The End of the Day

April 1, 2020
A web of characters are connected by long-kept secrets, a boxy briefcase, and a once-fabulous mansion in the Connecticut woods. Dana, Jackie, Lupita, Alice, Hap. How do they all fit together? In rotating vignettes from past and present, Clegg parcels out the clues at a leisurely pace. First we meet Dana Goss, a slim, imperious aging heiress. Suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's, she keeps forgetting why she's had herself driven to Connecticut with a monogrammed briefcase full of papers and photos, planning to break the 50-year silence between herself and her childhood best friend. Unfortunately, Jackie, a bitter woman whose fondness for Dana has long since been replaced by fury, won't even open the door. Next up: Lupita. Daughter of the maid at Dana's family's mansion, same age as Dana and Jackie, now living in Hawaii and running a taxi company. Then Alice, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, age 73: Dana Goss' aunt was her benefactor and lifelong friend. Alice is holding a baby for the first time in a while--her son and daughter-in-law have dumped their newborn and disappeared. Finally, Hap, the son in question. He was planning to bring his elderly father to meet the new baby, but the man fell down the stairs at his hotel just as Hap was arriving and died a few days later. Hap is about to find out that almost everything he knows about who he is is a lie. Subsequent sections rotate through the characters, uncovering the secret history that binds them together. On the way Clegg dives deep into the inner life of each, exploring the ways our traumas shape our lives. His unhurried, lyrical sentences often make connections between the characters' states of mind and the natural world: "The late day light breaks through and moves in beams and panels across the sky. It dazzles and vanishes, then reappears, flares bright, goes dark again--on and on, like code, as if the sun itself is speaking to her." This book is sad, but compared to Clegg's highly acclaimed first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, it's a Fourth of July picnic, albeit one that ruins a few characters' lives. A moody, atmospheric domestic drama with a mystery novel somewhere in its family tree.

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Starred review from May 11, 2020
Clegg (Did You Ever Have a Family) delivers a thoughtful, well-observed story of a patrician New York City family and its Mexican servants. Dana Goss, heir of Edgeweather, her family’s Connecticut estate, has in her old age begun to show signs of Alzheimer’s. As Dana makes the trip to Edgewater from her townhouse in the city for the first time in 30 years, Clegg alternates the short chapters with views into in the lives of Dana’s childhood best friend Jackie, and Lupita Lopez, the house manager’s daughter, who grew up in the shadow of Dana and Jackie’s friendship and privilege. In the second part, Clegg swings down to present-day Philadelphia, where Hap, a journalist, sits by his father’s deathbed. Readers will wonder about Hap’s connection to the other characters, and where the story is going, though Dana knows the answer, and her revelations will upend everything. As the pieces come together, little is as it seems—on first, or even second, sight. The splendid prose and orchestrated maneuvering will keep readers turning the pages and send them back to the beginning, to read it all over again. Agent: Claudia Ballard, William Morris Endeavor.

September 1, 2020
Dana and Jackie were inseparable as girls when Dana's family would spend weekends at their Connecticut estate near Jackie's family's modest home. Nearly 50 years since they last spoke, Dana arrives without notice on Jackie's doorstep and leaves just as abruptly. So begins the day during which Clegg's (Did You Ever Have a Family, 2015) complex second novel unfolds. Lupita grew up in the shadow of Dana's family, for whom her parents and older sister all worked. Today, driving a taxi in Hawaii, she ignores a persistent phone caller. Actually encompassing decades, the novel also introduces Hap, a man welcoming a baby and mourning his father's sudden death at the same time, and his mother, Alice, a professor with long-ago connections to Dana's family. The pleasure here is in getting lost in the details as Clegg leads readers through a narrative maze. Characters' connections?and separations?morph as the story proceeds, shifting among their various perspectives. Even at their least certain, their lives seemingly happening to them all at once, Clegg's characters are fully themselves in every moment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2020

A retired widow receives a surprise visit from a childhood friend long gone from her life. A man bringing his new daughter to his estranged father finds him collapsed on the floor. And a 60-plus taxi driver in Kauai is prompted to recall past tragedy by a long-distance phone call. Clegg blends these three disparate storylines in a novel about choices following Did You Ever Have a Family, long-listed for Man Booker and National Book Award honors. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

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