Split Estate: A Novel [Hardcover]

Charlotte Bacon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2008

A wonderfully tough-minded novel from a master dramatist of the poignant, interwoven crises of modern life

 

Split Estate opens with devastating scenes of a family at a horrific juncture: the wife of Arthur King and mother of his two teenage children, Celia and Cam, has recently committed suicide, jumping out the window of their New York apartment.

Charlotte Bacon's luminous new novel tracks the King family as it struggles to survive in the months that follow. Arthur, an attractive lawyer who has always been edgy about city dwelling, decides they must move back to his home state of Wyoming for the summer, where his mother, Lucy, welcomes her orphaned grandchildren and her wounded son to her much loved but diminished ranch. From the perspective of each protagonist in turn, we watch shy Celia and handsome Cam, distraught Arthur and brave Lucy face themselves and their future in a Wyoming that is beautiful and consoling, yet beset by new threats of destruction.

A split estate is a form of real property in which the mineral rights have been split off from the other land uses to which the owner is entitled. This has transformed the landscape the Kings love and jeopardized Lucy's independence. In truth, the Kings' very lives have become split estates--for Celia, on the brink of adolescence; for Cam, approaching independent adulthood; for Arthur, divided between the West and New York. Split Estate is a heartrending depiction of an American family sturggling to deal with irrevocable damage to their lives and surroundings.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Bacon's beautifully wrought, precisely observed and haunting latest follows a New York family struggling to survive a suicide. When Laura King jumps from the window of her Upper East Side Manhattan apartment, she leaves her husband, Arthur, and her teenage children, Cam and Celia, in emotional limbo. Seeking solace and a change of scene, Arthur takes the children cross-country to his mother, Lucy's, home in Callendar, Wyo. With pitch-perfect command of distinctive voices, Bacon (There Is Room for You; Last Geography) divides the narrative between Arthur, Celia and Cam, and Lucy King, all of whom feel guilt and anger about Laura's suicide. A major plot strand relates to the issue of mineral and drilling rights under the ranch land and gives the novel its title: each of the Kings strike out in self-destructive ways, related and unrelated to proposed methane wells, leading to a shocking denouement. Bacon captures the stark Wyoming landscape and Western ethos, and the power of buried secrets. She masterfully portrays complex family relationships in the wake of irrevocable damage. (Feb.)
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From The New Yorker

Laura King’s suicide—she jumps from a window—unmoors her family from their New York life. When a second mother of their acquaintance jumps, Arthur King hastily moves his adolescent children, Cam and Celia, back to the Wyoming ranch where he grew up; there, he thinks, it will be easier to keep them safe. His tough-minded mother, Lucy, a retired schoolteacher, sees more clearly that her shattered son has brought his damage with him. In the rural West, the costs of hanging on to what you have are also rising; Lucy is surrounded by ranchers who have sold off the mineral rights to the land their animals graze. Bacon’s examination of Laura’s legacy is densely particular and poetic—Cam is haunted by his mother’s bedroom window, that "tranquil rectangle of blameless air"; Celia registers a runaway horse as a "streak of need"—and yet we are never allowed to forget the harsh truths that drive her story forward: survival is never guaranteed, and fighting for it is optional.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374281831
• ISBN-13: 978-0374281830
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,159,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stark and haunting examination of grief, March 16, 2009

By 

Allison M. Campbell - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Split Estate: A Novel (Paperback)

Split Estate is a quietly powerful novel that examines the grief of the King family some time after Laura King jumped from their tenth-story New York City apartment, leaving no explanation. Arthur and his two teenaged children, Cam and Celia, are individually and collectively damaged by the suicide, and in desperation, Arthur drags Cam and Celia to live temporarily with his mother, Lucy, in his hometown of Callendar, Wyoming. Laura's memory isn't banished by a mere change of scene, however, and as the Kings struggle to relate to each other and adjust to life in Wyoming, each has grief and anger to contend with. The novel's title refers to the mining in Wyoming; as the ranching way of life has become harder and harder to sustain, families have begun to sell off the rights to mine their land, resulting in a split estate. Likewise, Laura still possesses the underlying foundation of the King family, and the question is whether they can either reclaim what they've lost or move on to lives without it.

Bacon's spare, precise prose illuminated with poetic turns of phrase ably compares the brutal reality of Wyoming with that of grief. As the Kings settle into their lives, there is hope that the change of scene might save what is left of the family. Chapters alternate between Arthur, Celia, Lucy, and Cam, but because the grief is collective as well as individual, this doesn't result in a lack of continuity; rather, the story is more nuanced and developed for the varied points of view. Each person has his secrets that are slowly revealed to the reader, and the ending is both shocking and inevitable. This is a beautiful, heartbreaking novel of despair, family, and Western life.

3.0 out of 5 stars family drama in Wyoming, October 28, 2011

By 

Lifelong Reader (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Split Estate: A Novel (Paperback)

I read this after loving There is Room for You. In between the two I had read Annie Proulx's The Shipping News (which I also loved.) I guess if you don't mind really super depressing books with not very much redemption than you will enjoy this. Split Estate shares the excellent description of characters and scenes within a specific geography like The Shipping News, but lacks even a small amount of redemption I found in There is Room for You. I found myself skimming the last 60 pages just to get to the end.

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written; totally absorbing, July 17, 2009

By 

I. Yeates (Saratoga Springs NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Split Estate: A Novel (Paperback)

How can a family reconcile their studied indifference to a deeply disturbed woman who provides daily sustenance to their lives? How will a husband, a son, and a daughter recover from her final self-destructive action: his wife and their mother jumping out of a window in the New York City apartment where they shared the seasons of their lives?
Overwhelmed by his own loss, Arthur is ill fit to render care and compassion to his teenage children, bewildered and confused in their efforts to decipher why fate has inflicted such a tragedy upon them.
Unable to envision New York City as a suitable place for his family to heal, Arthur packs up his family and drives to the small town of Callendar, Wyoming, his mother's ranch, his beginnings.
There we meet the matriarch, Lucy King, who manages her dwindling ranch, and wonders whether this new arrangement with her son and her grandchildren will provide the solace, they sorely need. As ranching loses its luster, and neighbors sell mineral rights to their land, Lucy struggles with her own personal demons.
The personal resolution of each character's conflicts is a study in human nature and endurance at its best.
Charlotte Bacon persuasively captures each character's persona as they undertake essential daily struggles and in so doing, discover the inner strength vital to advance beyond grief, and move forward.