... warm and funny ... Fairbrother delineates Ellie’s mind following her father’s death — her obsessive thinking, her attempts to distract herself, her subsequent plunges back into the reality of loss — with well-wrought observation of the rhythm and patterns of grief ... Ellie’s careless behavior represents an underexplored and therefore exciting investigation into a family dynamic — one in which a daughter responds to her father’s reckless entitlement not by shrinking into herself, by becoming ultra-virtuous or self-destructive, but by acting out with similar reckless entitlement in turn ... Though the mystery of the baseball and tie rack leads us through the plot, I found myself wishing the objects played a lesser part. The neatness of that journey and Fairbrother’s steady movement toward closure feel at odds with the strength of this book, which is the depiction of a smart, talented and sexual young woman who is in the process of learning, as adults must, to balance pride with humility, pain with pleasure, and acceptable fictions with uncomfortable truths.
Fairbrother’s debut is characterized by its elegant yet comfortable prose—readers will feel at home with Ellie as if experiencing the story’s events along with her. The mystery drives the plot, but Ellie’s personal growth is the heart of the novel. Her journey is braided in with her new knowledge of her father, and her father’s past impacts hers as she learns who she truly is. This layered coming-of-age story will appeal to fans of Jennifer E. Smith’s The Unsinkable Greta James (2022).
The premise of filling in unknown details of a parent’s life after his or her death is certainly a solid one for a good book. And Alison Fairbrother’s debut novel is indeed a good book. She creates intriguing missteps and unexpected detours for Ellie, who is now trying to make sense of her father’s life ... a great read that addresses a number of contemporary cultural issues and includes rich details about families that shape and reshape. Best of all, though, it’s about a discovery that leads a young woman to grasp the reality of her own life, as well as her father’s. Alison Fairbrother writes brilliantly about how we come to understand ourselves and the people we love.
... perceptive ... The minutiae of James’s estate eventually wears thin, but Fairbrother ably captures Ellie’s fractured world as a child of divorce, which fuels her motivation. This is a promising start.
It’s 100% true that said plastic tie rack is a rather flimsy MacGuffin on which to hang a plot, and the central-casting characters (size 12 Ellie doesn’t fit in and loves reading; attractive herbalist Colette visits a shaman) aren’t exactly compelling. It’s also true that they’re good enough company, especially when punctuated by sharp, spot-on observations of journalism and Washington life informed by the author’s own decade reporting in the capital ... Sure, go ahead and pack this for your next long weekend—it’s fun! That said, it doesn’t really need to make the trip home.
