Start Without Me

May 1, 2017

When recovering alcoholic Adam heads home for Thanksgiving to a family that expects him to fail again, he meets flight attendant Marissa, who dreads her own visit with her in-laws as issues of race, class, and social status trouble her marriage. Thus the author of the highly praised The Book of Jonah looks at battered idealism and resistant hope. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 28, 2017
Feldman’s second novel, after The Book of Jonah, chronicles a Thanksgiving Day in the lives of recovering alcoholic Adam and flight attendant Marissa. After an embarrassing mishap involving a bungled attempt to make coffee for his family, Adam walks out on his parents and siblings and makes the acquaintance of Marissa at an airport restaurant. Adam has been sober for nine months and is trying to start over as a bank employee, following a life as a successful musician. He misses his former partner Johanna, whose mental problems exacerbated their downfall as a couple and a band. Marissa misses the easy early days with her husband, Robbie, and is now pregnant after a tryst with her high school sweetheart. She sees an opportunity to be distracted when she decides to drive motormouth Adam back to his family, and she feels pity when Adam is distraught after a fight with his sister, leading Marissa to invite him to dinner with her overbearing mother-in-law, Roz, and frosty father-in-law, Leo, who are both wealthy and accomplished. Marissa bristles at the idea of Robbie’s parents still supporting them as Robbie pecks away at his screenplay and dismisses her yearning for independence. Feldman nicely demonstrates how well-meaning Adam gets in his own way and how Marissa’s hang-ups with class and money lead her to make matters unnecessarily complicated, but falters at constructing Johanna, who exists as the flimsiest outline of a character. An unexpected third act has Marissa trying to make peace with her past while Adam fights off his need for a drink. The novel wraps up a little too neatly, but it is a satisfying story about chance meetings and kinship.

August 15, 2017
It's Thanksgiving, and two 30-something strangers--"a couple of strays"--join forces to help each other survive the family dramas that lie ahead. Adam Warshaw, nine months and four days sober, wants to spend the holiday with his parents and siblings after many years of absence but still doesn't seem quite capable of going through with it. Flight attendant Marissa Russell, struggling with work and a secret pregnancy, needs to join her in-laws for the Thanksgiving meal while simultaneously trying to mend her fraying marriage. When Adam's and Marissa's paths cross in an anonymous Connecticut hotel restaurant (he's decided to flee back to San Francisco; she's heading to her family), the familiar scenario underpinning Feldman's (The Book of Jonah, 2014) readable second novel is set in motion: Adam changes his mind again and the pair set off on a drive to Vermont, hitting problems en route and alternately propping each other up until resolution can be found. If the conventions of this time-honored holiday dramedy formula are simmering tensions, bad behavior, black-sheep tendencies, and bedrock truths revealed, so it goes with these two: Adam's family struggles to welcome him back into the fold, while Marissa's in-laws, an improbable mixed-race group marked by political aspirations and short tempers, offer the antithesis of a warm embrace. Incorporating psychology and a musical back story, Feldman's novel aims high but loses its momentum, spending too much time looking backward and indulging the central characters' internal monologues. The road-trip narrative line becomes ragged, and sketchy secondary characters offer little engagement. The overriding questions in Thanksgiving entertainments are usually: can mistakes be corrected, new leaves turned, and survival ensured? The answers here will not come as any great surprise. A new recipe for turkey? Not quite.

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September 15, 2017
Ex-musician Adam is spending his first Thanksgiving with his family after getting sober. Overwhelmed by the realities of the day as well as the expectations that come with it, he impulsively flees to the airport. There he crosses paths with flight attendant Marissa, who is struggling with her own demons as she readies herself to spend the holiday with her in-laws. When Marissa agrees to drive Adam back to his parents' house, the two embark on a journey that reveals the turmoil of their respective pasts as well as the difficulties of the present. Adam's newfound sobriety forces him to confront a life fractured by addiction while reconciling his former relationships and aspirations. Marissa has a difficult decision to make as she confronts a crumbling relationship with her filmmaker husband, a situation further complicated by his overbearing family. Feldman's (The Book of Jonah, 2014) engaging novel offers sublime levity to balance the gravity of his characters' various struggles, and Adam's and Marissa's tales interweave effortlessly as they search for meaning among many doubts and what-ifs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)