PRECIOUS

In this debut novel from three-time Pushcart Prize nominee Novack, a ten-year-old girl’s disappearance and a mother’s abandonment slowly shred the fabric of life in a small Pennsylvania town.

Life for nine-year-old Sissy and her big sister Eva appears normal. The ’70s are progressing, and both girls are growing up. For Sissy, that means learning to differentiate between the stories her mother told and reality, and sometimes even minding her sister. For 17-year-old Eva, the passage of time means a progression from fast sex with the eager, fickle boys of her high school to a full-blown affair with a married teacher. Both are reeling from recent tragedies; the disappearance and assumed abduction of Sissy’s best friend-turned-enemy Vicki and also the departure of their beautiful, troubled mother, Natalia. What they can’t know is that these events spring from deeper grief: Vicki’s father was a troubled Vietnam veteran, a suicide who left her mother alone with the bottle. Natalia, meanwhile, is a Holocaust survivor, the only member of her family to make it out, thanks to the cold kindness of a German family who wanted a child: “I don’t mind that you’re a Gyp,” her new mother had told her. “I always wanted a little girl.” For all the supposed normalcy of their little town, the repercussions of grief and loss are everywhere. In the hands of Novack, these echoes are as inexorable as tides, and they permeate this book with a deep sadness. Although the pacing is slow, the characters come alive in the details. Sissy’s fantasies, alternating between rescue and revenge, and Eva’s dreams of love and escape are revealed in a naturalistic progression. Even the inarticulate Frank, Natalia’s abandoned husband, has his moment of clarity: “At least metal doesn’t shrink away from you.”

Every tragedy is inevitable in Novack’s precise, often beautiful debut.