What the Family Needed

January 14, 2013
Amsterdam’s second novel (after Things We Didn’t Know) tackles the family-in-crisis trope: divorce, financial struggles, a child adrift, and the loss of a spouse. Except each member of this family has a superpower. The book is written in vignettes that span 30 years and never land on the same person twice, and one of the delights is piecing together the truth about each character as his or her inner world and the family’s perception intersect. Some of the characters’ superpowers underscore the book’s conventionality—an insecure 15-year-old girl wills herself invisible—while others feel somewhat arbitrary. Why exactly does Natalie have the power to swim fantastically? (The answer provided is flimsy at best.) Yet there are moments when the writing’s simplicity becomes its own kind of superpower. In a section on grief, Peter loses his wife of 41 years (Natalie, the swimmer) and discovers he can make his desires real: funeral well-wishers appear and then vanish; Natalie’s pumpkin mash steams on a plate and only after eating does Peter decide the flavor is too much to bear. It’s a fresh take on grief, and when Peter realizes his loss, and that two lives lived in tandem are just that, the book soars. A late revelation, however, threatens to reduce each vignette, and the novel, into a stylistic exercise. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Co.

February 1, 2013
What this fictional family needs, according to Amsterdam, are surreal and fantastic interventions that give each member the strength to go on. Although the story spans 30 years, the weirdness starts when 15-year-old Giordana escapes with her mother, Ruth, and brother, Ben, to her aunt and uncle's house to elude her father's abuse. Aunt Natalie and Uncle Peter have a house of their own with their children, Giordana's cousins Alek and Sasha. Alek, whose age is inferable by his Superman underpants, is thrilled to see his cousins and impulsively asks Giordana whether she'd rather fly or be invisible. Somewhat bewildered, she chooses the latter, in part to placate the insistent Alek, but she is even more astonished to discover that she actually does develop the ability to disappear. This allows her to eavesdrop on conversations about her father's mistreatment of her mother, conversations Ruth doesn't particularly want to share with her daughter. The chapters focus on a different character in the family and on an astonishing capacity each develops. Alek starts to become recalcitrant in school, and Natalie takes refuge in swimming, but she begins to have times that compete with college swimmers half her age. In her capacity as a nurse, Ruth begins to hear the thoughts of her patients. After Natalie dies of an aneurysm, Peter discovers some astonishing abilities to bend reality to his will. The novel ends with the adult Alek, who's always been the estranged one in the family, claiming that "Anything can happen, anywhere"--and the events of the novel have proved his observation true. While Amsterdam is not exactly working in the style of magical realism, he develops his own kind of reality that has more than a tinge of fantasy.

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March 1, 2013
Amsterdam's highly praised collection of stories, Things We Didn't See Coming (2011), sensitively described the dilemmas facing ordinary yet vividly realized characters at the onset of an apocalyptic future. In his latest work, Amsterdam brings the same refined prose and resourceful imagination to the story of an extended family whose members, one by one, unaccountably discover they have superpowers. In each case the revelation is preceded by troublesome discord with a parent or child. For 15-year-old Giordana, the talent is invisibility and the catalyst is her parents' split-up and her move with her mother and brother to her crowded aunt and uncle's house. For Giordana's aunt Natalie, it's the ability to swim almost nonstop with Olympic athleticism, a gift mysteriously bestowed when her son, Alek, refuses to communicate with her. Other powers include, for her brother, Ben, flying like a bird; for her mother, Ruth, mind reading; and for her cousin Sasha, love-at-first-sight matchmaking. Amsterdam's juxtaposition of psychological insight with fantasy motifs makes him hard to categorize, but his storytelling prowess makes for riveting reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)