The Shades

May 14, 2018
Citkowitz’s ethereal latest (following Ether) dissects the messy tangle of past and present in the aftermath of a young woman’s death. A fatal automobile accident involving 16-year-old Rachel and her secret boyfriend fractures the Hall family. Rachel’s mother, Catherine, remains in the family’s second home in Kent, disengaged from life and her work as a successful art gallery owner until the arrival of a mysterious young woman who claims to have lived in the house as a child. Catherine’s growing interest in the stranger after months of depressed detachment heartens her husband, Michael, who has been spending his days and nights in London and yearning for a return to easily connecting with his wife. Their reticent son, Rowan, flees to a remote, liberal boarding school to reshape his life away from his sister’s death. His sudden, passionate fixation on the threat of global warming and his decision to drop out of school jolts the family from their long patterns of uncommunicative coexistence. Citkowitz meanders through her scant plot with ample atmospheric detours through the family’s past. Her depiction of the delicate, complicated attachment of siblings is particularly touching. The prose sparkles as she unpacks emotional wounds, but the threads of story remain too hazy and incomplete to be fully satisfying. This compact family drama captures the thinly masked desperation of grief with an eerie undercurrent.

Starred review from May 1, 2018
A couple begins to unravel after the sudden death of their 16-year-old daughter in Citkowitz's (Ether, 2010) haunting portrait of unsparing grief.In the year since Rachel was killed in a car accident alongside her secret boyfriend, her parents have retreated into separate worlds. Catherine, a high-powered gallerist, a tastemaker, has taken up residence at their aged country house in Kent, where once they'd planned to retire--a thought now inconceivable. Michael remains at the family home in London; there has, he reflects, always been "a remoteness that created a space between them that he never understood," though the gulf is wider now, the initial wave of grief having worn off. Meanwhile, their teenage son, Rowan, sweet and stoic, has fled to boarding school, having made the arrangements for his escape himself. And so Catherine is alone when a mysterious young woman arrives at the house, claiming to have lived there as a child. She is reinvigorated by the girl, striking up what she believes to be the beginnings of a friendship. But the relationship soon darkens; the girl, Catherine learns, may not be who she seems. Though the novel is short, with nothing extra, it seems to encompass lifetimes: Time and space expand and contract, the present blurring seamlessly--unsettlingly--with the past. We learn about Catherine's parents, her father's art, her mother's suicide; her courtship with Michael; the day of Rachel's death. But we also see the present: the marriage and the house; Rowan becoming increasingly obsessed with climate change at school. The mystery of the girl and the novel's murky ending are arguably the least interesting elements of the book, which is driven less by the naked plot than by the exquisite strength of Citkowitz's writing--spare, arresting, and emotionally precise.A thoroughly modern novel with a Gothic feel; a fully realized vision.

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June 1, 2018
With a deceptively light touch and an almost ethereal atmosphere, debut novelist Citkowitz (Ether, 2010) delves deeply into themes of loss and grief, reality and illusion, and growth and stagnation. The story of an older couple, Michael and Catherine, London gallery owners coping with the loss of their teenage daughter, is a central plot point.But in some ways that is but an anchor for explorations of a drifting marriage, the guesswork of parenting, and the untethering that seems to be part of the aging process. In the characters of their son, Rowan, and Keira, a young woman who says she used to live in their house and who seems more a figment of Catherine's imagination than a real person, the author creates strong counterpoints to the slightly lost quality of the older couple. As the story unfolds, Citkowitz gently considers the inherent complexities of youth, and nudges readers into confronting the impossibility of certainty. This slender novel is richly layered with meaning and allusions to myth and art that make it an engaging and rewarding read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)