Book Review
Dec. 30th, 2016 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariYou Could Be Home by Now
by Tracy Manaster
This very enjoyable novel centers around a group of residents and employees at The Commons, an Arizona retirement community. Young couple Seth and Alison have moved to Arizona and taken jobs at The Commons as a way of dealing with the death of their baby. Widow Sadie Birman has her teenaged grad-daughter Lily visiting for the summer. Divorced retiree Ben Thales has taken a liking to Sadie, but is still missing his ex-wife and grappling with the fallout of his daughter's disappearance at the age of 16. Mona Rosko is secretly raising her small grandson in spite of The Commons over-55 only rule.
The narrative is driven by several things: Lily accidentally discovers Mona's grandson, Ben starts coming apart a little at the seams, and Seth and Alison's relationship starts heading into a death spiral. Manaster handles the intersection and overlap of these characters and stories extremely well - transitions between the threads are seamless and used beautifully to increase and resolve dramatic tension. The characters are the best part of You Could Be Home By Now, though. I love how none of them are either perfectly likeable nor completely unlikeable - they've all got their own combination of virtues and flaws, complicated and often murky motivations, and layered relationships with the people around them.
(Full disclosure: I went to college with the author.)
by Tracy Manaster
This very enjoyable novel centers around a group of residents and employees at The Commons, an Arizona retirement community. Young couple Seth and Alison have moved to Arizona and taken jobs at The Commons as a way of dealing with the death of their baby. Widow Sadie Birman has her teenaged grad-daughter Lily visiting for the summer. Divorced retiree Ben Thales has taken a liking to Sadie, but is still missing his ex-wife and grappling with the fallout of his daughter's disappearance at the age of 16. Mona Rosko is secretly raising her small grandson in spite of The Commons over-55 only rule.
The narrative is driven by several things: Lily accidentally discovers Mona's grandson, Ben starts coming apart a little at the seams, and Seth and Alison's relationship starts heading into a death spiral. Manaster handles the intersection and overlap of these characters and stories extremely well - transitions between the threads are seamless and used beautifully to increase and resolve dramatic tension. The characters are the best part of You Could Be Home By Now, though. I love how none of them are either perfectly likeable nor completely unlikeable - they've all got their own combination of virtues and flaws, complicated and often murky motivations, and layered relationships with the people around them.
(Full disclosure: I went to college with the author.)
