The Laments

April 26, 2004
Ever in search of greener pastures, idealistic but frustrated engineer Howard Lament drags his long-suffering wife, Julia, and their three sons from South Africa to Rhodesia, Bahrain, England and America. The family's rootlessness weighs most heavily on eldest son Will, secretly adopted after a maternity ward mixup goes horribly awry, who feels the odd man out in the face of his constantly changing surroundings and the preternatural solidarity of his twin brothers. Hagen, a screenwriter and first-time novelist, makes the story a coming-of-age saga and familial drama, often comic in tone but also full of tragedy: car crashes, a kidnapping, death and dismemberment. As the Laments give up their privileged status under apartheid and eventually settle for downward mobility in the crass American suburbs, Hagan makes their wanderings and expatriate identity crises a commentary on the vexed legacy of British colonialism. The narrative sometimes slows to allow the Laments to hash out their liberal politics, and some sketchily drawn characters (Lament's son Julius is memorable largely for his un-self-conscious masturbatory rituals) die when their plot assignments are completed. Hagen pokes fun at Albion's seed with comic clichés—the Rhodesians are racist Colonel Blimps, the English are soccer thugs, the Americans are conformists, religious zealots or strident New Leftists. The Laments themselves, saddled with the melancholy of postimperial decline, are a spirited but slightly sad lot who wish for better lives. This is a funny, touching novel about the meaning of family, with an oddly high body count. Agent, Henry Dunow
. (June 22)

Forecast:
A 10-city author tour and overseas enthusiasm (rights have been sold in 10 countries) should earn this unusual and enjoyable novel a modest following.

February 15, 2004
The dysfunctional Laments leave South Africa to try their luck in America.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2004
Adult/High School -The Lament family has a secret. Will is not the jolly, glowing baby born to Julia and Howard in Rhodesia during the 1950s. He is the weak, transparent preemie abandoned by his distraught mother when she kidnapped the Lament infant from the maternity ward. When the woman and child die in an automobile accident, the attending physician persuades the stunned Laments to pretend the abandoned child is theirs, and take him home. For the Laments, home is more a goal than a place. Soon Will, his younger twin brothers, and his parents begin a series of disastrous moves. Idealistic and impractical engineer Howard longs for a career that will make full use of his inventive genius. Artistic, progressive Julia wants a perfect community. Leaving a prosperous situation in Rhodesia, the family follows Howard as he accepts ultimately unsatisfactory jobs around the world. Will minds the uprooting more than the others do as the family moves from Africa to Bahrain to England to the U.S., and his struggle to make a place for himself is complicated by the family's downward economic spiral. Since much of the focus of the story is on hormone-driven teenage boys, the language and situations are often crude and sexually oriented. Despite a surprising number of bizarre tragedies, the book is full of humor, and the gradual development of the characters leads to a plausible and satisfying conclusion.-Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, VA

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2004
Traveling the world, never setting down roots, the Laments were a restless breed. When Howard and Julia marry and begin a family, Julia hesitates to name the baby. And in that pause, the baby is switched and kidnapped from the maternity ward, and the Laments end up adopting the abandoned baby, Will. Starting over, the Laments move from northern Rhodesia to the Persian Gulf to England to suburban America, following Howard's career in engineering. Along the way, their family grows as their prospects dim. Howard loses his job and is transfigured from a dreamer fascinated with valves to a man uncertain of his next step, except that he wants to move on. Julia shifts from a spirited woman with artistic tendencies to a harried mother, real-estate broker, and breadwinner, determined to stay put and make a life for her family. Through it all, Will wonders at his lingering feelings of somehow not belonging to the family and yet shares the sense that whatever tragedy befalls them, they are linked by their love for one another.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)