All the Dead Yale Men

Starred review from April 15, 2013
Nova’s career-defining 1982 novel The Good Son explored the relationship between a domineering, social-climbing father, Pop Mackinnon, and his loyal but restless son Chip, a World War II veteran who returns home to an arranged marriage. This equally impressive sequel follows Chip’s son Frank, now happily married and a Boston prosecutor, after his father’s death by stroke unleashes long-buried family secrets and resentments–the latter over Chip’s sale of a parcel of land earmarked for Frank’s inheritance. Meanwhile, Frank’s daughter, Pia, thankfully dumps shifty boyfriend Aurlon for more upstanding fellow classmate Robert; but trouble surfaces in the form of shadowy gangster Stas, who tries to blackmail Frank into helping him cover up his stolen car-parts operation, and in the reappearance of Frank’s old love, Pauline. Frank’s first-person narration takes its time developing characterization and meticulously painting the memories of a son who is at odds with his father, yet who fondly recalls their shared history—including a death-defying encounter with a wild bear that demonstrates Chip’s fearlessness. Nova’s scenic evocation of Boston is spot-on, as is his emotional detailing of the fragile intricacies of family. Agent: Paul Fedorko, N.S. Bienstock Inc.

April 15, 2013
A complex melodrama, set in Boston, about a third-generation attorney who must come to terms with the tawdry legacy of a manipulative father manipulated by his own father and a willful daughter who falls for the wrong guy. This is a sequel to Nova's (The Constant Heart, 2012, etc.) acclaimed The Good Son, which appeared in 1982. Frank MacKinnon is his father's son, a not-yet-dead Yale man. Frank's father, Chip, is a hard-drinking type with uncertain but nefarious employment who has wasted the assets of his own cold, calculating (and long-dead) father, Pop. Money was squandered, and, worse yet, two-thirds of Pop's ample property in Delaware was sold off to the Girl Scouts. Frank turns to the journals of Pop's deceased wife, Catherine, for help in sorting out the financial mess, the emotional turmoil, the bad genes. Frank, a prosecutor, is a mess himself, blowing a case that eats at what remains of his conscience and struggling to steer his beloved, bright, attractive daughter away from Aurlon Miller, a charismatic but unkempt ne'er-do-well. When Frank's wife gets invited to Rome, Frank goes to great lengths to thwart Miller. Frank's passionate but principled ex, Pauline, appears and plays a small but crucial part. Pauline is an irresistible type, the incorruptible criminal. A troublesome black bear roams the Delaware property, fatted with symbolism. Nova is a gifted writer of quotidian violence: car wrecks, suicides, animal poisonings, murder. The macabre steadies his prose. Connoisseurs of this sort of not-quite hard-boiled fiction will find much to admire here.

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Starred review from May 1, 2013
Long-awaited is an overused phrase in publishers' promotional blurbs, but Nova's follow-up to his acclaimed 1982 novel The Good Son merits that description as much as any recent fiction, and it has been well worth the lengthy wait. Nova now brings forward more than one full generation his account of the Mackinnon family. The Good Son told the story of Pop Mackinnon and his son, Chip. Here we have Chip, a former WWII POW turned spook; his son, Frank, a prosecuting attorney in Boston; and Frank's daughter, Pia, and her boyfriends. The Mackinnons' roots are in a richly described Delaware Valley, but this dark saga is also set in a seamy New England familiar to readers of George V. Higgins' classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle or Geoffrey Wolff's Providence. It is told with comparable verve, wit, horror, and beautyeven when vulgar, even repellentand with images and set pieces that will haunt the reader long after they've put the book down. This gripping and intelligent chronicle of love, legacy, and betrayal (the title may suggest a genre mystery, which this surely isn't) captures a complex clan entangled in a questionable moral universe. Nova's Mackinnons, both here and in The Good Son, leave their edgy mark on the modern American literary landscape.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)