Small Hours

April 24, 2017
Kitses’s debut chronicles a critical day in the strained lives of Helen Nichols and Tom Foster, the parents of three-year-old twins in the New York suburb of Devon. While living in Queens with Helen and working at a science magazine, Tom began a brief affair with his colleague Donna. Though reluctant to be a parent, Tom had twin girls, Ilona and Sophie, with Helen, as well as another daughter, Elana, with Donna. Helen learns about his indiscretion, though he doesn’t confess the identity of his affair partner or that he had a child with her. After a move to the isolating suburbs, Tom is commuting daily to a job that he dislikes while Helen does tedious design work from home. The stress of dealing with toddlers, coupled with her thankless work, leads her to unleash her frustration on a pair of rough teenagers. After her neighbor’s kid Nick comes to the rescue, Helen spends the day wondering if someone might be gunning for them. Meanwhile, Tom learns from Donna that a job offer in London might take Elana away from him. Donna wants Tom to come clean with Helen about everything; he’s still hesitant despite Donna’s threat to bring lawyers into the matter. Finally, a series of events force him and Helen to deal with one another. All these conflicts are realistic and compelling: the loss of income coupled with a lifestyle Tom and Helen can’t really afford puts a strain on their already tested marriage, with the couple’s negative propensities exacerbating the problem. The book’s ending hits a note that’s a touch too optimistic, but is still in keeping with the theme that there’s no easy way out for these characters.

April 1, 2017
Over 24 increasingly suspenseful hours, a family's suburban life unravels.A tense domestic drama, Kitses' first novel alternates between the points of view of a husband and wife torn apart by what they don't tell each other. Tom and Helen have moved from Queens to a small town 90 minutes up the Hudson River with their twin 3-year-old daughters, but their life isn't as bucolic as they had hoped it would be. Though they're both working hard--Tom at a news wire service and Helen as a freelance graphic designer--they're having trouble making ends meet, and the town for which they had high hopes turns out to have a seamy underside. As the day goes on, full of frictions major and minor, both husband and wife come close to reaching the breaking point. Tom finds himself in a confrontation with an old lover with whom he has a complicated relationship, while Helen, already simmering with anger, finds herself taking out her feelings on a pair of teenagers she meets in a park, with unfortunate results. Leavened with occasional humor, particularly directed toward the wire service, the novel gradually and inexorably ratchets up its suspense, with each tiny choice that one of the characters makes spiraling out into a path of destructive behavior. Even as the consequences of these choices grow more severe, Kitses keeps them believable so that the reader's increasing dread can't be easily dismissed. The author anchors the family's story in a larger contemporary social reality, in which the actions of the couple are shaped not just by their emotions, but by the "blighted, postindustrial" town where the value of their house is constantly declining, the fact that both Helen and Tom have been edged out of steady jobs into marginal work, and the lack of affordable child care. The novel succeeds as both a disquieting tale of ordinary horror and a portrait of a marriage at a tipping point.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Narrators Tanya Eby and Dan John Miller trade chapters as a young couple, Tom and Helen, have trouble communicating with each other. They're both feeling the pressure of their jobs, Tom as a newswriter and Helen as a graphic designer. With sensitive tones and a steady pace, the narrators depict the daily grind of raising twin girls, managing job friction, and keeping a major secret. Eby shines as Helen has a confrontation with a neighbor, and Miller lets a growing tension and then exhaustion creep into his voice as Tom confronts the need to make a monumental decision. How will they be able to keep it together and find solace in the small hours? R.O. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine