Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2018
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A wise and lyrical debut novel about a new widower confronting the truth about his long marriage.
After the sudden death of his wife, Maida, Gene is haunted by the fear that their marriage was not all it appeared to be. Alongside Ed and Gayle Donnelly, friends since college days, he tries to resurrect happy memories of the times the two couples shared, raising their children in a small New Hampshire town and vacationing together at a lake house every summer. Meanwhile, his daughter, Dary, challenges not only his happy version of the past but also his view of Maida. As a long-standing rift between them deepens, Gene starts to understand how unknown his daughter is to him - and how enigmatic his wife was as well. And a lingering suspicion seizes his mind that could upend everything he thought he knew.
Katharine Dion's assured debut moves seamlessly between Gene's present-day journey and the long history of a marriage and friendship. Rich and wonderfully alive, The Dependents is the most moving kind of drama, an intimate glance into the expanse of family life and the way we must all eventually bridge the chasm between what we want to believe and what we know to be true.
"Starred Review. Dion's debut novel is a seamless exploration of Gene's past life, long marriage, deep friendships, and present-day struggles through loss and understanding. Her rich and nuanced characters combine with her exceptional writing to create a powerful and intimate look at the inner workings of one family." - Booklist
"[A] fine debut...The narrative travels back and forth through Gene's life as he tries to pick apart the performative from the heartfelt acts of love. The result is a beautiful story of communication and commitment." - Publishers Weekly
"Promising young novelist Dion portrays a lonely older man in a sympathetic, believable way in this insightful story about friendship, love, and loss." - Library Journal
"Intelligent and profound but quite depressing." - Kirkus
"The Dependents is a fine debut, full of intelligent writing and free of the canine desire to please that afflicts so much contemporary writing. And yet this book pleases on many levels. I will look for Ms. Dion's work in the future." - Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Middlesex and The Marriage Plot
"This richly textured family drama is a marvel of a novel...Its cumulative power comes from the depth of Dion's entry into her characters and the vividness of her prose that brings them to life. The Dependents is one of the best debut novels I've read in years, and a very auspicious one. - Adam Haslett, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Imagine Me Gone
"The Dependents is a brilliant and absorbing novel that's not afraid to ask the big questions: What is the source of happiness? How do we recover from loss? How much do we really know about the people we love? This is a masterly portrait of grief written by an author of enormous sensitivity and insight. - Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix
"The Dependents is a big book, one that grapples with important questions through generations...Dion's intelligence and ambition truly shine through sentence after sentence." - Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women
This information about The Dependents was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Katharine Dion was born in Oakland, California. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. She has also been a MacDowell Fellow and the recipient of a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She lives in Berkeley, California. The Dependents is her first novel.
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