Vividly rendered ... A propulsive crime saga and the story of a family’s disintegration ... It might seem easy to assume that The Midcoast is a crime procedural, and there are certainly elements of the genre. But White is too interested in character development for the novel to become bogged down in technical detail. Every time the book veers in that direction, we’re drawn back to mysteries of people and place ... The strength of White’s novel lies in the way this loss of authenticity is mirrored in the Thatches’ transformation from blue-collar nobodies to polished, small-town big shots. Brimming with keen observation, not just of the landscape but of dialect and class distinctions and all the tiny, vital particularities that make a place real in fiction, The Midcoast is an absorbing look at small-town Maine and the thwarted dreams of a family trying to transcend it.
White’s first novel is a corker, well plotted and paced and with just the right elements of suspense. That the novel moves backward and forward in time from various points of view is occasionally a bit confusing but doesn’t distract from the story with its vivid setting and well-realized characters. A fine debut.
Alluring ... White keeps the nonlinear story on a low boil, gradually hinting at Andrew’s motivation for investigating Ed and the details of his findings, which point to a hidden world of larceny and drug trafficking. An intriguing portrait emerges ... Readers will be hooked.
White handles suspense and a complex plot well, but the characters don’t quite come into focus—it’s never clear why Ed and Steph find each other so compelling, and Allie, who serves as a motivation for many of her family’s actions, is a blank herself until very late in the book ... A small-town riff on The Great Gatsby suffers from underdeveloped characters.
