PROCESSING REQUEST...
BIBZ
 
Login
  Forgot Password?
Register Today Not registered yet?
  1 Did You Ever Have a Family
Author: Clegg, Bill
 
Click for Large Image
Class: Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
LC: PS3603.L
Print Run: 150000
ISBN-13: 9781476798172
LCCN: 2014037087
Imprint: Gallery Books
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Pub Date: 09/01/2015
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $26.00
  Hardcover
Physical Description: 293 pages ; 23 cm H 8.37", W 5.63", D 1", 1.06 lbs.
LC Series:
Brodart Sources: Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
Bibliographies: Fiction Core Collection, 18th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 19th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 20th ed.
Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List
Awards: Adult Notable Books, ALA
Booklist Editors Choice
Booklist Starred Reviews
Kirkus Best Books
Kirkus Starred Reviews
Library Journal Best Books
Library Journal Starred Reviews
Publishers Weekly Starred Reviews
Starred Reviews: Booklist
Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
Publishers Weekly
TIPS Subjects: Domestic Fiction
BISAC Subjects: FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Family Life / General
FICTION / Sagas
LC Subjects: Bereavement, Fiction
Families, Fiction
Interpersonal relations, Fiction
Life change events, Fiction
SEARS Subjects: Bereavement, Fiction
Reading Programs:
 
Annotations
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 06/01/2015
The day before June Reid would have watched her daughter walk down the aisle, June's daughter, her daughter's fiancé, June's ex-husband, and June's boyfriend suffer a fatal tragedy. June drives away from small-town Connecticut, while unexpected connections unite the community she leaves behind in this study of hope, heartache, and the people who pull us back from the brink. Debut Novel, 304pp., 150K
Starred Reviews:
Booklist | 07/01/2015
Literary agent Clegg, who has penned two acclaimed memoirs, here turns to fiction with a deeply haunting story. June Reid loses her entire family in a house fire: her daughter, who was about to be married; her daughter's fiance; her ex-husband; and her much-younger boyfriend, Luke. Utterly bereft, June leaves her Connecticut hometown and drives to the Moonstone motel in the Pacific Northwest, where she stays for months, barely leaving her room. The narrative also incorporates viewpoints from others affected by the tragedy, however tangentially, including the wedding caterer and the florist; Luke's mother, Lydia, who bears the brunt of the small-town gossip in the wake of the fire, especially from small-minded people intent on blaming her son for the disaster; Silas, a teenage pothead who knows more about the fire than he is willing to admit; and the proprietor of the Moonstone, who senses that June "is the most alone person I've ever met, half in the world and half out of it." Clegg is both delicately lyrical and emotionally direct in this masterful novel, which strives to show how people make bearable what is unbearable, offering consolation in small but meaningful gestures. Both ineffably sad and deeply inspiring, this mesmerizing novel makes for a powerful debut. Wilkinson, Joanne. 304p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2015.
Kirkus Reviews | 07/01/2015
Hours before a wedding, a fire kills the bride, the groom, her father, and her mother's boyfriend. "When something like what happened at June Reid's that morning happens, you feel right away like the smallest, weakest person in the world. That nothing you do could possibly matter. That nothing matters. Which is why, when you stumble upon something you can do, you do it. So that's what I did." This is the florist speaking: she will put the daisies she picked for the wedding into more than a hundred funeral arrangements. Other characters, particularly the parents of the dead, will have a harder time figuring out what comes next. June--who has lost not just everyone she loves, but her house, her clothes, and her passport as well--gets in a car and drives to the West Coast. Lydia Morey, whose handsome son, Luke, was June's much-younger boyfriend, is stuck in town dealing with small-minded gossip and speculation. Silas, a teenage pothead who was working at the house the day before the accident, slowly unpacks what he knows about the cause of the fatal blast. Literary agent and memoirist Clegg's (Ninety Days, 2013, etc.) debut novel moves restlessly among many different characters and locations, from the small town in Connecticut where the fire occurred to the motel in the Pacific Northwest where June lands, darting into the past then returning to the tragedy in its utter implacability. Yet the true subject of the book is consolation, the scraps of comfort people manage to find and share with one another, from a thermos of pea soup to a missing piece of information to the sound of the waves outside the Moonstone Motel. An attempt to map how the unbearable is borne, elegantly written and bravely imagined. 304pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2015.
Library Journal | 07/01/2015
In small-town Connecticut, on the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's house literarily explodes, killing ex-husband Adam, lover Luke, daughter Lolly, and Lolly's fiance, Will. What follows is a propulsive but tightly crafted narrative that moves back and forth in time and from character to character as Clegg builds out his opening scene to take in those sometimes surprisingly affected. The breakup of June's marriage, the troubled relationship between June and her daughter, the tensions between June and Luke, the small-town tragedy of Luke's mother, the complicated backstory of the lesbian lovers who run the West Coast hotel where June fetches up--all these and more reveal the fine-grained sorrows of the human condition, rendered in polished, quietly captivating prose. As the stories emerge, so do their connections--and the idea of connection itself. "Did you ever have a family," says June flatly at a moment of crisis before the blast, capturing the weight family carries in our lives, and the consequence of every relation, every action, resonates throughout the text. VERDICT Readers may come to this debut novel because of agent/memoirist Clegg's reputation, but they'll stay for the stellar language and storytelling. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/9/15.]. Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal. 256p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015.
Publishers Weekly | 06/29/2015
In this sorrowful and deeply probing debut novel, literary agent and memoirist Clegg (Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man) delivers a story of loss and its grueling aftermath. The story opens with an unimaginable tragedy: a Connecticut house is consumed by fire in the wee hours before a wedding. The bride's mother, June, is the only survivor. Everyone else--Lolly, June's daughter, with whom she had a strained relationship; June's womanizing ex-husband, Adam; June's ex-con boyfriend Luke, 20 years her junior; and Lolly's fiance, Will--all die in the blaze. But where was June when the explosion occurred? Clegg pieces the mystery together through the voices of his characters. There's Luke's lonely, scandal-courting mother, Lydia, who shoulders secrets about her son; 15-year-old Silas, a stoner who was the last to see Luke, with June, the night before he died. And there's Rebecca, Kelly, and Cissy--caretakers of the Moonstone motel in Moclips, Wash., where June holes up for nine months after the fire and wastes away. The conclusion of the family's narrative is foregone: due to the fire, everyone ends up dead or alone. But it's Clegg's deft handling of all the parsed details--missed opportunities, harbored regrets, and unspoken good intentions--that make the journey toward redemption and forgiveness so memorable. (Sept.). 304p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2015.
Journal Reviews
BookPage | 09/01/2015
Memoirist and literary agent Bill Clegg ( Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man ) has now conquered the world of literary fiction with his searing debut, Did You Ever Have a Family. As a boy "wakes to the sound of sirens," we learn that an explosion has taken the life of a bride and groom just before their wedding day. Clegg then slowly, intricately reveals the wider ramifications of this unthinkable tragedy through the eyes of more than a dozen characters. The title (from an Alan Shapiro poem) most deeply refers to June Reid, who lost the most in the explosion that fateful day. But Clegg's wide lens compels the reader to think deeply about what a family is and how they influence us, for better or worse. The pain in this novel is raw and visceral, though there are brilliant, subtle touches as well. In one scene, a mother and son have a talk they should have had a long time ago. Across the street, "two teenage boys scrape paint from the house," a revealing image of painstakingly stripping away the past. Ultimately, readers of Did You Ever Have a Family will be reminded of both Faulkner (in Clegg's dark material and kaleidoscopic storytelling) and Colum McCann (in the genuine search for meaning or redemption amid tragedy). Clegg's novel is not for every reader. In addition to the bleak events, the flashbacks and lack of dialogue can become a bit wearisome. Nevertheless, Clegg has produced an insightful portrait of adversity. The characters, by and large, are memorable and their struggles genuine. One of Clegg's guilt-wracked characters describes the reflection of the night sky on a lake as "both ominous and beautiful." The same can be said of Did You Ever Have a Family. Tom Deignan. 304p. BOOKPAGE, c2015.
Library Journal Prepub Alert | 03/09/2015
Clegg is a leading literary agent and the author of two well-regarded memoirs, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days, which detail how he fell into crack addiction and stays sober now. So his emergence as a debut novelist doesn't seem that off-course. What's unusual is that the novel inspired Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books to create a new literary imprint, Scout Press; after winning the novel in a four-publisher bid, the Gallery folks recognized that Clegg's writing would not fit well with their generally commercial offerings. Part of a two-book deal, Clegg's novel isn't even the first offering in the imprint; Ruth Ware's In a Dark, Dark Wood, a psychological thriller from Britain, appears in August. As for Clegg's work, it's set in small-town Connecticut, where, on the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid loses everyone close to her-her ex-husband, her lover, her daughter, and the daughter's fiance-to an explosion. Central to the writing: how June endures and how she and others affected by the tragedy find solace. Barbara Hoffert. 304p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015.
9781476798172,dl.it[0].title
Review Citations
New York Times Book Review | 09/06/2015