Creatures

October 15, 2019
A first-time novelist explores the curses and blessings of a childhood shaped by unreliable parents and an unforgiving sea. This spiky, elliptical novel, which takes place on a fictional island off the coast of Southern California, begins with a beached whale. The inescapable odor and massive, macabre presence of the corpse are just two of the challenges Evangeline faces as she prepares for her wedding. Her long-absent mother has arrived uninvited. And it's possible that the groom, a fisherman, has died at sea. While the whale is, in any practical sense, the least of Evie's worries, it feels horribly emblematic of her circumstances--maybe even of her whole existence. As she tells her story, moving back and forth in time, it becomes clear that Evie has a history of finding fixations to distract her from the most difficult aspects of her life. Ultimately, though, the subject she would like most to escape is the one she studies the most closely: her father. Evie's dad is a beguiling figure, someone who provides for himself and his daughter as a raconteur and a drug dealer. When Evie's a kid, his exceptional charm is just as crucial to their survival as his ability to score cocaine or produce epic weed. Sometimes they are the guests of wealthy friends who like to party. Sometimes they live in cheap apartments. Sometimes they are homeless. This instability makes Evie somewhat immune to her father's charisma. As she grows up, we see how this colorful but volatile upbringing leaves her with real emotional deficits. Van Meter does not allow her narrator to luxuriate in self-pity, though. Some of the most heartbreaking moments in this novel are the most simply told, and there are scenes of beauty and magic and dry humor amid the chaos. And Evie is self-aware enough to acknowledge her own complexities and shortcomings. A quietly captivating debut.

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November 18, 2019
Van Meter’s tender and atmospheric debut is a portrait of a young woman’s hard upbringing amid an edenic setting. On Winter Island, off the southern California coast, Evangeline—known as Evie—awaits the return of her fisherman fiancé, Liam, while a dead whale lolls offshore. Born on the island and “raised” by her often-disappearing mother and her well-meaning but destructive father, as well as by the kindhearted women who date her father, Evie has finally succeeded in building her own life. She has a makeshift family with Liam, her best friend Rook, and Rook’s son, and has a fulfilling career at the nearby Sea Institute, but her fears of her impending marriage are compounded as she spends the days waiting for Liam’s return and revisiting the shifting emotional landscape of her childhood. Arcing across Evie’s past, present, and future on the island, the novel’s strongest sections are rooted in her childhood, alone and often itinerant with her father. Van Meter expertly and effortlessly brings to life at once her father’s substance abuse and dependence, his doting love for his daughter and loyalty to her absent mother, and his inability to be what Evie needs. His deep mark on Evie’s life, and her feelings toward him, are the book’s beating heart. Despite some unnecessary structural flourishes in the form of essay-prompts and themed-chapter sections, this promising debut sneaks up on the reader, packing a devastating emotional punch. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore and Company.

November 15, 2019
Save for time spent working at the mainland's Sea Institute, Evie has lived all her days on Winter Island, modeled on the Channel Islands archipelago off the coast of Los Angeles. Heavily influenced by the weather and wildlife of this ruggedly beautiful place, Van Meter's wonderfully un-ordinary debut is rather like the ocean itself: layered, deep, and happening all at once. When it begins, it's Evie's wedding weekend and she must deal with two unexpected presences?her flighty mom, and a whale corpse rotting in the bay just outside her window?and the worrying absence of her fisherman husband-to-be. But ensuing chapters, which are structured as a taxonomy of days, weather phenomena, and whale species, find Evie in many other moments. She's a bright kid trying to stay afloat while her dad battles addiction; she's a teenager betrayed by her best friend; she's ten years into her marriage and asking if she can surrender to her love for her husband. This is a moving, graceful novel of how people change and are changed by natures within and without.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)