Wish You Were Here

First published twenty years ago, this is the kind of timeless story that could just as easily take place fifty years ago or last week. And because it's written by Stewart O'Nan, it's beautifully written. It's an ordinary story of an extended family's last time together at the family lake house. Each family member is going through their own stuff and there's all the family dynamics that emerge when adult siblings are together again. O'Nan is unparalleled at writing about the complex and unique lives of unremarkable people and here he has a lot to work with, from the never-married aunt whose life was always full as a public school teacher, discovering loneliness in retirement, to a pre-adolescent boy full of fear of what might happen. show more The stand-out scene from this book is his -- finding the courage to ride an inner tube being dragged behind a boat and having it tip over -- such a routine event but written about with empathy. O'Nan had me rooting for each and every member of this family, even when they were in conflict. I'm so glad he chose to write a few more books about the Maxwell family. show less

For years, Emily and Henry Maxwell spent their summer vacation at the family’s lake cottage in Chautauqua, NY. The tradition continued even as their children, Ken and Meg, reached adulthood and had children of their own. Now Emily, recently widowed, has gathered everyone for one last week together before the cottage is sold. Wish You Were Here shows a family dealing with the losses of both Henry and the summer experiences that shaped them as a family.

Ken, married to Lisa, has suffered a career setback. Meg is a recovering alcoholic in the middle of a divorce. Ken and Meg each have two children of similar age, ready-made summer playmates. Henry’s sister Arlene is also part of the group; she and Emily have become particularly close show more since Henry’s death. The family’s week is filled with all of their usual summer activities–swimming, tubing, miniature golf, ice cream–but these are just part of the setting. In some ways, nothing much happens; just when you think there’s going to be drama, the situation settles back into equilibrium. At the heart of the story are the relationships every member of the family has with one another, and the emotional current driving their actions. I enjoyed watching this unfold and seeing how their week at the lake affected each member of the family. show less

I've enjoyed O'Nan's work in the past ([Last Night at the Lobster], [The Night Country]), and this hefty novel demonstrates many of the reasons why. The setting is familiar, and irresistible to me. There are multiple viewpoints in this story of an extended family's last summer vacation in their cottage on Lake Chatauqua: Arlene, an unmarried school teacher whose one and only love affair was decades ago and doomed; her sister-in-law, Emily, a fairly recent widow who owns the cottage and has decided she must sell it; Emily's daughter Meg and her two children, and son Ken with his wife and two children. Taking on the viewpoints of two aging women, a recovering alcoholic in the throes of divorce, a lost little boy in a grown man's body, his show more dissatisfied self-doubting wife, two teenage girls and two adolescent boys is beyond ambitious. Yet O'Nan nails every one of them. Within a paragraph or two, the reader knows these people, recognizes their faults, identifies with some aspect of someone's personality. They are all consumed with their own problems, many of them of their own making, and no one is really having much fun. A cloud hangs over everything--impending divorce, financial difficulties, grief, teen-aged crushes, Loss with a CAPITAL L. Two solid days of deluge do nothing to improve the situation. No one communicates well, the adults ride the children ceaselessly for things that ought to be overlooked on vacation fer cryin' out loud, Ken and Meg get high in the garage like guilty teenagers, the kids predictably act out because of course they know things aren't right AT ALL. As brilliantly as O' Nan renders all of this, I confess that 500+ pages of it got to be a bit much. I couldn't scare up much sympathy for any of the characters (except sometimes the children...living in a chaos not of their own making...but I didn't like any of them either), and I kept hoping for a little breakthrough of sanity, understanding or compassion somewhere. But no, self-absorbed they all remained. Even Emily's final generous offer to help her daughter came across as furtive and unfair. I am not at all put off from reading more of O'Nan, and I do want to get to [Henry, Himself] and see what that perspective might add, but I don't think I'm going to visit [Emily, Alone] any time soon. I feel I've had enough of her for...maybe always. show less

O’Nan’s hefty novel is proof positive that an engrossing, encompassing read doesn’t have to include international spies, doomed spacecraft, intricate heists, or high-speed car chases. There are no superheroes here, no monstrous villains – just a group of people related by blood or marriage, who come together for one last week at the summer home which is being sold after multiple generations of the Maxwell family have made memories there.

The narrative follows the quotidian tasks of surviving a week in close contact with multiple generations of an extended family. What are we eating, who is cooking it, who has to do the dishes? What do we do when it rains and the youngest generation is antsy and bored? Anyone who has ever endured show more a family reunion, particularly as an in-law or adolescent, will recognize the endless jigsaw puzzle, board game, enforced family fun events as excruciating chores, occasionally tinged by grudgingly acknowledged – if fleeting – moments of incandescence.

But it’s also an incisive look at nine people whose pasts and futures, needs and wants, have interlocked in a towering Jenga of love and resentment, memory and loss, struggle and acceptance. And every one of them, from retired teacher Arlene, seeing her brother’s widow cavalierly parting with a property that by rights should be half hers, to eight-year-old Justin, struggling with his parents’ divorce and the heavy burden of always being the baby of the group, gets their POV moment. The characters run true and deep, rubbing against each other in the lakeside cabin, sorting through the keepsakes and deciding what to take and what to leave behind as they prepare for this watershed event in all their lives.

A satisfying, juicy read, regardless of the season. show less

The Short of It:

A lovely, heartwarming story about love, loss and what it means to be a family. Easily, one of my favorite books ever.

The Rest of It:

I honestly don’t know why it’s taken me so long to write about this one. I read it so long ago, and yet there was a little piece of me that just wanted to let my mind wander this way and that after finishing it. It’s THAT kind of book. The kind you curl up with and linger over. I really didn’t want it to end. Ever.

But… it did. I wanted to cry when it ended. Not because the story is particularly sad but because I knew I was going to miss these characters dearly. And I do miss them.

After the death of her husband Henry, Emily Maxwell gathers the family for one last hurrah at the show more family’s cottage on Lake Chautauqua. The cottage has been sold and the task at hand is to enjoy one more pristine summer, and to decide who get’s what as far as its contents.

Gathered together are Emily’s son and daughter. Both of whom have their own families and are dealing with personal issues of their own, her sister-in-law, who also misses Henry dearly and Emily’s aging dog, Rufus. With the adults and kids all trying to get along and a daughter-in-law who doesn’t always see things Emily’s way, the week drags out until it’s inevitable conclusion.

O’Nan’s writing is somewhat magical in this story. He has a knack for taking everyday tasks and making them seem glorious. As this family’s week plays out, I often felt as if I was right there with them, cooking burgers or tubing at the lake. Anyone who has ever taken a family vacation will attest to the accuracy of everything in this novel. The sights and smells (think musty cabin, cluttered garage, sulphurous water) and the overall boredom of the children as the adults get to dictate what they do on any given day.

But tucked within the folds, you’ll find sadness and it will tug at your heart. How do you say goodbye to a place that holds so many memories? Things that bothered you before, like ant infestations, are suddenly precious in the way that lost things are. It’s impossible to fathom and through it all, you have the continuous ebb and flow of everything else around you.

Although long, I adored this book for its realistic depiction of family and although all of the characters had their quirks, I loved them and wanted the best for them and could not stop thinking about them after closing its cover.

The good thing? Is that there is a sequel to this book. Emily Alone continues on with Emily, as she lives alone and goes through the day-to-day of being… well…Emily. I can’t wait to visit her again!

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter show less

A family--the matriarch Emily, recently widowed; Meg, her soon-to-be-divorced daughter with children; and Ken, her underemployed artist photographer son with wife and kids--travels from their disparate hometowns to spend a last week together at the family lake house that was their refuge for so many summers. The book drifts quickly into a prevailing melancholy as a four-day-long rain storm moves in and forces the family to begin confronting the uncomfortable realities of their lives. As the rains lift they see the inevitable conclusion to their stay, which is ultimately escape from each other and back into their lives, where nobody will be there to judge but themselves for the way their lives have turned out.

Emily is a character that is show more easy to dislike as she nitpicks her children and makes them feel guilty for the paths their lives have taken but when the author allows a glimpse of her interior monologue her intentions aren't always in alignment with the way she is perceived. Stuart O'Nan recently wrote the sequel to this titled "Emily, Alone" which perfectly summarizes my expectation of where she would be left after leaving the summer house. show less

Many extended families gather along a lake or a seashore for a few days each summer. It's usually fun for everyone involved, but is there enough in such a family vacation for a novel? Stewart O'Nan thought so, and in 2002 he published “Wish You Were Here,” not just a novel about a week at the lake but a 517-page novel.

The family is the Maxwells, the subject of other O'Nan novels. Henry and Emily Maxwell have taken their family to their cottage along Chautauqua Lake in western New York for many years. Now Henry has died, and Emily gathers her family for one last week at the lake before she sells the cottage. Family members include Arlene, Henry's never-married sister; Kenneth, Emily's son, his wife Lise and their two children, Ella show more and Sam; and Margaret, Emily's daughter, and her children, Sarah and Justin.

This week at the lake never develops much more of a plot than any other family's week at the lake. Early in the week Kenneth stops for gas soon after a young female attendant at the gas station disappears, presumably kidnapped, and this thread weaves through the novel now and then, but it never turns into a crime novel. The closest O'Nan comes to an actual plot is that nobody in the family wants to lose the beloved cottaged, but only Emily can afford to pay the taxes, and she doesn't want the responsibility. Yet that is hardly enough to sustain 500 pages.

But we keep reading. There is something compelling about a family's attempts during a mostly rainy week to find things to do that will keep everyone amused. It is all familiar somehow, much like our own lakeside family reunions.

The author offers the point of view of each of the nine characters, switching from one to another. Each person is loving part of the family, yet we see that each is secretly petty, selfish and even somewhat vindictive. Unacknowledged conflicts rage beneath the surface, sort of like in most families. Only the two boys are young enough to allow their true feelings to come out in the open. Disciplining them amounts to teaching them to hold those feelings inside like the adults do.

The novel, while never riveting, nevertheless proves interesting enough to keep the pages turning. The missing woman does not turn up, and other problems remain unresolved as well. Emily is still lonely. Kenneth still can't make a decent living from his first love, photography. Margaret, just divorced, still wants to drown her depression in drink. Lise still worries that her husband has more to say to his sister than to her. Ella still has a crush on her prettier cousin. And so on. Family vacations usually don't solve problems. They just give us a break from them, or in some cases just bring them out into the open.

For many years my own extended family spent weeks each summer in a cottage along Chautauqua Lake, so O'Nan's many references to places along the lake — such as the Lenhart Hotel, the Bemus Point ferry, the Book Barn, the casino, etc. — made this novel especially appealing to me. It made me wish I were there. show less