This Must Be the Place

Arthur Rook's wife Amy is killed in a workplace accident. Arthur cannot comprehend that she is well and truly gone from his life. In going through her closet, he comes upon a pink shoebox filled with tiny treasures and mementos.

And an unmailed postcard from 16 years ago that reads:

"Mona, I'm sorry. I should have told you. Anyway I left you the best parts of myself. You know where to look. Amy
So Arthur in his grief, set out to Ruby Falls, New York to find Mona and maybe learn more about Amy and the past she never talked about.

This Must Be the Place is not really about Amy though. It's about those she left behind - Mona, her daughter Oneida and Arthur. For each of them, Amy played a pivotal role in their lives. As Arthur struggles to show more come to terms with Amy's death, Mona is forced to confront her past. Secrets long buried can no longer be kept hidden.

Kate Racculia's book was a wonderful find for me. There is the mystery of Amy's past, but for me it was the exploration of relationships that I found attractive. Mona and her love for her daughter Oneida. Oneida's complicated coming of age (this was a great subplot) and Arthur and Mona's tentative reaching out to each other and the loss of Amy. The book is populated with marvellously quirky characters that lend an almost enchanted feel to the Darby-Jones boarding house Mona runs. I did guess Amy's secret about halfway through, but it didn't detract from enjoying the rest of the book at all.

A great debut by a new voice. I enjoyed Racculia's whimsical, unique tale and characters very much and look forward to her next offering. show less

I don’t rave unabashedly about every book I read, but this is one book that I honestly couldn’t find any flaws with! The quirky characters were well-developed and the author carefully meted out their secrets. I feel like I know them well enough to strike up a conversation if I were to run into them. There was a good mix of sadness (particularly Arthur’s devastated reaction to his wife’s death) and humor, all blended with both important and unexpected minor twists. For example, I loved the revelation of Dani’s personality and how she helped Oneida.

This reminded me a lot of Sarah Addison Allen's books, without the magic and with a little more “edge.”

Kate Racculia's debut novel has a fantastic first half, stumbles a little and then makes it securely across the finish line. Arthur Rook is knocked sideways by the sudden death of his wife. He gathers his wife's shoebox of momentoes and her cat and takes off for her hometown, specifically the boarding house run by her childhood best friend. There he meets Mona and her daughter Oneida, who is dealing with adolescence and with connecting with her peers. Racculia writes with a light and thoughtful tone, respecting her characters and weaving in odd lines of rock lyrics. She does seem to waver towards the end on whether to be coldly rational or sentimental, but she pulls it all out in the end. I do like the cleverness of her writing and will show more certainly pick up her next book. show less

This is lovely novel about Arthur Rook, a bereft newly-widowed young man searching for some connection to his wife’s past. He finds an old unsent postcard he’s never seen and travels across country to her hometown, where she was raised by her now-deceased grandfather. There he finds a group of characters, especially Mona, the woman to whom the card was addressed, living at a boarding house Mona owns. Mona has a 15-year old daughter, Oneida, precocious and somewhat alienated from her classmates, and we come to know Arthur, Mona, Oneida, and Oneida’s boyfriend all very well, for there are really four main characters here, as well as Amy, the dead wife, who is ever-present.

Racculia’s handle on dialogue is superb, and even as I was show more tempted to read ahead to find out what happens, I was entranced by the language and stayed with the storyline. She shows, doesn’t tell, and when she refers to something from popular culture she allows the reader to follow-up if necessary and doesn’t bog down the story explaining. For instance, when Amy asks him to name one person he hates, he names Hitler (douchebag), the Cigarette-Smoking Man, and Iago. Later he describes his impression of the local vegetation when he was newly-arrived in Los Angeles as waving their triffid fronds. And recalling his childhood: He’d once even dreamed himself onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and had been whipped into a froth of anxiety because he was supposed to be on the Millennium Falcon; he was in the wrong universe entirely, and Spock had neck-pinched him to shut him up.

The secret Amy was hiding is not a big surprise and isn’t meant to be except to Arthur and some of the other characters. There are hints along the way, and when it’s revealed, it’s the way in which it affects these characters we’ve come to love which is the suspense. This is a wonderful book about loss, love, acceptance and new beginnings. Highly recommended. show less

This Must Be the Place, Kate Racculia's debut novel, is the story of a widower, a past friendship, a mother and daughter, first love, and what happens when all these different worlds collide. Really, it's a hard novel to classify as it crosses genres. It's a coming of age story mixed with elements of chic lit, but it is also a plot driven character study. And, after melding elements from these different genres, it's really quite good.

All the characters aren't perfect so they feel realistic. (Arthur was annoying me at times, but he felt real.) The big secret will not be a secret to the readers because it is clearly foreshadowed, but experiencing the character's discovery as small details are revealed and explained is masterfully handled show more by Racculia. (I don't want to give any spoilers.) I appreciated hearing from the different character's point of view, and loved how all the little details and plot twists were slowly explained and revealed from each character's point of view. Racculia doesn't quite explain a remorseless, cruel act at the center of the novel, but we certainly come close to some measure of understanding.

As I was reading This Must Be the Place that I kept discovering little gems of writing that resonated with me - a sentence here, a turn of the phrase there. If I didn't consciously show self-restraint, I could have flagged many quotes throughout the whole novel. There is some humor, some touching scenes, some absurd events, some conflicts. I'm going to be looking forward to more from Kate Racculia in the future because I really enjoy the way she expresses herself.
Very Highly Recommended; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less

I really enjoyed this novel. It was filled with interesting, quirky, and vivid characters and they each got to tell their story. We begin with Arthur Rook, who has just lost his young wife, Amy, and when he finds a shoe-box full of mementos, he heads to Ruby Falls. Amy left Ruby Falls when she was just a teenager and Arthur knew little about her life there. But now he wants to know everything so he can keep Amy alive in his memories, though he has started to blur reality and imagination.

Mona is a fun-loving singe mom, who adopts the lost Arthur when he comes to stay at her boardinghouse. She doesn't want Arthur to know her secrets but she can't help but fall into the Amy memories.

Oneida is brilliant and different. She is a teenager who show more doesn't care about fitting in. But she knows her mom has a secret and begins to resent the time her mom spends with Arthur. Oneida's story is also a beautiful coming-of age story as she juggles the perils of high school with a first love.

And then there is Amy, selfish but loving, creating a world that leaves others out, though she was the center of theirs. We only know her in flashbacks, but the author brings this complicated character to life.

This book has everything: romance, mystery, humor, magic, and drama. It is extremely well-written and engaging, slightly off-beat (in a good way) and I highly recommend it.

rating 4.5/5 show less

audio fiction (~13 hrs) - drama, grief and family secrets
It begins with a postcard, written by Amy when she leaves her friend in Ocean City, New Jersey, but which she never sent. Years later, her 32 y.o. widower husband Arthur would find the address on the postcard, turning up at the doorstep of Amy's estranged friend Mona (and Mona's teenaged daughter Oneida) in Ruby Falls (upstate New York?).

Interesting characters with complicated problems; as their stories unfold things get pretty messy with plenty of heartbreaking moments as well as potentially romantic ones. It maybe drags a bit towards the end (Oneida's a good kid, but her story is sort of all over the place), but overall an entertaining book.