Did You Ever Have a Family

Starred review from June 29, 2015
In this sorrowful and deeply probing debut novel, literary agent and memoirist Clegg (Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man) delivers a story of loss and its grueling aftermath. The story opens with an unimaginable tragedy: a Connecticut house is consumed by fire in the wee hours before a wedding. The bride's mother, June, is the only survivor. Everyone elseâLolly, June's daughter, with whom she had a strained relationship; June's womanizing ex-husband, Adam; June's ex-con boyfriend Luke, 20 years her junior; and Lolly's fiancé, Willâall die in the blaze. But where was June when the explosion occurred? Clegg pieces the mystery together through the voices of his characters. There's Luke's lonely, scandal-courting mother, Lydia, who shoulders secrets about her son; 15-year-old Silas, a stoner who was the last to see Luke, with June, the night before he died. And there's Rebecca, Kelly, and Cissyâcaretakers of the Moonstone motel in Moclips, Wash., where June holes up for nine months after the fire and wastes away. The conclusion of the family's narrative is foregone: due to the fire, everyone ends up dead or alone. But it's Clegg's deft handling of all the parsed detailsâmissed opportunities, harbored regrets, and unspoken good intentionsâthat make the journey toward redemption and forgiveness so memorable.

Starred review from July 1, 2015
Hours before a wedding, a fire kills the bride, the groom, her father, and her mother's boyfriend. "When something like what happened at June Reid's that morning happens, you feel right away like the smallest, weakest person in the world. That nothing you do could possibly matter. That nothing matters. Which is why, when you stumble upon something you can do, you do it. So that's what I did." This is the florist speaking: she will put the daisies she picked for the wedding into more than a hundred funeral arrangements. Other characters, particularly the parents of the dead, will have a harder time figuring out what comes next. June-who has lost not just everyone she loves, but her house, her clothes, and her passport as well-gets in a car and drives to the West Coast. Lydia Morey, whose handsome son, Luke, was June's much-younger boyfriend, is stuck in town dealing with small-minded gossip and speculation. Silas, a teenage pothead who was working at the house the day before the accident, slowly unpacks what he knows about the cause of the fatal blast. Literary agent and memoirist Clegg's (Ninety Days, 2013, etc.) debut novel moves restlessly among many different characters and locations, from the small town in Connecticut where the fire occurred to the motel in the Pacific Northwest where June lands, darting into the past then returning to the tragedy in its utter implacability. Yet the true subject of the book is consolation, the scraps of comfort people manage to find and share with one another, from a thermos of pea soup to a missing piece of information to the sound of the waves outside the Moonstone Motel. An attempt to map how the unbearable is borne, elegantly written and bravely imagined.

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Starred review from July 1, 2015
Literary agent Clegg, who has penned two acclaimed memoirs, here turns to fiction with a deeply haunting story. June Reid loses her entire family in a house fire: her daughter, who was about to be married; her daughter's fiance; her ex-husband; and her much-younger boyfriend, Luke. Utterly bereft, June leaves her Connecticut hometown and drives to the Moonstone motel in the Pacific Northwest, where she stays for months, barely leaving her room. The narrative also incorporates viewpoints from others affected by the tragedy, however tangentially, including the wedding caterer and the florist; Luke's mother, Lydia, who bears the brunt of the small-town gossip in the wake of the fire, especially from small-minded people intent on blaming her son for the disaster; Silas, a teenage pothead who knows more about the fire than he is willing to admit; and the proprietor of the Moonstone, who senses that June is the most alone person I've ever met, half in the world and half out of it. Clegg is both delicately lyrical and emotionally direct in this masterful novel, which strives to show how people make bearable what is unbearable, offering consolation in small but meaningful gestures. Both ineffably sad and deeply inspiring, this mesmerizing novel makes for a powerful debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 1, 2015

In small-town Connecticut, on the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's house literarily explodes, killing ex-husband Adam, lover Luke, daughter Lolly, and Lolly's fiance, Will. What follows is a propulsive but tightly crafted narrative that moves back and forth in time and from character to character as Clegg builds out his opening scene to take in those sometimes surprisingly affected. The breakup of June's marriage, the troubled relationship between June and her daughter, the tensions between June and Luke, the small-town tragedy of Luke's mother, the complicated backstory of the lesbian lovers who run the West Coast hotel where June fetches up--all these and more reveal the fine-grained sorrows of the human condition, rendered in polished, quietly captivating prose. As the stories emerge, so do their connections--and the idea of connection itself. "Did you ever have a family," says June flatly at a moment of crisis before the blast, capturing the weight family carries in our lives, and the consequence of every relation, every action, resonates throughout the text. VERDICT Readers may come to this debut novel because of agent/memoirist Clegg's reputation, but they'll stay for the stellar language and storytelling. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/9/15.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2015

The author of two well-regarded memoirs that detail how he fell into crack addiction and stays sober now, Clegg is a leading literary agent, so his emergence as a debut novelist doesn't seem that off-course. What's unusual is that winning the novel inspired Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books to create a new literary imprint, Scout Press; the Gallery folks recognized that Clegg's writing would not fit well with their generally commercial offerings. On the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid loses everyone close to her--her ex-husband, her lover, her daughter, and the daughter's fiance--to an explosion. How do she and others affected by the tragedy find solace?

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2015

In small-town Connecticut, on the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's house literarily explodes, killing ex-husband Adam, lover Luke, daughter Lolly, and Lolly's fiance, Will. What follows is a propulsive but tightly crafted narrative that moves back and forth in time and from character to character as Clegg builds out his opening scene to take in those sometimes surprisingly affected. The breakup of June's marriage, the troubled relationship between June and her daughter, the tensions between June and Luke, the small-town tragedy of Luke's mother, the complicated backstory of the lesbian lovers who run the West Coast hotel where June fetches up--all these and more reveal the fine-grained sorrows of the human condition, rendered in polished, quietly captivating prose. As the stories emerge, so do their connections--and the idea of connection itself. "Did you ever have a family," says June flatly at a moment of crisis before the blast, capturing the weight family carries in our lives, and the consequence of every relation, every action, resonates throughout the text. VERDICT Readers may come to this debut novel because of agent/memoirist Clegg's reputation, but they'll stay for the stellar language and storytelling. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/9/15.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.