EVENING

Returning to Toronto to sit shiva for her sister, Eve finds herself entering a seven-day hiatus from life, a time in which to not only mourn, but rethink the past, ponder the future, and reevaluate the sibling lost forever.

Methodical, conscientious Tam had achieved it all. Canada’s premier anchorwoman, she also possessed “a great marriage, a wonderful daughter and a new baby, fame and fortune.” Her sister, Eve, however, chose a different, messier life plan. Fleeing Canada to travel, then settling in New York, Eve, now 35, has a semiavailable boyfriend, an incomplete dissertation about unmarried British women writers in the interwar years, and a job teaching continuing education courses. Eve’s return to the family home to grieve her sister’s untimely death comes with the added discomfort that at their final meeting, two week earlier, the sisters argued so vehemently that they never spoke again. Being back also revives Eve’s feelings for Laurence, her childhood love, who is newly single and just as desirable. Could a cozy future in Toronto be hers? Rapoport’s tightly structured novel uses the seven-day Jewish mourning ritual to delve claustrophobically into Eve’s psychology and the family history that shaped it. Parents, grandparents, the sisters' seesaw relationship, and Eve's childhood memories are repeatedly scrutinized, interrupted by occasional plot nodes like a date with Laurence and a video from Tam, prepared before her death. Was Tam as perfect as she seemed? Who envied whom? Can Eve make better choices? These questions, both familiar and overworked, will all resolve themselves neatly as suggestions of moral lapses are excused by extenuating circumstances, and a couple of surprises help other issues melt away.

The scenario is sympathetic but the conceptual bones poke too visibly through this novel’s narrative skin.