From Jane Hamilton, author of the beloved New York Times bestsellers A Map of the World and The Book of Ruth, comes a warmly humorous, poignant novel about a young man, his mother's e-mail, and the often surprising path of infidelity.
Henry Shaw, a high school senior, is about as comfortable with his family as any seventeen-year-old can be. His father, Kevin, teaches history with a decidedly socialist tinge at the Chicago private school Henry and his sister attend. His mother, Beth, who plays the piano in a group specializing in antique music, is a loving, attentive wife and parent. Henry even accepts the offbeat behavior of his thirteen-year-old sister, Elvira, who is obsessed with Civil War reenactments and insists on dressing in handmade Union uniforms at inopportune times.
When he stumbles on his mother's e-mail account, however, Henry realizes that all is not as it seems. There, under the name Liza38, a name that Henry innocently established for her, is undeniable evidence that his mother is having an affair with one Richard Polloco, a violin maker and unlikely paramour who nonetheless has a very appealing way with words and a romantic spirit that, in Henry's estimation, his own father woefully lacks.
Against his better judgment, Henry charts the progress of his mother's infatuation, her feelings of euphoria, of guilt, and of profound, touching confusion. His knowledge of Beth's secret life colors his own tentative explorations of love and sex with the ephemeral Lily, and casts a new light on the arguments - usually focused on Elvira - in which his parents regularly indulge. Over the course of his final year of high school, Henry observes each member of the family, trying to anticipate when they will find out about the infidelity and what the knowledge will mean to each of them.
Henry's observations, set down ten years after that fateful year, are much more than the "old story" of adultery his mother deemed her affair to be. With her inimitable grace and compassion, Jane Hamilton has created a novel full of gentle humor and rich insights into the nature of love and the deep, mysterious bonds that hold families together.
New York Times
...lovely, resonant...there will be much to discuss about the haunting if arbitrary way that Ms. Hamilton makes past and present, love and war, loyalty and treachery all intersect.
Library Journal
This warm, wise, and often very funny book is a worthy successor to the acclaimed Map of the World and is recommended for all fiction collections.
Kirkus Reviews
The mysteries at the core of an adolescent boy's being are placed in a tender, precious light in Hamilton's latest triumph which also poignantly portrays a mother torn between a lover's embrace and the family she's long called her own.
Publisher's Weekly
In a miracle of empathy, Hamilton manages to grant psychological validity to all the members of this ordinary-seeming but emotionally distracted family, and to strike the reader's heart with her tender evocation of both human fallibility and our ability to recover from heartbreaking choices.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Lacey, Librarian This book is awful! I chose this for a bookclub read and was very disappointed. I had to force myself to finish it. The author, a woman, does a poor job of writing from a 17 year old boy's perspective. The writing is slow paced and disjointed. We spent the entire... Read More
Rated of 5
by Linda
This was a riviting read - I could relate to it completely - I could not put it down. When, like I have, moved around alot, email is my touchstone to the rest of the world: my friends. I would rather my car break down or my phone go off-line than... Read More
Jerome, a young artist on a remote island retreat, discovers the body of an old man, Andrew Woodman, frozen in the ice. One year after the body is discovered, Sylvia Bradley – a withdrawn, sheltered woman whose secret affair with Andrew changed her world forever – decides to learn more about her lover’s mysterious disappearance....
A stunning novel, set in a small town during the Nixon era and today, about America and family, politics and tragedy, and the impact of fate on a young man’s life.
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