by Sarah Moriarty
300 pages, Little
A (Amazon), Kindle Edition
Review
by J. S. Colley
I chose this free book from Amazon Prime’s First Read program.
The Willoughby children lost their father and now they’ve lost their mother. For decades, the family spent every summer at their beloved lake house in Maine. Now, they gather during the Fourth of July holiday, sans parents, for what could be their last stay.
There are four children: Tom, Gwen,
Libby, and Danny. Tom, the successful, eldest child, is obsessive and rigid.
Gwen, the wild, fun-loving artist, finds herself with a difficult decision to
make. Libby, the thoughtful, sensitive lesbian, is still coming to terms with
who she is. Danny, the youngest, was so attached to his mother that her death
sends him into a deep, dangerous depression.
Over the course
of their holiday, details of the family’s past are revealed through the eyes of
each child as well as the now-deceased parents. As is common in families, each
member’s reality is different, each relationship tainted or bolstered by
witnessed events. While they make the difficult decision of what’s to become of
the aging house that binds them as a family, secrets are revealed, perceptions
shattered.
The writing is both
skilled and poetic, but the diverging storylines, if not trite, are expected;
the characters clichéd. Which is disappointing. The author is a beautiful
writer but, in this case, the story seemed a vehicle for the delightful prose
instead of the prose being a vehicle for the story.
The children and,
I would argue, the parents are all stereotypes. The successful, seemingly
wealthy, older brother is cold and obsessive. His siblings snicker at him
behind his back. And, of course, the reader is told he was a “Bush voter.” (For
once, I’d like to see a successful person be characterized as something other
than cold, heartless, and obsessive or
a Republican. Are there no successful businesspeople who are Democrats?) The
lesbian sister is kind and tentative about her siblings’ possible reactions to
her chosen partner. (Sorry, but this felt like the perfunctory gay character,
another social issue checked off the list.) The wild, promiscuous artist with
the unwanted pregnancy and requisite difficult decision. (Another social issue?
Check.
And, are there no
sensible artists out there? How do any of them produce meaningful or prolific works
with such a lackadaisical attitude?) The youngest child, coddled by his parents,
especially his mother, is incapable of functioning in the world. (Is the
youngest child anything other than this?)
The addle-headed but well-intentioned mother, Scarlet, who is willing to live
with her husband’s dark secret. The seemingly loving husband who, as mentioned,
has a dark secret. It’s as if the author wanted to pile as many au courant socio-political issues as
possible into the novel. All novels should aspire to teach us something, but
the learning should be like a hidden nugget to be ferreted out. The reader
wants to feel as if they are on a scavenger hunt for hidden meanings and
symbolism, or else they would have chosen non-fiction. When a reader sees too
much of the author on the page, it takes them out of the story.
But, in spite of
its flaws, readers who love descriptive writing will find North Haven worthy. And,
I must admit, while I found myself, near the end, skipping over some of the more
repetitive descriptive narrative, and while the psychoanalyst’s playbook
definition of personalities based on sibling birth order took me out of the
story at times, I still managed to enjoy the novel.
I would
definitely try this author again.
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