Ordinary Hazards

April 3, 2020

DEBUT Single-minded, ambitious, and somewhat abrasive, Latinx anthropologist Claudia Ranks leaves Seattle when she learns of her husband's involvement with her sister and heads for a Native American whaling village on the Pacific Coast where she once worked. There she reacquaints herself with spirited but fading Maggie, who lives in a trash-to-the-ceiling house and has been diagnosed with dementia. Claudia feels that her research on the Makah is worthy but fragmented and wishes to create a more complete story. But Maggie--and the Makah generally--are evasive, unwilling to share their culture. Meanwhile, Maggie's son, Peter, a loner like Claudia, has returned to care for his mother after years way. Even as Claudia tries to persuade Maggie to open up, he and Claudia enter into a seesawing relationship that gives them both a sense of belonging while failing to resolve the issue of what comes next in their respective lives. VERDICT Gorgeously, toughly written, this book dares to be open-ended yet leaves readers with a satisfying sense of how life really unfolds. Cultural clash matters here, but personal differences and desires even more. For any fiction reader looking beyond the obvious. [See "Winter/Spring Bests," LJ 4/20.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 8, 2020
In Bruno’s engrossing debut, 30-something Emma returns from her new home in Brooklyn to the Final Final dive bar in Wilton, N.Y., where she met her ex-husband, Lucas, five years earlier. Through flashbacks, Emma reflects on good times with Lucas and becoming a mother before their divorce, and Bruno slowly draws out the details around devastating events that lead to Emma’s heartbreak. Despite her job as a hedge fund manager, which requires her to be alert before the markets open, Emma spends the evening in Wilton near Lucas, where “there’s a fine line between rustic and run-down,” as opposed to her own Brooklyn neighborhood. After one of the regulars, Martin “Yag” Yagla—a longtime friend of Lucas—confronts Emma for lingering, Emma muses on how Wilton tethers her to memories of her former family. Emma has it out for Yag, and decides to get him banned from the Final Final by slipping a man’s wallet into his jacket, then accusing him of stealing it. The skirmish is resolved, yet it has ramifications, as Emma and Yag grapple with events surrounding the dissolution of Emma’s family. While the Upstate and Brooklyn descriptions verge on cliché, the author convincingly portrays Emma’s ambition, grief, and desire to move on from the past. In the end, Bruno’s thoughtful tale offers memorable insights on the meaning of home.

Starred review from June 15, 2020
From a stool in her local bar, Emma Murphy reckons with the maelstrom of her broken life. With multiple degrees from prestigious schools, Emma ought to be on Wall Street, but she chose to live in a small town in upstate New York, where she co-runs a multimillion dollar hedge fund and teaches advanced communications to MBA students at the local university. She likes the classroom, and her entire curriculum rests on the importance of storytelling: Beginnings, endings, and transitions. That storytelling arc is the basis of her own bestselling book, The Breakout Effect. But somewhere along the line, Emma's own story has broken down. So in The Final Final bar she sits, drinking whiskey, thinking about Lucas and their failed marriage. A few locals populate the scene, including Jimmy, Martin, and Cal, whose 10-year-old daughter, Summer, idly draws pictures at a table. They were all Lucas' friends first. Meanwhile, Samantha, her oldest friend, and Grace, her business partner, have been texting Emma, hoping to bring her to Samantha's house by 9 p.m. For a girls night? An intervention? Either way, Emma has no intention of showing up. And Emma is not the only one falling apart tonight. One of her fellow barfly's troubles may spell the end of everything. In this, her debut novel, Bruno shows a masterful talent for sketching both the outlines and depths of depression, guilt, and self-loathing. In chapters structured according to the time of night, Bruno leads us hour by hour, step by step down the staircase into Emma's past. In the harsh light of an alcoholic's making an inventory of her moral failings, we witness Emma tell the beginning and ending of her love affair with Lucas. And we gingerly descend into their heartbreaking transition. A spellbinding portrait of grief.

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Starred review from July 1, 2020
Frequenting a small-town bar, one quickly learns the regular patrons?their names, occupations, and drinks of choice, but also their histories, motivations, and fears. Emma would like to think she's an outlier among the regulars at The Final Final, but that's exactly what a regular would say. Emma's fresh off a divorce and a tragic accident, but she doesn't have to put on a brave face while perched on a barstool; it seems like everyone in upstate New York knows everything, anyway. Taking place over the course of a long and dramatic Wednesday night, Bruno's debut jumps between flashbacks to Emma's happier times of domestic bliss and the hard, heartwrenching times of today. As drinks are poured, jokes are told, and fights are started and finished, Emma's vision for her future becomes increasingly clear. Echoing the small-town atmospheric work of Richard Russo, Andre Dubus III, and Jane Smiley, Bruno's novel introduces a lyrical, earnest, and heartfelt voice. For the regulars, or anyone who's walked into a wood-paneled haven and had their drink of choice slid across a well-polished bar without exchanging a word, Ordinary Hazards burns deliciously, but goes down easy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)