hard on the “bad mother” trope, one that’s been well-trodden in recent fiction, but she creates a compellingly complex investigator in DI Jim Clemo. The narrative is split not only between Rachel's and Clemo’s perspectives, but also Clemo’s post-investigation sessions with a department-ordered shrink, indicating that however the Finch investigation turned out, it wasn’t pretty. As Rachel waits and frets at home, often in the company of her high-achieving older sister, Nicky, who clearly knows more than she lets on, Clemo and his fellow officers, including his secret girlfriend, DC Emma Zhang, whom he perhaps unwisely recommended as Family Liaison Officer for the case, try to piece together a case from a dearth of physical evidence. The requisite family secrets come to light, though Macmillan gets credit for some truly clever red herrings.
While there’s little new ground broken, the missing child scenario, when done reasonably well, as it is here, is a reliable hook, and with Macmillan’s taut pacing, this is an engaging debut.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-241386-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
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