Breezy read dishes up family drama
In “Vacationland,” there’s the college professor from Brooklyn whose marriage is teetering, three precocious kids, a gorgeous summer home on the coast of Maine. Throw in a grieving love child, a patriarch with Alzheimer’s, and a first kiss for one of the kids, and the recipe is there for a breezy summer read.
Meg Mitchell Moore’s writing style reflects that breeze. The sentences are simple and to the point. The love child, Kristie, has moved to town after the death of her mother, to meet the father she never knew.
Kristie’s various interactions with the family are what mostly drives the plot. She’s not sure what she’s looking for in Maine, exactly, but owes it to her late mother to at least meet the man who chose to let her be raised by a single mom in rural Pennsylvania while he climbed the career ladder, retiring as the chief justice on the Maine Supreme Court.
Kristie’s stepsister, Louisa, doesn’t know any of this when the summer begins. She’s spending June, July and August at her family’s place in Owls Head, Maine, on Penobscot Bay, ostensibly to write a book, but really trying to navigate her own mid-life crisis. Her husband, Steven, stayed home to try to get his podcast network off the ground. They talk on the phone occasionally, usually misconstruing what the other is trying to say. The true insights come from letter excerpts Moore includes written by preteen daughter Abigail to her father. “I have really big news,” reads one. “We have a new aunt! She is a secret aunt who Mommy didn’t even know she had as a half sister . ... This is much more exciting than Sabrina’s trip to Italy or Shelby’s dad’s new Tesla.”
And on it goes, until a climactic family dinner
when all is exposed, and the drama is tidily wrapped up. The book is an acquired taste, but not at all unpleasant. Not every book needs to be Very Important. Sometimes satisfying is good enough. — Rob Merrill, Associated Press
Leah and Liam Dawson are lawyers. McKenna and Zack Hawkins are doctors.
Or at least, Leah was a lawyer. And McKenna was a doctor. Now, they’re wives.
They don’t know each other, but their similarities are uncanny. The two are smart, determined and at least somewhat privileged women, possessing educations, houses and cars to match their upper-middle class, married white woman lives. But their lives are far from perfect.
Nora Murphy’s debut novel “The Favor” delicately but unabashedly puts a microscope to domestic abuse in modern America with the added layer of a crime thriller. The novel begins with a vignette describing a woman fleeing the scene of the murder, though it’s unclear which, if either, woman is narrating.
Leah and McKenna’s partners are affluent white men who use their
professional knowledge and connections to bolster their abuse and make it difficult to prove, further trapping their wives.
Leah spots McKenna at the liquor store, recognizing herself in the stranger. Fascinated, Leah follows and watches McKenna while Liam is out of town, building tension with every alcohol-deadened day that goes by until Leah is compelled to intervene.
Perhaps a well-executed favor could free them both. It would take recognizing the abuse and finding carefully concealed evidence to get anyone to court.
The author’s note helpfully provides resources for people experiencing abuse and clarifies Murphy’s choice to focus on educated, white women when many people who experience domestic abuse are nonwhite and don’t hold degrees.
“The Favor” possesses an undeniable momentum even as you dread what it will throw at you next. But it’s more nuanced than typical thriller fare, offering a broad, detailed, inside look into domestic abuse, showing just how abuse can happen, why it continues, the forms it can take and the struggle to heal and build a new life after escaping it.