This is one of those books that, when you’ve finished it, you just want to sit quietly and let the waves of resonance wash over you for a few minutes. It’s a beautiful, poetic work that truly captures the essence of “thick love,” that powerful kind of love that causes mothers to do things they never would have thought themselves capable of – for good or bad. It also toys with the idea of what the characters call “rememory,” and the need to cling to stories and memories of their past to help them get through the present. The final pages’ insistence that “It was not a story to pass on” speaks to how high the stakes truly were, if a story this thick was not worth remembering…

Throughout the book I kept wanting there to be a play adaptation of it, or possibly a modern dance retelling. The hauntings in the house and the disjointed inner monologues seem perfectly suited to staging with dramatic lighting and sound. The play I’m imagining would be a disconcerting, abstract piece, structured to beautifully capture the emotional heart of the novel.

Up Next: I lighten the mood…hopefully…with “a book with a one-word title.”