Three unrelated people live in a small town in Pennsylvania. Each one has lost, in some way, someone close to them. These losses have in common that they are recent, and have left the character devastated, but each one is quite distinct.
Chuck Ayers is an elderly man whose wife Cat passed away of cancer. After many years together, he deeply misses her: he walks around the house with her old bath towel, every object reminds him of Cat, and he wonders what to do with his time.He has two children in their 30s, both happily married and financially well off, so he has no other familial concerns, but there is one niggling period of their past that bothers him. Fifteen years ago, Cat had made friends with Natasha, a waitress in her favourite cafe, and at one point had suggested that they let her live in their garage apartment. Chuck firmly vetoed the plan, and now regrets it.
Ella Burke lives alone in a small apartment. Separated from her husband, Kyle, and sharing custody of their daughter Riley, she had been struggling but surviving, until one day Kyle vanished with their daughter. Months have passed, and the police have no leads. Kyle, it turned out, had also emptied their bank accounts, so that Ella had to sell the house and is now working two jobs to make ends meet.
Kirsten Bonato is an animal lover who had wanted to become a vet, but now works in an animal rescue. Her beloved Italian father had been shot at a gas station in a random, senseless act of violence during a robbery. Kirsten is psychologically derailed, but is beginning to be drawn towards two very different colleagues: David, a divorced older man with two children; and Grayson, young and handsome.
Three different main characters, apparently unknown to each other, distinct in age, gender and circumstances. Each chapter is about a different character. Slowly, connections become evident. Ella delivers papers to Chuck, among others. Chuck’s wife Cat taught art at a high school, and Kirsten was one of her students. Everyone, it turns out, has seen the news reports of Ella’s missing daughter.
This gently touching novel has a calm placidity, despite the emotional traumas at its core. Grief and loss, the author seems to say, are painful and scarring, but like most injuries, eventually heal leaving a new normal. Events unfold slowly, time is spent on each person’s inner thoughts. The characters have regrets, but none of them are intrinsically edgy, mean or sharp; they are basically all rather nice people.
The author delves into their inner monologues:
[Chuck] wishes they could say more. He wishes he could pour it all out, but he keeps his guard up. [..] Is he trying to protect Leela by not saying how badly he’s falling apart? That he feels himself going crazy in this house and how he forgot about that doctor’s appointment the other day?
Of the three stories, I thought Ella’s was the strongest, perhaps because hers was a starkly uncommon form of loss. At some point in their lives, most people have to deal with the loss of a spouse or a parent, as do Chuck and Kirsten in this novel, but Ella’s missing/stolen daughter is a (thankfully) rare situation. Everything Ella does, every place she goes, every person she meets, reminds her of her daughter Riley.
She imagines showing Riley the yard in bloom.
When she tries to fall asleep at night, she sees it in her head. Riley. Riley a little taller. Riley’s eyes, hopefully, hopefully, not losing that spark.
Joella writes simple, straightforward prose, but mostly manages to explore the emotional depths with success, if sometimes with repetitiveness. An attempt is made to introduce a quirky character: Sal, the cranky old neighbour who drops in uninvited, frequently, to visit Chuck. Unfortunately, there is little about Sal that is interesting.
Over the course of the novel, the lives connect and the characters get invested in each others’ lives and problems. Each trauma is of equal concern to the people around; no one suggests that it’s time for Chuck to move on or that Ella’s daily agony is more important. The peripheral characters are equally ‘nice’: when Kirsten tells one young man that she is attracted to another, he shows vulnerability and empathy, with no hint of negativity, anger, or resentment The only unpleasant character is the child-stealing Kyle. The reader will probably guess that this is not the sort of book in which characters commit suicide, or find their grief driving them to evil.
That said, there is still some tension in the book, especially in the story of Ella and her child. Each of the other stories was pleasantly told, but lacked any edge.
By the last few chapters of the novel, there is a sense of situations and emotions drifting towards a resolution. At that point, I thought the novel should have ended, but instead the author chose to dot every i and cross every t, which felt a little unnecessary.
A gentle, pleasant book that lacks intensity.
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