Emily Ruskovich

I want you to read this book, it is so beautifully written. The key points are bleak as the writer braids together the lives of a rural family in Idaho, Idaho is another character in the book, over five decades and the story weaves back and forth between the dead and the living. There is a shocking murder and then incarceration. There is early-onset dementia and a missing child but all along are the different kinds of love threading through the years. Descriptions of the two preteen sisters stay with me, May reluctant to leave her older sister even to sleep: "June so close beside her, and the scared-dog smell of June invisible beneath the smell of the wet cushion and the cooling trees, that she could fall asleep here on her sister's shoulder...and not wake up until morning." p.294 And more: “sibling laughter–he can hear it– not the laughter of school friends or neighbors or cousins. Something secret in that laughter, private, edged with meanness and devotion.”

The vague guilt and nobility of the music teacher, Ann, as she tracks the changes in her husband's mind during the piano lessons. "One week he's playing both hands together. The next week, he struggles on a children's song, with only his right hand. Slowly, as the weeks go by and the weather turns cold, she turns the pages backward...to the place where they met, to the place where he didn't know the names of any notes." Someone called the book a poem in prose. It catches you and holds you at first stunned by the irreversible final act and then by the empathy of the characters, and of the author, as they struggle to survive loss. Ruskovich's song lyrics haunt me as though I could hear the melody: “Take your picture off the wall And carry it away. Dye your hair the shades of fall. Don't let time turn it to gray..."
A captivating tale and worth your time.… (more)

I struggled with this book. If it hadn't been a book group choice, I would have given up at page 50, at page 100. I finally started to be rewarded for my persistence by page 200, when I started to 'get' some of the complex, three dimensional characters. I struggled with the narrative, hurrying back and forth between the decades. I struggled to believe in the characters, and I struggled with the time line of the story and the intermittent reappearance of some minor characters: what purpose does Eliot serve in the story? As I write, I'm talking myself out of this book again. Actually, it was a relief to finish it.… (more)

I am having such a hard time verbalizing the way I feel about this book. All I really know is that I loved it to pieces and it is perhaps one of the most tender and beautifully written novels I have ever read. Before I write any further, I have to preface with this: if you are someone who is looking for an intense story with a gradual climax and a resolution, this book is not for you. Idaho is a completely character driven piece and will not exactly offer you any kind of closure.

The novel itself was a glimpse into a number of lives as opposed to a narrative of sorts; there was no real climax or story told, rather it was a look at the way a variety of people with different circumstances continued to live and reflect upon their lives in the wake of a horrific tragedy. I'm not one to cry at books, but the descriptions and actions of certain characters - Wade, in particular - tugged at my heartstrings and had me frequently teary-eyed. This book is about the many kinds of love that we are capable of along with the sacrifices that we are willing to make in order to affirm that warm, compassionate love.… (more)

The author takes an unusual approach to a novel about a crime and its aftermath. Set in Idaho, jumping through various years from 1970s to 2020s, it is about a family’s tragedy. Near the beginning we find out that the mother, Jenny, has killed her six-year-old daughter, and another daughter is missing. The father, Wade, remarries Ann not long afterward. Ann is the focal point, trying to understand what happened. Her husband is now suffering from early-onset dementia so he cannot or will not tell her.

It is told in “patchwork” style, moving back and forth among characters and timelines to portray a segment of the story, which the reader will need to piece together. Several segments have little to do with the main storyline and I kept wondering why all these detours were needed. We visit Wade’s father, a schoolmate of one of the daughters, a prison inmate, and others only loosely related.

I liked the creative way the story was told, but after finishing, I felt a vague dissatisfaction. I kept wondering: Why did Ann get involved with this family? Why did Jenny kill her daughter? Why did Wade not look harder for his missing daughter and what happened to her? It is not a stretch to then wonder: Why did I read this book?

If you like a linear story or one where answers to a mystery are provided, this is not your book. I do not need all things tied up in a bow and am generally comfortable with open endings, but this one goes to extremes. I am left with an ambivalent feeling – 3 stars.
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