Facebook X-twitter Instagram Linkedin

Stephenie Harrison

FictionComic Fiction

Evvie Drake Starts Over

Review by Stephenie Harrison

NPR pop culture correspondent Linda Holmes is an unabashed lover and ardent defender of the romantic comedy, so it’s unsurprising that her debut novel is exactly that. Evvie Drake Starts Over is a heartwarming rom-com about loss, grief and second chances.

Ever since her husband—a successful surgeon and her hometown’s golden boy—died in a car crash, Evvie Drake has been in the worst kind of rut. Everyone in her small Maine town chalks up her funk to grief, but as far as Evvie is concerned, the truth is far worse. So much worse, in fact, that Evvie can’t even bear to share it with her best friend, Andy, and has instead resigned herself to a life spent as a young widow, rattling around a house that is now far too big for her, content to lose herself in big books and watch life slowly pass her by.

Everything changes, however, when Andy suggests that Evvie rent out her home’s attached apartment to a friend who also has more than a passing familiarity with life not turning out according to plan. Dean Tenney, once one of baseball’s hottest players, is now infamous for his case of “the yips,” a baffling development that forced him into early retirement after he inexplicably lost his ability to pitch, seemingly overnight. After Dean moves in, a tentative friendship forms between the two that ultimately transitions into something more. Together, Dean and Evvie encourage one another to face their pasts and their present truths, all while discovering that even when life throws you a curveball, it’s never too late to find your happily ever after.

Despite the kernel of sadness rooted at the novel’s core, Evvie Drake Starts Over is a feel-good read that radiates warmth. Holmes nails the balance between romance and humor, with Evvie and Dean’s effortless and truly funny dialogue being a particular strength. In addition to developing their convincing relationship, Holmes spends ample time fleshing out her leads so they feel like real people with legitimate issues.

Uplifting and life-affirming, Evvie Drake Starts Over is a perfect choice for fans of Rainbow Rowell and Marian Keyes.

Read a Q&A with Linda Holmes for ‘Evvie Drake Starts Over.’

Uplifting and life-affirming, Evvie Drake Starts Over is a perfect choice for fans of Rainbow Rowell and Marian Keyes.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Rules for Visiting

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Perhaps the greatest irony of our modern era is that in a time when we appear more connected than ever, most of us have never felt more alone. Certainly this is true for May Attaway, the protagonist of Jessica Francis Kane’s meditative second novel, Rules for Visiting.

Largely preferring the company of plants to people, May is a single, middle-aged woman who lives in her childhood home with her father and cat and works as a gardener at the local university. She is the first to admit that although her world is relatively small and uneventful, the life she has cultivated for herself is a comfortable one (albeit mundane and vaguely hermitic). When she is gifted with an unanticipated month of paid vacation, May is inspired to revise her stance on relationships and broaden her horizons. Armed with little more than an Emily Post guide to etiquette, a book of quotations on friendship and a suitcase named Grendel (after the friendless monster in Beowulf), May sets out on a transformative pilgrimage to reconnect with the four women she considers her dearest friends. 

A 21st-century novel for those with old-fashioned sensibilities, Rules for Visiting is an empathetic yet enigmatic read. May’s story is not for the impatient, as the narrative perambulates through a series of discursive musings on friendship, flora, family, grief and how connections can fail or flourish in this modern age. For much of the novel, May keeps the reader at arm’s length, charming with her wry wit but using these rhetoric sleights of hand as substitutes for real understanding and intimacy. But as May becomes more comfortable with the art of connecting with the people in her life, she reveals more of her true heart to the reader as well, gradually shedding light on the trauma that led to such a closed-off life. 

Rules for Visiting takes its time to fully take root, but the end result is a sturdy novel that blossoms rather beautifully.

Perhaps the greatest irony of our modern era is that in a time when we appear more connected than ever, most of us have never felt more alone. Certainly this is true for May Attaway, the protagonist of Jessica Francis Kane’s meditative second novel, Rules for Visiting.

FictionHistorical Fiction

The Lost History of Dreams

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Following several lauded volumes of nonfiction, visual artist Kris Waldherr delivers an accomplished debut novel, The Lost History of Dreams, an atmospheric and hypnotic love story that not even death can end.

Wracked with grief over an accident that befell his wife three years previously, Robert Highstead has cut himself off from his family and turned his back on his writing, instead devoting himself to photographing the dead as one final memento for their family members. Incapacitated by sorrow, Robert remains ensconced in the past, one in which he and his wife are still madly in love with each other. But when Robert’s brother reaches out and requests that he head to the wilds of Shropshire to deliver the body of their cousin, the famed poet Hugh de Bonne, Robert finds himself powerless to refuse. Hugh’s last request was that his remains be buried beside his own wife, Ada, and that he be photographed alongside his niece and heir, Isabelle Lowell, in a dazzling glass chapel built in Ada’s memory. When Robert arrives at his cousin’s estate, however, he receives a prickly reception from Isabelle, who holds the only key to the chapel. In no uncertain terms she tells him that Hugh will never be allowed entrance to the chapel and that Robert is wasting his time. Finally the two strike a deal: Over the course of five evenings, Isabelle will relate Ada’s story, and Robert will transcribe it. Only after the story is completed will Isabelle open the chapel, and the many ghosts tethering both her and Robert to the past can finally be laid to rest.

“Love stories are ghost stories in disguise,” Isabelle warns Robert on their first evening together. The Lost History of Dreams is a sensual, twisting gothic tale that embraces Victorian superstition much in the tradition of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; the mystery is slyly developed, while the love story is tastefully titillating. 

In a novel that blurs the line between life and death, nothing can be taken for granted, and just when you think you have everything figured out, Waldherr turns the tables once again. This means that at times the narrative becomes convoluted and certain plot points don’t come to fruition, but it’s still an absorbing read.

Following several lauded volumes of nonfiction, visual artist Kris Waldherr delivers an accomplished debut novel, The Lost History of Dreams, an atmospheric and hypnotic love story that not even death can end.

FictionPopular FictionDebut Fiction

When You Read This

Review by Stephenie Harrison

More often than not, death is viewed as an ending rather than a beginning—but that is not the case in Mary Adkins’ delightful debut novel, When You Read This, in which a young woman’s death proves to be the catalyst for a compassionate and heartwarming love story.

When Iris Massey is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in her early 30s, she turns to blogging as a way to help come to terms with her illness and immortalize a sliver of her soul through memories and drawings. Before she dies, she prints out a copy and leaves it behind with instructions for her boss, Smith, to get the manuscript published if he can. Smith wants to honor Iris’ memory and her last wishes, but when he reaches out to her sister, Jade, about how to proceed, she tells him in no uncertain terms to drop it. Despite the hostile tone of Jade’s initial messages, the gaping Iris-shaped hole in both Smith’s and Jade’s lives ultimately forms a bridge between them. Through emails, texts, therapy transcripts, blog posts, order confirmations and more, readers witness as shared grief paves the way for discussions of other touchstones of loss and disappointment, sparking a deeper connection that neither character was looking for but can’t be denied.

An epistolary novel for the 21st century, When You Read This sparkles with a perfect blend of humor, pathos and romance. At times painfully sad, the novel balances Jade and Smith’s anguish so that it is palpable but never overwrought, and moments of levity and whimsy keep the tale from becoming maudlin or cloyingly sentimental. Adkins has managed to paint an authentic and nuanced portrait of grief and the various ways people attempt to cope and continue on with life when the worst has happened. 

Inventive and irresistible, When You Read This is a tender and uplifting story about love, loss and the resilience of the human heart that will have you laughing and crying in equal turns.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

More often than not, death is viewed as an ending rather than a beginning—but that is not the case in Mary Adkins’ delightful debut novel, When You Read This, in which a young woman’s death proves to be the catalyst for a compassionate and heartwarming love story.

FictionWorld Fiction

An Orchestra of Minorities

Review by Stephenie Harrison

BookPage starred review, January 2019

After making an international splash with his 2015 debut, The Fishermen, and receiving a nomination for the Man Booker prize, Chigozie Obioma returns with an engrossing new epic. In An Orchestra of Minorities, Obioma blends the folklore of his country’s Igbo people with the narrative framework of Homer’s Greek classic The Odyssey to produce a multicultural fable that heralds a new master of magical realism.

Set in southeastern Nigeria, An Orchestra of Minorities tells the story of Chinonso, a lonely and humble poultry farmer who makes the mistake of falling in love with the wrong woman, one who enjoys a much more privileged socioeconomic status and background than himself. Unnerved by her family’s strenuous objections to their match, Chinonso sells all his worldly possessions and travels overseas in order to secure an education, prove his worth and gain their approval to marry. Alas, misfortune plagues Chinonso as soon as he departs from Nigeria, and the fate that once drew the two lovers together now seems determined to keep them apart and break Chinonso’s spirit in the process.

After enduring much hardship and many years away in Cyprus, Chinonso returns home to discover that the only woman he has ever loved is perhaps even further out of reach than before, and he may also have lost the man that he once was during his time away.

It’s a special writer who can take the familiar tropes found within An Orchestra of Minorities and infuse them with new life, transforming them into something exciting and unexpected. Happily, Obioma is exactly such an author. Not only does the Nigerian backdrop add depth and interest to the tale, but the story itself is told from the perspective of Chinonso’s chi, a protector from the spirit realm who weaves in Igbo mythology and guides the narrative through both mortal and metaphysical dimensions, resulting in a unique and unforgettable reading experience.

Written in lambent prose and ambitious in scope, An Orchestra of Minorities is no fairy tale, but rather a tragic masterpiece.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After making an international splash with his 2015 debut, The Fishermen, and receiving a nomination for the Man Booker prize, Chigozie Obioma returns with an engrossing new epic. In An Orchestra of Minorities, Obioma blends the folklore of his country’s Igbo people with the narrative framework of Homer’s Greek classic The Odyssey to produce a multicultural fable that heralds a new master of magical realism.

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Conventional wisdom cautions, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but thankfully, author Stuart Turton must not have gotten the memo. His debut novel, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, is a daring and wildly imaginative spin on the tried, tested and true English manor house murder mystery trope that manages to be both comfortingly familiar and absolutely unlike anything readers have ever encountered before.

Turton’s devilishly devious debut opens in a forest with our protagonist screaming the name Anna. With his next inhalation, he realizes that not only does he have no idea who Anna is, but he also has no memory of anything at all—including his own identity. As he struggles to make his way out of the forest, a shot rings out, and a woman appears to be killed before his very eyes. In a panic, he manages to make his way to the foreboding and elegantly decaying estate of Blackheath in search of assistance. However, our narrator eventually comes to realize that the forest murder is but the first of many, and that solving this crime is not his ultimate objective. Rather, a mysterious masked man informs him that beautiful heiress Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed that night, and it is up to the protagonist to figure out who committed the crime. If he fails to uncover the killer before the day is done, he’ll wake up in a different guest’s body to relive the day and try again. After the eighth day, his memory will be wiped clean, and he’ll start the cycle all over again. Only when the murderer is unmasked will Blackheath release its hold on our dilettante detective and allow him to leave the grounds for good.

Blending elements from Quantum Leap, Groundhog Day and Clue, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle turns the conventional murder mystery novel on its head while simultaneously elevating the genre to new, exhilarating heights. Turton has crafted a dizzying game of cat and mouse that will keep readers on their toes as they attempt to keep up with the various loops through time and make sense of all the clues that are scattered by the various hosts over the course of the day. Initially the reader’s confusion mirrors that of the narrator, but this only increases the reader’s sense of satisfaction when the many pieces of Turton’s complex puzzle begin to slot into pace and all is made clear.

An intellectual thriller that would likely stump the likes of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a must-read for any reader wishing to give their little gray cells a workout.

Conventional wisdom cautions, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but thankfully, author Stuart Turton must not have gotten the memo. His debut novel, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, is a daring and wildly imaginative spin on the tried, tested and true English manor house murder mystery trope that manages to be both comfortingly familiar and absolutely unlike anything readers have ever encountered before.

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionHistorical FantasyFantasy

Time’s Convert

Review by Stephenie Harrison

It was a bittersweet moment in 2014 when history professor and bestselling novelist Deborah Harkness published The Book of Life, bringing her All Souls Trilogy, which chronicled the adventures and romantic escapades between a powerful witch and a centuries-old vampire, to a close. At the time, Harkness reflected to BookPage that although she had always envisioned Diana and Matthew’s story as a trilogy, she found it unexpectedly frustrating to stick to three volumes, because it meant she couldn’t fully explore the interesting characters and side plots that cropped up.

Now it seems that Harkness has found an ingenious workaround to her dilemma in a move that will undoubtedly thrill her fans: Her latest novel, Time’s Convert, marks the launch of the All Souls Universe, a series that expands upon the original trilogy and whose only limits are those set by Harkness’ imagination and busy schedule.

Set in the same world as Harkness’ previous novels, Time’s Convert is not simply a continuation of The Book of Life. Although Matthew and Diana do appear, it is Matthew’s son, Marcus, and his fiancée, Phoebe, who take center stage. With this couple, Harkness is allowed to do what she does best, weaving a rich and mesmerizing love story that jumps between past, present and future, as she delves into Marcus’ origin story and juxtaposes it with Phoebe’s own struggles as a fledgling vampire.

Harkness’ depictions of Revolution-era America and France are vivid and detailed, while her examination of the various ways one can form a family and all its inherent complications are thoughtful and moving. However, much of the interpersonal drama and revelations in Time’s Convert assume one has a pre-existing familiarity with the characters and world, so newcomers should start at the beginning. For those who have already read Harkness’ previous books, Time’s Convert is a welcome reunion with old friends.

It was a bittersweet moment in 2014 when history professor and bestselling novelist Deborah Harkness published The Book of Life, bringing her All Souls Trilogy, which chronicled the adventures and romantic escapades between a powerful witch and a centuries-old vampire, to a close. At the time, Harkness reflected to BookPage that although she had always envisioned Diana and Matthew’s story as a trilogy, she found it unexpectedly frustrating to stick to three volumes, because it meant she couldn’t fully explore the interesting characters and side plots that cropped up.

FictionDebut Fiction

Darkness falls on small-town America

Review by Stephenie Harrison

From its opening pages, in which an empty casket is paraded through the streets of a small town in Ohio so that its townspeople may pay tribute to one of their golden boys who has died fighting overseas, debut novelist Stephen Markley makes his intentions clear: Ohio is a eulogy to middle America and its flyover states. It is a battle cry for the forgotten pockets of the country and the tired, poor and dispossessed whose voices we do not care to hear.

Bookended by death and spanning nearly 500 pages, Ohio interweaves the stories of four former classmates, all of whom have left New Canaan, Ohio, only to return home on the same fateful night. We meet Bill Ashcroft, an outspoken activist who has come to deliver a dubious package that is strapped to the underside of his truck; Stacey Moore, a grad student whose love life has plagued her since her school days, who has returned to make peace with the mother of an old flame; Dan Eaton, a history-loving bookworm-turned-veteran who lost his eye in the war and is back for dinner with his high school sweetheart; and Tina Ross, former town beauty who now lives one town over, works at Walmart and needs to get over her football star ex-boyfriend once and for all. Each character returns haunted by the ghosts of New Canaan’s past, unaware of how their past and present actions will converge with destructive and terrifying consequences.

Timely and of vital importance, Ohio delves into the spectrum of issues consuming contemporary America’s Rust Belt, exploring topics like joblessness, addiction, terrorism, sexuality, religion and sex, to name a few. Markley’s disturbing masterpiece reads like the offspring of Harlan Coben, Jonathan Franzen and Hanya Yanagihara: an illuminating snapshot of our current era masquerading as a twisted character-driven thriller, filled with mordant wit and soul-shaking pathos. The picture Ohio paints is bleak, brutal and unrelenting, and while moments of wry humor exist, they are but pinpricks of light in an otherwise extremely dark novel. At times the graphic violence and ceaseless despair depicted seem so gratuitous that categorizing the book as “misery porn” feels like a justified warning. However, Markley purposely provokes his readers, challenging us to confront and ponder topics and people that make us uncomfortable. His method will undoubtedly prove divisive, but those who have the temerity to let Ohio absorb them will be rewarded with an edifying and unforgettable read that leaves them breathless.

From its opening pages, in which an empty casket is paraded through the streets of a small town in Ohio so that its townspeople may pay tribute to one of their golden boys who has died fighting overseas, debut novelist Stephen Markley makes his intentions clear: Ohio is a eulogy to middle America and its flyover states. It is a battle cry for the forgotten pockets of the country and the tired, poor and dispossessed whose voices we do not care to hear.

FictionPopular Fiction

Slipped through her fingers

Review by Stephenie Harrison

With nearly 40 years under her belt and a recently failed marriage to her name, Sarah Mackey has finally found the love of her life. During her annual pilgrimage home to England to visit her parents, Sarah meets Eddie, who is chatting with an escaped sheep on the village green. Although Sarah is definitely on the rebound—or so says an app on her phone, downloaded by a friend with the best of intentions—and in no fit state to start a relationship, the chemistry between the two is instantaneous and undeniable.

Sarah falls hard, and after a week holed up together in Eddie’s cottage, she’s sure he has, too. So when Eddie leaves for his previously planned holiday in Spain and she doesn’t immediately hear from him, she is puzzled but not overly concerned. However, with every unanswered text and voicemail, Sarah’s unease mounts until she becomes convinced that a great catastrophe has befallen Eddie. Her best friends counsel her to let it go and accept that she’s been ghosted, but Sarah is haunted by Eddie and the promise of what their week together signified. Despite her friends’ warnings, Sarah begins an obsessive search for her one-that-got-away, determined to uncover what went awry, even if it means finally facing her painful past and her family’s trauma, which she’s been running from for nearly two decades.

Following four previously published books written under the pseudonym Lucy Robinson, Ghosted is the debut of novelist Rosie Walsh writing as herself. A cleverly plotted romantic thriller filled with scandalous twists and turns and a juicy central mystery, Ghosted proves impossible to put down as readers race to seek the closure and resolution (and perhaps the happy ending) that Walsh’s heroine so desperately desires.

Deliciously addictive, surprising and sentimental, Ghosted is a must-read for fans of Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes, or any reader who knows that the course of true love never did run smooth.

With nearly 40 years under her belt and a recently failed marriage to her name, Sarah Mackey has finally found the love of her life. During her annual pilgrimage home to England to visit her parents, Sarah meets Eddie, who is chatting with an escaped sheep on the village green. Although Sarah is definitely on the rebound—or so says an app on her phone, downloaded by a friend with the best of intentions—and in no fit state to start a relationship, the chemistry between the two is instantaneous and undeniable.

FictionSpeculative FictionDebut Fiction

The Book of M

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Imagine a world in which shadows are more than simple physical phenomena that occur whenever light strikes a surface. What if our shadows were the guardians of all our memories and the core essence of who we are? What kind of darkness might descend upon the earth if one day people’s shadows suddenly began to vanish without an explanation, taking with them biographical details and threatening to unravel reality? This is the terrifying premise of Peng Shepherd’s outstanding and unforgettable The Book of M.

Our guides to this dystopian future are Ory and his wife, Max, who have quarantined themselves in a mountain lodge in Virginia while the mysterious plague of shadowlessness gradually sweeps across the planet. Despite all their safeguards, Max has recently lost her shadow, and it is only a matter of time before she begins to lose herself. In an attempt to stave off her forgetting, Ory gives Max a tape recorder to act as a repository for her memories. However, one day Ory returns from a scavenging trip to discover Max gone, prompting him to venture into a savage, chaotic world on a desperate and foolhardy mission to reunite with her. Even if the day should come when Max no longer remembers him, Ory knows he will never be able to forget or give up on Max.

Shepherd has constructed an exceedingly thoughtful and clever story that is perfectly paced and intricately plotted, producing a narrative filled with a genuine sense of urgency, thrilling twists and jaw-dropping revelations. Instantly absorbing, The Book of M is a scary, surprising, sad and sentimental story that will be deeply felt by readers while capturing their imaginations and hearts.

Readers shouldn’t be surprised if the only times they can bear to put this book down are when they feel the need to confirm that their shadows are still firmly intact.

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, June 2018
FictionLiterary Fiction

Watch your step

Review by Stephenie Harrison

What do you get when a cantankerous old hoarder in a decrepit mansion collides with a world-weary caregiver who has a reluctant talent for communing with the dead? The answer is Jess Kidd’s imaginative second novel, Mr. Flood’s Last Resort, an enchanting thriller that disarms and delights.

When Maud Drennan is assigned to look after Cathal Flood, all she knows is that he has managed to run off his previous caregivers through a combination of psychological warfare, booby traps and outright hostility. However, Maud is made of stronger stuff than her relatively plain appearance would suggest, and she arrives at Cathal’s doorstep ready for a fight. With dogged determination, Maud slowly enters into an uneasy truce with the inscrutable old man, but she also comes to realize that there is more to Cathal—and his property—than meets the eye.

While the moldering manor house is filled with decades-old detritus and an army of slightly feral cats, it is also a mausoleum of secrets, potentially lethal ones. When Maud learns about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Cathal’s wife—and the house begins to offer up clues regarding a cold case that eerily echoes memories from Maud’s traumatic childhood—she knows it is up to her to uncover who Cathal Flood truly is and to appease the restless spirits that haunt the halls of his home.

Unique and unconventional, Mr. Flood’s Last Resort is an unforgettable mystery that will appeal to fans of Tana French and Sophie Hannah, as it charms and unsettles in equal measure. Kidd (Himself) deftly balances whimsy and humor with a genuine sense of malice and danger. Savvy readers will question who can be trusted, as nothing—not even Maud—is as it initially seems.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What do you get when a cantankerous old hoarder in a decrepit mansion collides with a world-weary caregiver who has a reluctant talent for communing with the dead? The answer is Jess Kidd’s imaginative second novel, Mr. Flood’s Last Resort, an enchanting thriller that disarms and delights.

FictionSpeculative Fiction

Chance, fate and the butterfly effect

Review by Stephenie Harrison

If you’ve ever told someone (or been told) that “everything happens for a reason,” you need The Coincidence Makers. In his ambitious and genre-bending debut, Yoav Blum gamely tackles the quandary of fate versus free will, putting his own playful spin on one of humanity’s biggest philosophical conundrums.

In Blum’s re-envisioning of the universe, free will and fate coexist in a delicate dance: We all have the power to make choices, but these choices are orchestrated by an elite team known as the Coincidence Makers. Guy, Emily and Eric are three such Coincidence Makers, and it’s their job to keep everything on track by adjusting circumstances and making sure everyone sticks to their steps and executes their part of the dance. As relatively low-level agents, the three are often tasked with seemingly random tasks like arranging for people to meet and fall in love, convincing someone to change careers or even getting a butterfly to flap one of its wings. However, all this changes when Guy receives the most difficult, dangerous and morally dubious assignment of his career, one that will forever change their understanding of cause and effect.

Already a bestseller in Blum’s home country of Israel, this existential, mind-bending jigsaw puzzle of a novel is supremely satisfying when all the pieces fall into place. Perfect for readers who enjoy a cerebral bent to their fiction, The Coincidence Makers is a unique and unforgettable story about what happens when you try to make life go according to your own script.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’ve ever told someone (or been told) that “everything happens for a reason,” you need The Coincidence Makers. In his ambitious and genre-bending debut, Yoav Blum gamely tackles the quandary of fate versus free will, putting his own playful spin on one of humanity’s biggest philosophical conundrums.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

Song of a wanderer

Review by Stephenie Harrison

An inveterate free spirit, Lucia Bok is a dreamer and a seeker. It seems her brain and body never stop wandering, taking her from her first breaths in Tennessee to college in New York City and itinerant stints abroad in Latin America and Vietnam. But to what end? During her South American travels, she stumbles across the answer: The object of her quest is encapsulated by a Spanish word, querencia, which means “a place we’re most comfortable, where we know who we are, where we feel our most authentic selves.” This one word will define the rest of Lucia’s life and the battle she faces when her capricious eccentricities transform into full-blown psychoses, forcing her and her loved ones to discover where Lucia—and her illness—truly belongs in the world.

Mira T. Lee’s debut novel, Everything Here Is Beautiful, is an astonishing and imaginative chronicle of mental illness and the unbreakable bonds of family. Taking readers on a journey from the halls of a psychiatric ward to the remote countryside of Ecuador, Lee examines the enigma that is Lucia through various perspectives, bringing together in a discordant symphony the voices of her sister, her husband, her lover and even Lucia herself (in both her lucid and agitated states). In shimmering prose, Lee nimbly unfurls a story that slithers like a serpent back and forth through time and across the threshold between what is perceived and what is real, producing a nuanced view of a complex woman and what it means to love her.

Everything Here Is Beautiful boldly delves into mental illness’s profound impact on love and relationships, exploring tricky quandaries like to whom the burden of responsibility falls and whether it is possible to separate an individual from her illness. There are no easy answers to these questions, and Lee does not pretend otherwise. Instead, she presents us with a sensitive and elusive story of sisterhood and schizophrenia that is brimming with another one of Lucia’s favorite words: saudade, a deep, melancholic longing for a person or state that is absent.

This electrifying first novel is wistful, wise and utterly unforgettable.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mira T. Lee’s debut novel, Everything Here Is Beautiful, is an astonishing and imaginative chronicle of mental illness and the unbreakable bonds of family.

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Features

All Features