The Mysteries

April 1, 2021

Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and an economic downturn on the nightly news, the lives of two families intersect through the friendship of their seven-year-old daughters. Miggy is the headstrong child of the Brennemans, a once proudly nonconformist couple who are now weighed down by the responsibilities of Jean's fledgling dance studio and Julian's failing hardware business. Miggy's devoted follower Ellen is content to escape her quiet home, where her mother sleeps away postpartum depression, and a severe housekeeper rules the roost. Left mostly to their own devices, the girls play at religious confession, become preoccupied with POWs and patients in iron lungs, and watch over Miggy's expectant dog. When a tragedy occurs, the lives of both families are completely derailed. VERDICT Silver (Mary Coin; Little Nothing) paints an evocative picture of the early '70s. This compelling domestic drama, with heartbreak at its center, depicts the everyday mysteries that lead up to the big one--life itself.--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

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March 15, 2021
An intense story about two young girls growing up in St. Louis during an unsettled time. Miggy (short for Margaret Ann) Brenneman is a temperamental, unruly 7-year-old, an only child who always seems to be courting danger. Her best friend--and complete opposite--is Ellen Gallagher, who attends Catholic school and is unfailingly polite and restrained. Ellen has a new baby brother, Louie. It's 1973: Nixon is president, the Vietnam War is winding down, and the economy is in recession. St. Louis itself has seen better days. Miggy's father, Julian, has inherited a failing hardware store, and he and his wife, Jean, a ballet teacher, both think they were meant for better things. Meantime, Ellen's mother, Celeste, spends too much time sleeping, ostensibly because of postpartum depression. But there's reason to believe her malaise runs deeper. Ellen's stepfather, William, is a good man, somewhat baffled by his wife. The narrative unfolds slowly at first; then there's a terrible accident, which swiftly upends everything. Author Silver is probing grief and guilt here as well as the mysteries of fate and character: On two separate occasions, Jean and Julian look at Miggy, "their demanding, often unappeasable child," and ask, "Who are you?" Sentence by sentence, Silver's writing is graceful and observant. Yet the novel doesn't add up to much. The author portrays the accident as a turning point. Yet the grown-ups were struggling before the catastrophe, which only seems to push them further along the road they were already traveling. Miggy and Ellen are by far the freshest, liveliest characters, but the author keeps shifting focus away from them. Some parts of the novel seem truncated--Jean and Julian's courtship, for example--while others feel too expansive. Lovely writing but airless and unsatisfying in the end.

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April 1, 2021
Jean and Julian's daughter, Miggy, is capricious and daring, at times a real handful. Celeste and William's daughter, Ellen, is her polar opposite: timid and mindful, perennially walking on eggshells. That the seven-year-olds become fast friends is as much a surprise to them as it is to their parents. The two couples, however, have no contact and little in common other than the struggles familiar to young marrieds everywhere. Set in St. Louis in 1973, the existential crises of the times--war, Watergate, the civil rights movement--take a back seat in Silver's (Little Nothing, 2016) newest novel, behind the more immediate challenges of parenting and providing, caring for others versus caring for oneself. When a senseless tragedy upends the lives of both families, everyone is forced to consider the roles they've acquired so uncertainly. From the mysteries that captivate two little girls to those that confound four adults, Silver's luminous exploration of foundational relationships catastrophically altered by a gut-wrenching accident reveals the poignancy and vulnerability that underlie so many human contracts. Whether writing in the precociously gleeful voices of two guileless children or the increasingly jaded tones of damaged adults, Silver achieves a powerful and gripping authenticity that captures the confusion and, yes, the mystery of both innocence and maturity.

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