From Publishers Weekly
In this complex, multilayered book, Page (
Accidental Happiness) revisits familiar themes in the story of one family coming to terms with loss and past events. On the morning of the space shuttle
Columbia disaster, Holli Templeton is sick with worry, as NASA milestones have proven to be harbingers of raw, personal events. Her mother was killed in a car accident on the night of the moon landing, and she suffered a miscarriage the same day the
Challenger exploded. Sure enough, as soon as the wreckage of
Columbia clears, Holli finds out that her grandmother, Raine, seems to be losing her grip on reality. Meanwhile Holli's 20-year-old son, Conner, is nursing his chronically ill girlfriend and pondering his future. Complex interactions between Holli, Raine and Holli's difficult stepmother, Georgia, further complicate the situation, and in order to care for her aging grandmother and overwhelmed son, Holli must let go of her long-held resentments and see her family in a new light. Although Page's penchant for flowery description can be distracting, she seamlessly navigates the book's intertwining narratives and presents believable characters, at once imperfect and utterly sympathetic. Both the story's emotional pull and intricate plot twists are sure to seduce new readers.
(May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
In her third character-driven novel, Page delves into the entangled lives of three generations of one slightly dysfunctional family, creating a story full of decades-old resentments, tentative reconciliations, and, ultimately, an optimistic future. Holli Templeton, now living in Manhattan, was raised in Texas by her grandmother Raine after her young mother died, and her father and his second wife and their daughter “made a new family, then forgot to issue her a membership card.” Now divorced, Holli leads a solitary life, more so since her son Conner dropped out of Brown in his sophomore year and hurriedly moved to Texas with his girlfriend, Kilian. Suddenly Holli and Harrison, Conner’s father, are summoned there—to assess both Raine’s possible dementia and her ability to continue living alone and Conner and Kilian’s mysterious crisis. It seems the simultaneously “fierce and fragile” Kilian has cystic fibrosis, something Conner neglected to tell them, and she is pregnant. Page portrays these past and present emotional quagmires with an acutely intuitive eye, drawing the reader into the complicated lives of her sympathetic characters. --Deborah Donovan
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