Carla, Anne, Jimmy, and Charlie are all survivors of a shooting spree in a hamburger joint in their little town. Anne and Jimmy are teenagers, who were having lunch with her father when the shooter shot him. Carla is the waitress who hid in the back, near the kitchen, trying to get her cell phone to make an outbound call as she watched the shoot kill her customers. Charlie is a driving teacher who grazed by a bullet survives almost perfectly in tact. Dr. Laraby, ER doctor and son of a now deceased medical legend had just left the store on his way to the emergency room as is attending when the victims are brought in minutes later. None of them survive.
The novel unfolds in sections named by character. Each person's life just before and in the week or so after the shooting is explored intermittantly with italicized descriptions of their experience of the shooting. The reader never gets the full picture of why each person was there and what they saw until the end of the novel. That's because the novel is about what it does to them. How do these completely disparate people react in the face of this tragedy and what about their lives to then led them to those reactions?
At first all we know is Anne found God; Jimmy went mute; Charlie ran; and Carla, at first, seems to be holding it together. What slowly unfolds is far more complicated. The teenagers have a secret and Anne deals with it by preaching the good word. Jimmy, afraid to speak lest he tells, refuses to speak at all. Charlie, feeling lucky, runs to Vegas capitalize on that luck and finally make a difference for his young family. Carla slowly loses her hold on her life and her small child, and finally, Dr. Laraby risks everything trying to atone for his failures in the operating room.
The pace of the novel is great. It moves you along, if not pulling you sometimes. The exploration of the psychological toll on each of these characters is equally riveting. How does one deal with jealousy in the aftermath of tragic events? How horrible is it to realize there is some possible gain to be had from having been there? These questions are dealt with contextually - not just as the result of one event. For instance, when the unpopular girl at school is suddenly a celebratory because her father didn't survive the shooting but she did, what does that do to a teenager? How is she suppose to process that? How is her mother?
Freirich does amazing work with each of the survivors and their post trauma pathos. He wonderfully manages to not tie up every loose end, which is entirely satisfying in this case.
The Story Sisters - Alice Hoffman
There is something insidious at the heart of all faerie tales. That's part of their appeal. In The Story Sisters Hoffman gives us three beautiful daughters living with their single mother in Long Island. The eldest Daughter Elv, has invented, for her two younger sisters, a magical world so intense that they speak their own language. They long for this world over the one in which they live daily. In their faerie tale, buried in the woods in a secret land is where all the good in the world exists. Except that, their real life ain't so bad either. The girls grandparents live pretty well in Manhattan, and they reap the benefits of wealthy benefactors. Not only that, grandma also keeps a place in Paris where the girls go each Spring. Their lives are filled with the kind of parties and events of princesses. In addition, as I mentioned, the girls are each extraordinarily beautiful and accomplished. Both worlds would seem to be a fairy tale. Except...
Semi, not-really spoiler
The underside of the fairy tale is hinted at in the opening of the story, and it's not good. The youngest sister is almost snatched on afternoon walking home from school, her older sister intervenes only to be snatched herself. The details aren't necessarily spelled out, but your imagination will fill in those gaps pretty easily. The middle sister, having been no where nearby when the events took place, has no idea. Claudine, the youngest, stays on the spot where Elv was snatched until miraculously she returns and they rush home together. Elv and Claudine keep there horrible secret for the entirety of the novel, never even speaking of it among themselves.
As adolescence kicks in, Elv becomes more and more rebellious: wearing black, keeping all hours, and having sex. Her mother loses total control over her monster of a teenager, who wreaks irreparable damage on the family, and extreme measures are eventually taken. Elv is locked away in an institution. At the institution, she meets a prince, who is anything but. They spiral together to rock bottom. Meanwhile, Elv's remaining family members do what the can to recover from the events that lead to Elv's incarceration. The family is broken and although there is a suggestion at the end that they are finding their way back there is along road to go.
Hoffman is brilliant, as always, in moments. Tying details about the girls' young life to tales from their faerie world informed - you eventually learn - by Elv's experience during the day she was lost to them. Those details become almost excruciating. The problem is, ultimately, the novel, intentionally or not, is such a heart wrenching illustration of how children get lost and more importantly how grown ups fail them that all the beautiful language can't save it from the ick. Faerie tales have always been about teaching a lesson, told by grown ups, to help children to understand things. This novel is a faerie tale in reverse, except none of the grown ups were listening and that failure eradicates much of the beauty of the novel for this reader.
Semi, not-really spoiler
The underside of the fairy tale is hinted at in the opening of the story, and it's not good. The youngest sister is almost snatched on afternoon walking home from school, her older sister intervenes only to be snatched herself. The details aren't necessarily spelled out, but your imagination will fill in those gaps pretty easily. The middle sister, having been no where nearby when the events took place, has no idea. Claudine, the youngest, stays on the spot where Elv was snatched until miraculously she returns and they rush home together. Elv and Claudine keep there horrible secret for the entirety of the novel, never even speaking of it among themselves.
As adolescence kicks in, Elv becomes more and more rebellious: wearing black, keeping all hours, and having sex. Her mother loses total control over her monster of a teenager, who wreaks irreparable damage on the family, and extreme measures are eventually taken. Elv is locked away in an institution. At the institution, she meets a prince, who is anything but. They spiral together to rock bottom. Meanwhile, Elv's remaining family members do what the can to recover from the events that lead to Elv's incarceration. The family is broken and although there is a suggestion at the end that they are finding their way back there is along road to go.
Hoffman is brilliant, as always, in moments. Tying details about the girls' young life to tales from their faerie world informed - you eventually learn - by Elv's experience during the day she was lost to them. Those details become almost excruciating. The problem is, ultimately, the novel, intentionally or not, is such a heart wrenching illustration of how children get lost and more importantly how grown ups fail them that all the beautiful language can't save it from the ick. Faerie tales have always been about teaching a lesson, told by grown ups, to help children to understand things. This novel is a faerie tale in reverse, except none of the grown ups were listening and that failure eradicates much of the beauty of the novel for this reader.
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