Critics' Opinion:
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Published Jun 2009
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
It's the fall of 2007, and Emily Ascher should be celebrating: she just got engaged to the man she loves, her job is moving in new and fulfilling directions, and her once-rocky relationship with her mother, Laura, has finally mellowed into an easy give-and-take. But with the promise of new love settling into old comes a difficult look at how her family has been torn apart in the many years since her brother died. Her parents have long since divorced, and her father, Joe, a famous actor and playwright who has been paralyzed with grief since the tragedy, carries the blame for his son’s death—but what really happened on that winter night? Why has he been unable to clear his name, or even discuss that evening with Laura and Emily?
As spring looms—and with it Emily’s wedding in the Berkshires and an unveiling of Joe’s new play—each Ascher begins to reevaluate the events of long ago, finally facing the truth of his or her own culpability in them. Moving between past and present over the course of sixteen years, The Embers is a skillfully structured debut novel of buried secrets and deep regrets that crush a family while bonding its members irrevocably.
"[A] riveting narrative ... Bass's excavation of a complex familial labyrinth is an elegant testament to the beautiful mess that is family." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Bass's well-paced, nuanced family saga is as engrossing as it is empathetic." - Library Journal
"A well-intentioned but flawed debut." - Booklist
"The Embers is the sort of novel I'm always hoping to find—from the first page, I was transfixed. Hyatt Bass’s lyrical story of a broken family is, in a word, stunning. The Embers is the best book I’ve read in a long time." - Amanda Eyre Ward, author of How to Be Lost and Love Stories in This Town
This information about The Embers 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.
Hyatt Bass wrote, directed, and produced the film 75 Degrees in
July, which was released in 2006. She is also the author of The Embers.
Visit Bass at http://hyattbass.com/
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