We Shall Not All Sleep

May 1, 2017
An unusual and compelling debut: a vast, ambitious intergenerational family saga that takes place in a brief time frame (three days) and a remote setting.That would be Seven Island, off Maine's rugged coast, and for nearly two centuries (the novel takes place in 1964, mid-Cold War) the playground for two wealthy families, the Hillsingers and the Quicks, who are deeply entwined yet insist on--revel in--their separateness, living in the island's two grand houses and "mingl[ing] when necessary or appropriate, but rarely with any warmth." Connections have become even more strained and Byzantine in the current generation: Jim Hillsinger and Billy Quick married socialite sisters, so their children are cousins, and, after Billy's wife Hannah's death four years earlier, Lila Hillsinger temporarily took a more intimate role in the lives of her nieces and her brother-in-law. The immediate occasion is "the Migration," the annual summer departure of the sheep of Seven for a neighboring island and its vaunted clover, an event around which elaborate ceremonies have developed. The plot Nagy builds onto this is flabbergastingly complex and fascinating: Jim is a CIA officer recently cashiered because he was suspected of treason...a suspicion that emerged from his efforts to save his sister-in-law, briefly a communist fellow traveler, from public humiliation in the McCarthyite heyday. Meanwhile there's a gorgeous subplot that has to do with Hillsinger's decision (he's egged on by his aged father, one of several indelibly drawn minor characters) to banish his 12-year-old son, Catta, to wild, impassable Baffin Island for a 24-hour period--a brutal rite of passage that Lila has forbidden. The cast is huge, the plot sometimes diffuse, the transitions a bit whipsawing, and there's a small false note at the end...but mostly this novel is a surprising delight. Nagy mixes narrative modes and tones (and generations) nimbly; it's rare to see suspense and literary lyricism woven together so well.

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June 1, 2017
Set on a private island off the coast of Maine, and taking place almost entirely during a couple of eventful days in the summer of 1964, Nagy's complex first novel darts among the points of view of the island's temporary residents, which include members of two deeply intertwined families whose winter residences are in New York, as well as the staff who serve them. The head of one family is a financier; his counterpart, under the thumb of the Old Man, who dictates family life, has just been forced from the CIA in disgrace. As the wife of the spy is attempting to choose between her husband and his rival, the spy's 12-year-old son is sent off by his grandfather to spend an eventful night surviving alone on a deserted, neighboring island. Although flashbacks to the events leading to the disgrace are needlessly complicated, Nagy neatly juggles his many characters, allowing suspense to develop naturally and working in thought-provoking variations on the themes of betrayal and survival.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)