Trompe l'Oeil

March 30, 2015
Reisman’s second novel (after 2004’s The First Desire) is a slow burn of breaking, healing, and breaking again, in the aftermath of a tragedy. At the start, the Murphys are an ordinary family. Nora and James are a “sparkling couple”: they have three beautiful children and a second house by the beach, in addition to their gorgeous first home in a Boston suburb. But an accident on a vacation in Rome shakes their lives to the core: their youngest daughter, four-year-old Molly, is hit and killed by a car. Slowly, over time, the trappings of the Murphys’ identity slip away. Reisman’s sense of language and lyricism are sharp. But the narrative can sometimes stall, and it is often too subtle and languorous for its own good. Still, with shades of The Ice Storm and Revolutionary Road, Reisman offers a poignant portrait of a family undergoing a gradual, permanent transformation.

March 1, 2015
A slow, lyrical exploration of a family's unspooling after the death of a child.As Reisman's (The First Desire, 2004) second novel begins, James and Nora Murphy are about to take their three young children on vacation from their home in Massachusetts to Rome. One of them dies in an accident there, and the novel follows the survivors, and two children born later, for decades. In those years, just about every other bad thing that can happen to a family piles on to the original tragedy, accruing in short chapters and poetic language. A landscape: "August thunderstorms...jagged lines to the northeast, and the felt-sense of water spilling over into the dark." A sex scene: "a place of liquid and muscle and bone. A salt tang, a pale gray drifting...." A dinner: "the kettle almost announcing itself as kettle, the paper shell of the garlic feathery against his skin, tart slices of lemon brilliant on the counter." One admires Reisman's skill, but these lapidary descriptions eventually become tiresome. Ornamenting the narrative further are vignettes analyzing various paintings and sculptures which can be seen in Rome-by Caravaggio, Fetti, Bernini, many more. Each moves from description into second-person philosophical inquiry. "If she could escape the harsh light, the judging view, might the shame dissolve into more tender melancholy? Beyond the frame and any view-even yours-she might rest." If these sections develop the plot, it's so subtly that one could easily skip them, like the whaling chapters in Moby-Dick. Too many paintings, too many houses, too many emerald green pieces of broccoli: the Murphys' lives become as wearying to the reader as they are to the Murphys themselves. An almost narcotically depressing novel; its fine writing, artsy digressions, and close psychological study require a special sort of reader.

March 1, 2015

When James and Nora vacation in Rome with their children, a terrible tragedy ensues that ultimately tears them apart. Not that there weren't cracks before. Nora had settled for motherhood and neglected her painting, though occasional chapters deepen the prose by reflecting on classical artworks. James, crippled by his upbringing, grumbles about the long commute from the old family home on the Massachusetts coast to Boston. Soon those cracks widen irreparably, resulting in the examination of a failed marriage and its aftermath that truly catches the breath. VERDICT A realistic and gorgeously written story that readers will surely share; from the award-winning author of The First Desire.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015
Nora and James Murphy spend their summers at a beach house in Blue Rock on the Massachusetts coast, but one year they decide to cut short their usual stay and travel with their three small childrenTheo, Katy, and Mollyto Rome. There, four-year-old Molly dies in a terrible accident, a tragedy that shadows and shapes the rest of their lives. But life does go on. Two more daughters, Sara and Delia, are born. While Nora decides to live in the Blue Rock house year-round, seeing it as a haven, James drifts further away, and the two ultimately divorce. The children grow up, leave home, and have children of their own. Reisman writes with a visual artist's sensibility, incorporating descriptions of well-known paintings reproduced on postcards that Nora has collected and offering lovely imagery related to color, light, sea, and sky. An eloquent exploration, from several perspectives, of one family's life following unimaginable loss.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)