I had been seeing really good reviews about this book that came out last year and have seen it on the library book shelf so finally decided to check it out. Great read! Now, it's not as good as the one I finished a couple weeks ago (The Berry Pickers) but it's right up there. It's an excellent look at family relationships particularly children being raised by a widowed dad who was often emotionally unavailable).
STORY SUMMARY
Ken Gardner was just 3 years old when his precious mommy died shortly after giving birth to his baby sister, Abigail (Abby). Both children have been haunted by her absence ever since.
Adam, their father, is a world renowned, and extremely smart, oceanographer specializing in the "language" of humpback whales. He has a remote home in the Wellfleet Woods on Cape Cod where he raised the children mostly by himself.
Abby and Ken have had a complicated attachment to one another and now that they are adults (late 30s/early 40s), their relationship is strained. Yet they are still connected.
Ken is a very wealthy and very successful businessman who has political ambitions. It is 2016 and an election year and the running mates are a woman (Hillary Clinton) and an egotistical buffoon. Ken has a "picture perfect" family: his wife Jenny, who is best friends with Abby...in fact, they were roommates when they were both art students at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). Jenny and Ken have twin girls who are just approaching their teen years: Frannie and Tessa.
Abby is a talented visual artist but she depends on Ken's goodwill, mainly because he owns the studio named Arcadia by their mother Emily when she used it (she was an architect) and now Abby lives and works in the cottage.
Adam is about to turn 70 and he's beginning to look at his own mortality and his fading relevance in his career. He has bipolar disorder and he has always controlled his moods with medication. But....on the cusp of turning 70, he is determined to make one final scientific breakthrough. He has secretly stopped taking his pills and he knows this will upset his chlldren.
Meanwhile, Ken and Abby have their own secrets. And along comes a person named Steph who is married to her wife Toni and just had a baby boy named Jonah. Steph appears in the Gardners lives just as the summer season descends on Cape Cod. Who is she? What is her connection to Ken and Abby? Why is she befriending Adam??
Adam becomes more and more immersed in the whales and the ocean and seems to becoming unraveled.
Abby and Ken are planning a huge birthday party for Adam per his request and they both plan very elaborate, personal gifts for him. Abby is painting a very personal scene depicting her self now as well as she and Ken as children. It's somewhat revealing as to her feelings about being a little girl under Ken's constant watch. Ken is planning on making a to-scale model of a retirement community he is building for his father. Both of these adult children are vying for a spot in their father's heart.
What really happened between Abby and Ken when they were little children? They do both agree on one thing: they have never liked the label their father called them: "little monsters".
MY THOUGHTS
This is a fantastic story and a modern day look and (rather loosely based) example of the Cain and Able story in the Old Testament. (except no one physically dies in this book).
The author clearly knows Cape Cod well and I really enjoyed reading about Chatham, P-town and the surrounding area as, of course, we have been there often over the years as a family and my in-laws have their roots there.
Besides the perfectly described setting, this book has rich character development. Each section (April through October) has chapters that are told in a different voice. Sometimes it is Abby, Ken, Adam, Steph, Jenny. And then there's The Party. It's not confusing at all although there are several characters. The main characters being Adam, Ken, and Abby.
At first I thought "oh no, this is going to be about incest". Nope. Not really. There's a subtlety about that issue but it doesn't go there. ......I don't want to ruin the plot for you, but let's just say Ken was totally fixated on Abby while they were growing up. It's not incest.......but it's also not fully appropriate.....there's a deep psychological issue at play and if I discuss it in this review, it will spoil the plot for you.
Some of the themes in this book appear to be: Bipolar Disorder and the effects of that mental illness; medication overuse/misuse; alcoholism, single parenthood, widowhood, emotional abandonment/neglect; same sex marriage; jealousy, betrayal, adultery, lies, secrets, male chauvinism, dysfunctional families; narcissism, and trying to win a single parent's approval.
This is a deep look at the psychology behind children being raised by a single male parent (Dad) who has a mental illness. It's about jealousy of children and how that affects the adult lives. It's about winning a spot in a father's heart....and their own parenting skills as they grow up and get married and have children. It's a look at a patriarchal society and how things shifted ...or tried to shift....in 2016 and all the angst that year brought to the United States.
I really enjoyed this book although at times I felt like it was spinning out of control and I just had to keep reading far into the night to see what in the world was going to happen at the party.
This is a clean book (no real swearing...or at last not much at all....no explicit s*x scenes).....a super deep look at the family relationships, particularly siblings.
Highly recommend this story!
In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to mature content).
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 9.
2 comments:
Sounds very interesting. Thanks for reviewing. I'll have to look for it at the library!
I have never heard of this book or this author. I haven't been to the library in awhile as my goal this year is to get through books I've actually purchased so this may have to go on a list for next year. .
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