The Year That Follows [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Scott Lasser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2009

The story of a woman’s search for her brother’s lost son, orphaned in the wake of his sudden death, drives Scott Lasser’s riveting new novel—a work of stunning economy and momentum about a woman’s quest and a family’s longing for wholeness and completion.

Cat is a single mother living in Detroit when her brother is killed in New York, and she sets off in search of his child. Her search is still under way when she gets a call from her father. Sam is eighty and carrying the weight of a secret he has kept from her all her life. He asks Cat to visit him in California, intending to make his peace.

Cat’s journey—toward her father, and her brother’s infant son—and Sam’s journey toward his daughter, his lost son, and a new relationship to both his future and his past are woven into this superbly realized novel about families and the mysteries and ambiguities that inhere in our most primal relations. The result is a deeply stirring work that explores the complexities of home and heritage, and the bonds that even death is powerless to diminish.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A daughter and her father navigate the year that follows September 11, revealing secrets and healing old wounds in this slightly higher-brow Nicholas Sparksian melodrama. Single mother Cat searches for the orphaned child of her brother, Kyle, after Kyle died on 9/11 in one of the towers. Turns out Kyle had confessed to Cat the night before that he believes he is a father, and that the child's mother worked in the World Trade Center. A year after the attack and with no orphan located, Cat's father, Sam, a widowed former military man dying of heart disease, invites Cat to join him in marking the anniversary of Kyle's death. Both Cat and Sam embark on emotional journeys toward each other and reconciliation, and along the way they each find love. The numerous sappy passages don't do any favors for a book with an already maudlin premise. (June)
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Review

Praise for Scott Lasser’s The Year that Follows

“Scott Lasser’s succinct writing underscores the quiet emotional intensity of The Year That Follows his tender novel about the powerful, complicated ties of family. . . . A moving but remarkably unsentimental story.”
—Diane White, Boston Sunday Globe

“There are few books this reviewer is compelled to finish in one sitting, and this was one of them.”
—Henry Bankhead, Library Journal

“Getting to know Lasser’s complex and affecting characters is a profound pleasure, as is his radiant understanding of intimate relationships between parents and children and men and women. The strong, sure current of his magnetizing prose delivers one stunning revelation after another in this sinuous tale of biology-leaping familial connections. Every rinsed-clear sentence carries the unbearable tension of fear-laced hope as Cat struggles toward forgiveness and love, and Sam accepts the painful but affirming collision of loss and joy. ”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

“A taut, masterfully controlled and profoundly moving novel. . . . A novel with barely a wasted word or an emotion that doesn’t ring true.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“I couldn’t put Scott Lasser’s The Year that Follows down. The characters were vivid, and the drama moving. One of the great gifts of the book is that it brings to life a haunting story in a way that is thoroughly uplifting. One of the best novels about loss I’ve ever read.”
—Anita Shreve, author of Testimony and The Pilot’s Wife

“The Year that Follows introduces readers to a cast of flawed, good people struggling to mine meaning from the tragic loss of 9/11 as, step by tentative step, they move toward an altered future. Scott Lasser’s life affirming novel is stirring, poignant, and quietly profound.”
—Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307271196
• ISBN-13: 978-0307271198
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott Lasser is the author of four novels: Battle Creek, All I Could Get, The Year That Follows, and Say Nice Things About Detroit. His non-fiction has appeared in magazines ranging from the New Yorker to Dealmaker Magazine. Lasser has worked for a number of now-bankrupt companies, including General Motors, Lehman Brothers, and Dealmaker Magazine. He splits his time between Colorado and Los Angeles, with regular trips to his hometown of Detroit.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves a Big Following, June 13, 2009

By 

A Rebel Librarian (U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year That Follows (Hardcover)

Scott Lasser's third novel is a charm. I haven't read his first two yet, but they're on my list. The prologue packs a punch: Wall Street broker Kyle tells his sister Cat that he thinks he has an infant son from a relationship with another broker. The next day, both he and the child's mother die in the 9-11 attacks. Cat, a single mother living in Detroit, is determined to find the child with very little information to go on. Meanwhile, her eighty-year-old father is dealing with his own challenges on the West Coast, from blocked arteries to a secret he has kept from his only surviving child for too long. Father and daughter agree to observe the first anniversary of Kyle's death with a Jewish custom, even though neither has practiced the faith for many years - or, in Cat's case, ever.
The empathy with which the two protagonists are treated is impressive, and the story moves at a good pace. Themes of family bonds and second chances are conveyed in a straightforward style that manages to avoid sentimentality.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't miss this deeply moving, masterfully told novel, June 15, 2009

By 

D. Green (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year That Follows (Hardcover)

In his previous books---Battle Creek, and All I Could Get---Scott Lasser proved himself to be one of those rare literary writers who not only has important stories to tell, but who also knows how to tell them. In both of those novels, Lasser offers compelling, flesh-and-blood characters who are not afraid to face the world and fight for what they want and for what they believe in. Lasser explores life-and-death themes---fathers and sons, fear and desire, the compromises we all must make to live in the real world---but does so in stories that rocket forward, barely leaving readers time to catch a breath

The Year That Follows, Lasser's newest, offers all the same pleasures of the previous novels and more. In it, Lasser has compressed a powerful family saga into the confines of a short novel that reads as briskly and effortlessly as a detective mystery.

Set during 'the year that follows' 9/11, the novel tells the story of a family struggling to accept the death of Kyle---son, brother---who dies in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Kyle's father, Sam, determines to properly mourn his son and insists the family observe the anniversary of Kyle's death according to Jewish tradition. He admits this is looking back---but what more can a father nearing the end of his own life do? Kyle's sister, Cat, on the other hand, has committed to looking forward: she has decided to find and possibly raise the child of Kyle and a woman she has never met.

These twin strands make up the main storyline of the novel---but along the way we learn much more about Cat, Sam and what it means not only to be part of a family living through sudden loss, but just how fluid and resilient the definition of family can actually be. Though we barely meet him, the presence of Kyle haunts the book and provides a stunning, deeply felt rendering of grief and loss, while at the same time reaffirming the power of family, love and commitment.

Lasser has created a world filled with joy and grief, where what we take for granted one day can be suddenly revoked on another. But he goes beyond that, showing not only what follows but what endures after unthinkable tragedy. If you care for literary fiction but also love a deeply moving and satisfying story, you should make sure to get your hands on this terrific novel and share it with everyone you know!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great American Novel, June 9, 2009

By 

Jay F. Cowan "Magazine Editor" (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year That Follows (Hardcover)

Scott Lasser's latest novel displays the writer's work at its most sensitive and compelling, with his trademark dry humor and the kind of page-turning pace that's rare in literary writing. It's too easy when thinking and writing about 9/11 to look at the larger crime and tragedy of it while forgetting the individual human lives that were changed forever. Using it as the backdrop for this ambitious and moving tale of quintessentially American stories, Lasser has homed in on the family ties that shape and define us all. It is spare, elegant and heart-wrenching in just the right doses. If you are a fan of iconic author James Salter, a big influence in Lasser's work, you can do no better than this novel. Read it first, before the inevitable Oscar-winning movie, so you can tell your friends you knew about it from the beginning.