I’m really excited to be on the blog
tour for ASK AGAIN, YES, by Mary Beth Keane. This gorgeous, lyrical book is a
Radio 2 Book Club pick for the autumn. Here's how it has been described:
‘a must-read for our time’
Lisa Taddeo (Three Women)
‘a powerful and moving novel [from] a writer of extraordinary depth,
feeling and wit.’
Meg Wolitzer (The Female Protagonist, The Wife)
A profoundly moving novel about two neighbouring families in
suburban New York, the friendship between their children, and a tragedy that
reverberates over four decades, to read the book is to love it, and it’s going
to be an essential read this summer.
Gillam, a quiet suburb in upstate New York is a town of
ordinary, big-lawned houses, a leafy settling ground for young families moving
out of the city.
The Gleesons have recently moved there and soon welcome the
Stanhopes as their new neighbours. Lonely Lena Gleeson hopes to find a friend
in her neighbour, but Anne Stanhope – cold, elegant, unstable – wants to be
left alone. It’s up to their children – Kate and Peter, who are born six months
apart – to find their way to one another. Then, when Kate and Peter, a violent
event divides the neighbours, and the children are forbidden to have any
contact.
Is it possible to continue a friendship whose resilience and
love has been almost broken by the fault line dividing both families, and by
the terrible, tragic incident that has engulfed them all?
My Thoughts
There are so many layers in this novel where horrifying events are described in its quiet, understated style. It covers the generations in two families but we mainly see the story through Peter and Kate's eyes. Beneath the quiet, suburban lives there are debilitating issues of unexplained violence, self destruction, blame and guilt. Is it possible to move on with a clean slate, or will the past always have an impact on each subsequent generation?
The characters in this novel are fairly unremarkable in themselves but it is past events which single them out. You get to see them with all their flaws and also their strengths as family ties prove unbreakable. There is a poignancy as they struggle with the need to understand the past. Can they move past blame and guilt, to understand and forgive human frailty? It is a powerful read which resonates after the last word has been read.
In short: Full of hope and despair, a family drama unfolds.
About the Author
MARY BETH KEANE is the author of The Walking People, Fever
and Ask Again, Yes. In 2011, she was named one of the National Book
Foundation’s ‘5 under 35,’ and in 2015 she was awarded a John S. Guggenheim
fellowship for fiction writing. Her previous novel, Fever, is in development
with BBC America (Killing Eve) with Elisabeth Moss producing/starring as
Typhoid Mary, and with the scriptwriter for Mad Men attached. Producers Bruce
Cohen (America Beauty, Silver Linings Playbook) and Scott Delman (Book of
Mormon), have optioned rights for Ask Again Yes. Mary Beth currently lives in
Pearl River, New York, with her husband and their two sons.
Thanks to Mary Beth Keane, and Sriya Varadharajan of Michael Joseph for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
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