Did You Ever Have Family

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book of dark secrets opens with a blaze. On the morning of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's house goes up in flames, destroying her entire family - her present, her past and her future. Fleeing from the carnage, stricken and alone, June finds herself in a motel room by the ocean, hundreds of miles from her Connecticut home, held captive by memories and the mistakes she has made with her only child, Lolly, and her partner, Luke.

In the turbulence of grief and gossip left in June's wake we slowly make sense of the unimaginable. The novel is a gathering of voices, and each testimony has a new revelation about what led to the catastrophe - Luke's alienated mother Lydia, the watchful motel owners, their cleaner Cissy, the teenage pothead who lives nearby - everyone touched by the tragedy finds themselves caught in the undertow, as their secret histories finally come to light.

Lit by the clarity of understanding that true sadness brings, Did You Ever Have a Family is an elegant, unforgettable story that reveals humanity at its worst and best, through loss and love, fracture and forgiveness. At the book's heart is the idea of family - the ones we are born with and the ones we create - and the desire, in the face of everything, to go on living.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This stunning debut novel written and narrated by Clegg (Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man) starts off with a nearly indescribable tragedy. The night before June Reid's daughter's wedding, June's house erupts into a fiery ball, killing everyone inside-the bride and groom, June's ex-husband, and her much younger boyfriend. June is the only survivor. In the wake of the tragedy, everyone in the community reacts differently, from the kid who helped landscape for the wedding to the caterer who was never paid to the mother of June's boyfriend. Each character has a story to tell and no one copes with the loss in the same way. It's heart-wrenching, honest, and unflinching. A beautiful look at acceptance, forgiveness, and, most important, hope. Clegg's narration is magnificent. -VERDICT An unforgettable novel that will stick with listeners long after the last line. ["Readers may come to this debut novel because of agent/memoirist Clegg's reputation, but they'll stay for the stellar language and storytelling": LJ 7/15 review of the Scout: Gallery hc.]-Erin Cataldi, Johnson Cty. P.L., Franklin, IN © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Noted literary agent Clegg opts for a relatively understated approach to the audio edition of his acclaimed debut novel, given the considerable dramatic weight of the material. The narrative, told from the point of view of a variety of characters, explores the aftermath of a horrific explosion at a small-town Connecticut home on the night before the divided-and somewhat scandalous-Reid family's wedding celebration. Clegg's reading style engages the listener without playing too heavily on larger-than-life emotions. He fixates on the domestic details, such as the teen boy Silas's obsession with his bong and backpack, and the cleaning rituals of a motel maid at the seaside inn where family matriarch June has fled to escape her grief. Clegg's voice displays a winsome youthful quality that seems a decade or two younger than his actual age, so the coming-of-age dynamics in the story line ring with particular clarity. He may not keep listeners on the edge of their seats, but Clegg certainly keeps his audience connected to the world he has created. A S&S/Scout hardcover. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* 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 fiancé; 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 Copyright 2015 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

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. Junewho has lost not just everyone she loves, but her house, her clothes, and her passport as wellgets 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.