Customer Reviews

What We Remember

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read prolifically and often take no notice of the cover or the title and so it was not for either reason that I picked this novel out of the library apart from it was in the gay reading section and I had not heard of the author. Sometimes it is fun to read a light hearted whodunnit? And this is, albeit a very contrived whodunnit, an easy read. It was after finishing the book, and looking again at the cover I was incensed. My biggest gripe about the book and why I will be reluctant to read anything published by Kensington Books again (No publishers votes for me on this one!!) is the farcically misleading cover. I defy anyone who bothers to wade through this book to explain just what in the narrative the front cover relates to. Anyone who answers Cory has all too vivid an imagination! Furthermore, the blurb on the back cover is nearly as contrived as the spidered web of narrative. There were publishing errors such as when the narrative referred to Nate when it should have been James and other poor editting which downgraded the obvious effort the author made to entertain. Sadly not a book to recommend.

A quiet evening in Seattle, with his attorney girlfriend, Charly, is interrupted for James McCloud by a call from his sister Celeste, back home in upstate New York. Seems that the body of his father, long believed to have committed suicide, has been found, and indications are that he was murdered. James flies home to help Celeste, his gay younger brother Billy, and their mother, Ada, at this difficult time.

Circumstantial evidence found with the body results in his being arrested as the primary suspect, by Celeste's husband, Nate, the town sheriff. As the family ponders the scary possibility that James, who had his differences with his father but never showed any violence before, might have actually committed the murder, Charly flies to New York to help in James' defense. She finds a very unusual family, with close ties to the family of the father's best friend, and many of them harboring secrets they assumed wouldn't hurt anyone, but which together conspire to keep the crime from being solved.

One of my absolute favorite authors, Michael Thomas Ford has an impressive stack of diverse best sellers in several genres and on a variety of topics. This mystery/character study of a small town family is among his best. Told effectively in flashback narratives by the different characters, it provides a life lesson on how secrets and "white lies," no matter how well-meaning, can come back to haunt you later. Excellent, captivating read, which I give five bright stars out of five, in a dark country sky.

I enjoyed this book on several levels. As a mystery, it's well plotted and engaging. As a portrait of a family coming to terms with its past, it's completely convincing and thought-provoking. As a literary work, it's masterful. It's not often I read something and think, "Gee, I wish I'd written that," but in this case I found myself thinking it constantly. This is a first class read.

I've read about everything by this author, and always enjoy his work. This is probably his first real mystery, and he kept me guessing right up to the end. In a bit of a surprise move, the gay character is neither the star of the story nor particularly sympathetic. This is a tale of family dynamics and small town living. I appreciated this quick and entertaining read.

Michael Travis Jasper, author of the novel, "To Be Chosen"

Back Where He Started: A Novel, To Be Chosen

Picture if Anne Tyler had decided to write a murder mystery and go from there. A compelling, well thought out drama about murder in two intertwined households that demonstrates that everyone has their secrets to keep. Without giving too much away, a man returns home after his father's body is found years after his suicide note turns up. However, the way the father;s body is found indicates that it was not a suicide. Along the way, we follow how the characters interact with one another, followed consequently be the actual events as they occured, keeping us bouncing between 1991 and 1983. One of my favorite concepts in Ford's book is how he messes with expectations. Another author would have made the characters more "fabulous" to go along with the soap opera aspects of the story, but instead Ford gives us real characters at the kitchen table. It reminded me of Looking For It in that Ford defied expectation by writing a book about gay friends finding love (which usually take place in locales such as Miami or LA) and dropping them into the snow belt in midwinter without any of the usual trappings. Rapidly he is becoming one of my favorite authors.

I have to give Ford props for leaving the gay lit ghetto to write a largely mainstream novel that mixes mystery with family melodrama. The catalyst for the story involves the re-opening of a murder case that ultimately involves two long intertwined families in a small Upstate New York town. The dysfunctional family drama includes semi-incest, murder, unwed pregnancy, and any number of elements familiar to soap opera viewers (although thankfully not amnesia or alien abduction). There is a gay character who is variously a screw-up and the most insightful member of the cast, a metamorphosis that's a little too cut and dry. The story starts slowly and, initially, I had difficulty maintaining an interest, but by the second third of the book, the story moves swiftly and the various intersecting stories among the characters begin coming together. The later chapters tie together the plot with varying degrees of plausibility. The "surprise" turns in the story aren't huge surprises, although they help explain why Ford chose a rather quick and unintuitive plot turn earlier in the book. I found myself having somewhat disappointed by the time all was resolved although the book had managed to keep my interest well enough to finish it.

As mysteries go, this one is not bad, but far from great. As family drama, I would say the same. Ford's earlier books have their devoted fans, but beyond his collected columns, I probably found them as mixed as this one.

I've read four other books by Ford. I thought "Last Summer" and "Looking For It" were great. Well written and quickly paced. Then came "Full Circle" which was boring and incredibly cliched and then "Changing Tides" which was just terrible and poorly written. This one falls somewhere in between.

In the 1980s policeman Daniel McCloud disappears. His wife Ada gets a note from him saying he had cancer and was going away to commit suicide. Eight years later his body is discovered buried...and he had been shot. His son James comes under suspicion and is arrested. His girlfriend Charly comes to town to help him. She discovers the McCloud family is heavily dysfunctional. There's Billy--James' brother--who is gay, an alcoholic and hooked on drugs. Celeste is James' sister and she's very negative and always suspicious. She's married to Nate, who has Daniels old job, and no one likes him. Slowly secrets come out and things begin to unravel and Billy finds himself dealing with all the drama.

The basic story is good and the mystery is absorbing but this book goes on far too long and is structured in an annoying way. The chapters keep skipping back and forth between 1983 and 1991. I realize WHY it's written like that (so we slowly discover things) but I found it hard to keep track of the characters. Also the POV is changing rapidly. First you think this is about James then he virtually disappears. Charly is up next then SHE disappears and Billy becomes the main character! Sometimes chapters started and I didn't know WHO we were hearing. Also there are a LOT of looonngggg passages (pages actually) where we read every single thing the charactyer is thinking. Half the time it's repeating information we already know or has nothing to do with the story at all! Towards the end I just started skimming those and found I wasn't missing a thing. Ford definetely needs a good editor. It all leads to a happy ending that I didn't buy for a second. Still I DID read the whole thing and, when it stuck to the story, it was very good. So not his best but not his worst.

Michael Thomas Ford has earned a loyal following for his excellent novels: he is fine storyteller, knows how to pace a tale to keep the reader involved, and creates characters with whom the reader can embrace as memorable people. His ability to remain in the top group of the writers who create successful gay-themed stories that stand solidly as excellent literature is well established, and while not all of his output is along these lines, his most popular books are (Last Summer, Looking for It, Full Circle, Changing Tides, Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me, That's Mr. Faggot to You, It's Not Mean If It's True, etc.) In WHAT WE REMEMBER Ford seems to be branching out into novels that will appeal to a larger audience in that he explores the arena of women's fantasies and private moments and the intrigues of heterosexual liaisons along with the tired and true dissection of dysfunctional families. He adds to this what is meant to be a puzzling murder mystery and the technique of writing that alternates contemporary time in alternating chapters with events eight years prior to explain the gradual unfolding of family secrets and realities. Some of this works, some doesn't.

Simply stated WHAT WE REMEMBER is a tale of two families in a small town whose lives are intertwined with love/hate relationships, suicide/murder, jealousy, misplaced and reconnected love and other diversions. The problem with this novel is that the characters are almost without exception not people about whom we care, making the strange developments less than convincing. Of note, the only character who does manage to maintain our interest is Billy, the youngest brother of the main family who just happens to be gay. But even Billy is a misfit and stretches the tolerance of the family as well as the patience of the reader until the last few chapters. Any reader who pays attention to the rather obvious hints stated from the beginning of this book will have figured out the mysteries that end the book. It may not be Michael Thomas Ford at his best, but it still is a good read and one that keeps the reader involved in spite of the weaknesses. Grady Harp, December 09

A bleak story of animosities and buried secrets, and the power of memory to influence a family's life, What We Remember examines the lives of the McCloud family. It is 1991 and the body of the Daniel McCloud has been found after he suddenly vanished back eight years previously, and leaving behind a suicide note telling his wife Ada he had cancer. Ada is understandably shattered at the discovery, along with her three children James, Celeste, and the youngest child Billy.

For years the family have tried to navigate the roads of temperance, while James has left the area and moved on and now lives with his girlfriend Charly, Celeste has adopted a more conventional life in Cold Falls, mothering two children and marrying Nate Derry, the cocky town sheriff who has long-buried ties to the McClouds. Only Billy seems to be drifting, his shattered life marred by substance abuse, but it is perhaps Billy who holds the key to what happened to his father.

While Nate constantly reminds Billy of his shortcomings and resents his sexuality, nonetheless, it is also Nate who accuses James of murdering his father when a bejeweled ring that once belonged to James is discovered with the body. When Charly comes to Cold Falls to help prove James' innocence, Michael Thomas Ford adds layer upon layer of drama to this story as Charly's investigations causes a dark secret to unfurl and the revelation that Nancy, a childhood friend of the boys, was secretly sent away to Maine after she was discovered to be pregnant.

Ford beautifully balances the tender scenes of family intimacy, particularly Ada and her determination to keep her children safe from the preying eyes of the past, with the wider mystery as his novel accelerates forwards, and allegations of rape reinforce the unsaid tension between Nate and James and Billy. It is these implicit animosities, long built up that have their seed in the tragic events of 1982. The mystery behind Daniel's death is finally revealed and in the process his family learn some painful insights, along with all of the angst that must come with the demands of family and the need to belong.

What We Remember signifies Ford's maturing as a writer and he perfectly captures the hormone-driven frustrations of a generation of teenagers as they're thrust amid the uniquely the stifling mores of suburbia, and also the complicated layers of family and friendship that are eventually torn apart by the endless passage of time. Mike Leonard May 09.

Back in 2006 in a review of Full Circle I said that author Michael Thomas Ford was bound to be discovered by the mainstream literary cognoscenti. With What We Remember this has happened. The reviews on the dust jacket are from Publishers Weekly and Entertainment Weekly, not the Advocate or the Washington Blade. Although it has a gay element and graphic gay sex, What We Remember is being marketed as a story of families and rightfully so.

Dan McCloud is the sheriff of Cold Falls, New York. His sudden disappearance in 1983 is thought to be explained by a suicide note his wife receives in the mail. In 1991 his body is discovered in such a way that his death could not have been a suicide. Son James, the responsible offspring, returns to Cold Falls to console his mother, Ada, and reunite with sister Celeste, the wild one, and brother Billy, the black sheep. What follows is a very cleverly woven tale of events in both 1983 and 1991 that casts suspicions on nearly all of the characters. The story is terrific.

There are, however, some minor problems. At first, the bouncing back and forth between '83 and '91 like a ping pong made me dizzy, but eventually I got into the rythm and it stopped bothering me. Not explained is how Nate managed to become sheriff at the tender age of 22 or 23. And the Cold Falls sheriff's department is said to be receiving a lot of e-mail in 1991. Not likely. There is a reference to reality television programming, which had not yet been introduced in 1991. And, finally, the dust jacket illustration makes no sense to me. A long-haired father with two kids standing next to a pier is nowhere in the story. But, again, minor stuff.

Michael Thomas Ford can take his place as one of the great contemporary American novelists. What We Remember may be the breakthrough that takes him to the best seller list.