The float test A novel

Review by Booklist Review

Strong (Flight, 2022) maintains her position as queen of the quietly devastating novel with her latest offering. The Kenner siblings are struggling. Jenn is drowning under her familial obligations. Fred is a writer who can't write. George is caught between a cheating wife and a dishonest boss. And Judith, our narrator, is losing on two fronts, motherhood and her career. Brought together by their mother's sudden death, the Kenners could lean on each other if only they could exhume and examine the secrets and lies that have torn them apart. Strong is very adept at extracting and considering the minute details that create and destroy relationships. The setting in a humid Florida summer increases the tension. Then add Judith as an unreliable narrator, and readers are gifted with a kind of literary puzzle in which one has the task of untangling the highs and lows of each relationship to determine where it all went wrong for this family. The Float Test is a novel readers will become fully engaged with.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In the remarkable latest from Strong (Want), a grieving family's reunion provides a stage for conflicts over who has the right to tell another person's story. Jude Kenner, a corporate lawyer, returns from New York City to her hometown in Florida after her mother's death, dreading the reunion with her three siblings. There's Jenn, the bossy oldest sister and mother of six; middle sister Fred, a novelist with whom Jude isn't on speaking terms (the details of their rift come out later); and the youngest, George, a trader who's separated from his wife. When Fred finds a gun in their mother's nightstand, a Chekhovian hint of danger enters the narrative. Jude soon retreats to New York, not disclosing to her siblings that she's been fired from her job, while the other three stay behind. Jude, who narrates, takes the same liberties a novelist would to delve into her siblings' lives ("A lot of what I'm saying here I found out later; the rest, as Fred would say, I've imagined my way into because why not"). Not only does the story yield a fascinating meditation on the nature of fiction, but it exhibits profound empathy for each of the characters. This is Strong's best yet. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (Apr.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

In the wake of their mother's death, a Florida family regroups. Strong's fourth novel, set over two recent summer months in a wealthy area of Florida, is defined by an unusual decision: The third-oldest of the four Kenner siblings, Jude, is its omniscient narrator. At one point, there is a parenthetical acknowledgement of how weird this is: "A lot of what I'm saying here I found out later; the rest, as Fred would say, I'veimagined my way into, because why not." The reason Fred, short for Winnifred, would say this is that she, the second child, is the writer in the family, and her published books have been the source of difficulty and estrangement. With the story she tells here, Jude is effectively taking back the narrative, describing Fred's (and everyone else's) experiences in Florida so intimately that one has to keep reminding oneself that this is Jude's story and trying to recall which woman goes with which husband or ex-husband, etc., and that Jude is largely offstage in New York. As the novel opens, the children's mother has had a stroke while running and died two days later. Jude and her youngest sibling, George, come to town for the funeral; George remains at their parents' house for the rest of the novel. One of the things Jude "found out later" is why he didn't want to go home to Houston. Another such thing is that at the "party that was not a party" after the funeral, Fred found a gun in their mother's dresser drawer. The story of this gun, both in the past and the present, is the closest thing the novel has to a throughline, and the suspicion that it must at some point be discharged proves true. Every one of the many characters, including the dead mother, has backstories and subplots and friends and associates. Threaded through it all is bad news about the Floridian landscape and climate that plays little role in the plot. An abundance of good writing and interesting storylines and environmental information, but not much to tie it together. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---