Review by Booklist Review
Kentucky, 1933. Thirteen-year-old Carol's vile, drunken father runs out of money in a card game and bets his daughter instead of cash. He loses. As a result, it is agreed that Carol must live on the weekends with the winner, a man named Travis Curt; that's long enough for her to become pregnant by him and then to run away with no destination in mind--just . . . away. Flash forward to 1986 and a 13-year-old boy named Samuel; his best friend, Eddie; his parents; and his Uncle Rusty, who has the mind of a six-year-old. From this point, the novel moves backward and forward in time until the two stories converge. The result is a beautifully realized, multigenerational family novel that is exceptional for its memorable, fully developed characters. Readers will become emotionally invested in these quotidian, sometimes sad, lives, watching as Carol and Samuel come of age. Their story is beautifully written, and its mood haunting, as readers are invited to consider the meaning of family and the power of memory.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Van Booy (The Sadness of Beautiful Things) follows two generations of a rural Kentucky family across nearly a century in his fractured, melancholic latest. In 1933, drunk widower Clay wagers and loses his 13-year-old daughter, Carol, in a poker game. She moves in with Travis Curt to serve as domestic help, and he rapes and impregnates her. Carol runs away and finds refuge with Bessie, a Black woman who performs illegal abortions. Over the next decade, Carol, Bessie, and housekeeper Martha raise Carol's developmentally disabled son, Rusty, and eventually Carol and Rusty move out, and Carol finds work as a housekeeper for a former patient of Bessie's. Van Booy intercuts Carol's story with that of her grandson Samuel, starting in 1986 when, at age 13, one of Samuel's eyes is permanently damaged while playing with a friend. Later, after a bad first semester of college, Samuel drops out and starts drinking heavily. He drifts through his adult life, winning a large poker tournament and dating a waitress until he's ready to settle down. The alternating viewpoints and episodic narration sometimes come at the expense of emotional depth and clarity of purpose. Themes of resilience and tragedy come through, though readers will be left wondering about some of the author's choices. Agent: Susanna Lea, Susanna Lea Assoc. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Misfortunes and strokes of luck recur within a family over the course of generations, and sometimes, the universe connives to make the connecting thread hard to follow. Drawing on themes from children's literature, Shakespeare, and T.S. Eliot, Van Booy traces the circular paths through time followed by one family in a series of moody--probably black-and-white--snapshots. As an uneducated young teen in impoverished 1930s rural Kentucky, Carol lives a life of privation and meanness with her widowed father. Escape of a sort comes when she is wagered away to her father's poker buddy. But harm continues to accrue to Carol in countless brutal ways until her rescue by a trio of "outsiders." Van Booy's often poetic yet spare recounting of the events set in motion after Carol's relinquishment covers the course of three generations in Carol's family with nods to contemporary trends as well as an acknowledgement of the inevitability of the seasons of a lifetime. Cycles of racism, violence, and misogyny are disrupted by the grace-filled actions of friends, relatives, and strangers all making their ways through the same inhospitable environment. In the words of one of Carol's unlikely saviors, everyone reaches a crossroads in life, where they can choose to take another way. The same sage observes that what you give in the world will be returned and what you take will be taken; these lessons, shared with Carol on a miserable ride to redemption, inform just about every action and interaction between and among the myriad characters Van Booy sets loose on the slowly revolving stage of rural, karmic destiny. This well-crafted and often serendipitous saga recognizes that family cannot be escaped but can be expanded. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
