Reunion

The basics: Reunion is the story of Chicago screenwriter Kate Pulaski and her brother and sister. The titular reunion happens in Atlanta when their estranged father dies, leaving behind their many half-siblings and ex-stem moms. Kate is shocked her siblings want to go to the funeral, but she begrudgingly joins them.

My thoughts: Not very far into Reunion, I looked up Hannah Pittard's biography because I figured she had to be from the same part of Atlanta in which I grew up. She nails the details of geography and attitude of the city in a way only someone who shares my love/hate relationship with it can. As I read, I was simultaneously homesick for Atlanta and reminded of why I left. Kate certainly shares my ambivalence of Atlanta: "It's show more that it reminds me of all that is fake about the sweetness of the South."

As much as I enjoyed the setting of this novel, I would have loved it if it were set anywhere. Reunion is far from a feel-good family story. The Pulaskis are dysfunctional and realistically flawed. As close as Kate is with her siblings, each is keeping secrets. The dark humor of Kate infuses the novel's tone with some levity as they individually and collectively face many challenges and divulge secrets. Reunion is so good because of Pittard's characters and writing.

Favorite passage: "I give Atlanta a hard time and I certainly give my father's people a hard time. When it comes right down to it, though, I like being from Georgia. But it requires being somewhere else for me to appreciate how special it is. It's a bad relationship--or maybe the truest kind of relationship. Look. I'm trying to be honest. I like it best when it's not around. Because it lives in my memory, completely malleable, completely disposed to my own fantasies and imaginations. It's a cool thing to be able to say when I'm in Chicago--that I'm a Georgia peach--but when I'm here, the skin isn't so fuzzy."

The verdict: Reunion is an engaging and wise novel. Like Kate, I found humor at inappropriate times. I devoured this slim novel in twenty-four hours and loved every minute I spent with the Pulaskis and Hannah Pittard. show less

Two sisters and a brother return to Atlanta after the suicide of their father. The story is told through the eyes of Kate, the youngest and an inveterate liar. She admits her lies to the reader and seems to need to confess. She has a lot of self-awareness but lacks the ability to make any changes in her life. Kate does not want to return for the funeral. She hates her father because of his lifetime of serial infidelity. Kate and her brother and sister have no sense of family outside of the three of them but getting to know their father's estranged wife sets in motion changes for all of them. The three are joined by four ex-stepmothers and a number of half-siblings but they are secondary characters. A family reunited after the death of a show more parent is not a new concept but Pittard manages to make it her own. There is a real honesty in the unfolding of each of the children's history and character. I read the book straight through and enjoyed every minute. show less

Sometimes in your reading life you just need first person narration. I needed all of Kate's "I's". Sometimes you also need a dysfunctional family...this book delivered that, too. And Pittard did a great job of pulling you in with the opening line:

"On June 16, at roughly eight thirty in the morning, I get the phone call that my father is dead."

Well, you have to keep reading after that, at least I did.

Kate's life is pretty well in shambles before she finds out about her father's suicide and before her siblings tell her she has to travel to Atlanta for the funeral -- which will also involve coming face-to-face with her four stepmothers and many half-siblings. As Kate haphazardly deals with her disastrous life, she also comes to terms with show more her relationship with her father.

This is a quick read and a good one for discussion. There's sibling relationships, adultery, childhood issues, and so much more. It's kind of the less-funny, more serious version of This is Where I Leave You. show less

This is a multi-faceted book with lots of interest for me. I guess the main substance of the story is the relationship between three adult siblings, but the father's influence hangs over the whole story in both spoken and unspoken ways. As a father of three, approaching my own death, this provoked me to think more about what I will be leaving behind and whether it's too late to do anything that will change the impact I have already made. Also big in this story is marriage and its many failures across different generations. Are our children destined to follow our example? Almost a side story in this novel is the nature of the American south (Atlanta) where most of the story is set, and comparison with Chicago where the narrator lives. show more I've never been to America, but I have a daughter who lives not that far from Chicago and a faithful LibraryThing friend who lives in Atlanta, so the comparison caught my interest. I even took a personal interest in the story's funeral and the options for disposing of ashes having recently discussed the disposal of my own ashes! Notwithstanding my own personal interest, I reckon this is a well written and engaging book. show less

I stayed up until three in the morning finishing Reunion by Hannah Pittard. I could not stop reading it. Kate Pulaski is a screenwriter who is washed up and has just made a mess of her marriage. When I started this book, I was amazed at how much I didn’t like the main character. She is a perpetual liar, she spends money without the thought of tomorrow, she is very manipulative and critical of others, and she hates her dad. So, why didn’t I want to stop reading? The author is amazing, she hooked me without my knowing it and I think that she could do this to any reader.

At the beginning of the story, Kate was ready on a plane already that had been delayed and she gets a phone call telling her that her dad had died, that he had shot show more himself. Her brother and sister want her to come to her dad’s house, she doesn’t even want to do that. But she does end up on a plane to Atlanta, her hometown. Over four days, her secrets and her brother and sister’s emerge, she learns that she is similar the man she hated, her father. The four days are filled with emotional turmoil and painful lessons, and discovery and when all this is revealed, I began to understand her, why she acted the way she did and how she stopped hiding from herself. The more that she stopped deceiving herself and started to challenge others, the more I liked her.

This book is an emotional journey that I was reluctant to take because of what I knew of Kate at the beginning but I found myself so wrapped up in her self-exploration and courage to face the truth that I could not lay the book down, I had to know what was going to become of Kate. Now I want to read more of Hannah Pittard’s books.

I received this Advance Reading Copy as a win from FirstReads but that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in this review. show less

I got this book as a Library Thing Early Reviewers. I loved it from the first page, because I tend to love first-person chatty novels. The writing is good and engaging and the story is good. As the book went on, though, I found myself not being able to STAND the narrator, although I think that's intentional on the part of the author. But I think we are supposed to look at her life history and understand how she got so screwed up. I did understand that, although I kept wanting to say "just grow UP already!". All of that is just part of the craft of novels though. My MAIN complaint -- and maybe they'll change this in the editing process? -- was the titles of the chapters. It absolutely drove me bonkers throughout the entire book. "flight show more to atlanta"; "driving to Sasha's place"; "the back porch, before dinner". I mean, you could just read the chapter titles and have a synopsis of the entire plot in way less time than it took me to read the book! One chapter is titled "billy calls" and then when you start reading the chapter, her phone rings and she thinks it's her husband Peter calling, and you, as the reader, are going "Nope it's billy. I know this because the chapter title told me so". I don't know, maybe it's snarky, but I thought the book would have been way better if they just stuck with Chapter 12 and so forth. It literally almost ruined the book for me. show less

Kate Pulaski has made an awful mess of her life, Her husband wants her gone, her screenwriting career is stalled (perhaps for good), she is deeply in debt and has no ready cash. Her life seems to have hit bottom, but there is one more nasty bombshell in store: her estranged, much-married father has killed himself, and her two older siblings, Nell and Elliot, are counting on her to join them in Atlanta to help wind up their father's affairs.

The agreeable surprise of Hannah Pittard's new novel is the unexpected charm of its lying, unreliable narrator, Kate. When her father embarked on his second, third, and fourth marriages, Kate was still living at home and bore the heaviest burden of resentful stepmothers and a steady stream of new show more half-siblings. Kate is self-aware enough to complain mightily of this unpleasant twist of her fate, but not self-aware enough to recognize how much her unreliable father has shaped her own character and choices. Kate is a curious mixture of volatility, self-deception, and paradoxical blunt honesty, and I found myself becoming surprisingly fond of her. Kate wants to be a better person. Kate is kind of clueless.

A second happy surprise was the way Pittard handled Sasha, the estranged fifth wife of the siblings' father. (It would be easier to refer to her as their stepmother, but it is hard to see her that way; she is younger than all of them). It's rare to see a novelist resist the temptation to make the May half of a May/December romance anything but a cartoon, but Sasha exudes a practical warmth and goodness that makes her easily the novel's most endearing character. In fact, in every way, Hannah Pittard resists cliches and easy answers for her characters. Her gift for creating fully-fleshed-out characters makes Kate's three-day sojourn in Atlanta a believable and refreshingly unusual journey to self-awareness.

Thanks to Hachette Publishing for making this book available to LT's Early Reviewer Program! And good luck to them in their fight against Amazon. show less