A House Among the Trees

April 10, 2017
When famed children’s author Mort Lear falls to his death in a stubborn attempt to trim a wayward tree limb, he leaves behind an invaluable legacy of work and an even greater wealth of secrets. Glass (Three Junes) employs her trademark multilayered character studies and intricately woven time-jumping narrative to slowly unspool each thread connecting Mort’s past to the lives of those he left behind. Tomasina “Tommy” Daulair, his long-term live-in assistant and the older sister of the boy Mort’s most beloved character was modeled after, inherits everything—including the burden of explaining the last-minute change in Mort’s will to museum director Meredith Galarza, whose love for Mort’s work is only exceeded by her obsession with the man himself. Tommy’s attempts to navigate her grief and the complexities of her new duties are interrupted by an unwelcome visit from Oscar-winning actor Nicholas Greene, eager to research his next role: a biopic covering the most dramatic periods of Mort’s life. Nick, to Tommy’s dismay, arrives with fresh information about Mort’s past that shows how little she, or any of his loved ones, truly knew him. Unfortunately, Glass demonstrates more skill in building anticipation than in following through with satisfying revelations. Her use of a fragmented, narrative-hopping timeline overwhelms the characters themselves, leaving them as obscure as Mort’s secrets.

March 15, 2017
The sudden death of a successful children's author leaves the survivors to grapple with his legacy and consider the secrets we all keep in this radiant latest from Glass (And the Dark Sacred Night, 2014, etc.).Yes, that famous gay artist bears a striking resemblance to Maurice Sendak, but Glass has been inspired rather than constrained by her prototype. Mort Lear is an original creation, still very much a presence in the novel as it unfolds following his accidental fall from the roof of his Connecticut home. Morty has unexpectedly named longtime live-in assistant Tomasina Daulair his heir and literary executor; he has also vindictively reneged on his promise to bequeath his archives to a New York museum. In addition to this embarrassment, Tommy must deal with the previously scheduled visit of Nicholas Greene, a newly minted movie star about to play Morty in a film. The deftly structured plot centers around that visit and its disruption by the arrival of Meredith Galarza, the jilted museum's director, and Tommy's resentful brother, Dani, who as a boy was the unwitting model for Morty's drawings of Ivo, protagonist of -the book that launched Lear like a NASA space shot.- We also learn that Morty had confided to Nick a startling revelation of childhood trauma even more twisted than the story he publicly told of abuse by an older man. But Glass doesn't perpetuate the stereotype of tortured, exploitative genius; she gently explores the complex ways an artist transmutes and transcends his personal history in his work as well as the decisions people around him must make about how much they are willing to subordinate their lives to the needs of someone more gifted and driven. It's typical of the warmhearted Glass that her conclusion finds room for compromise and mutual fulfillment among her full-bodied, compassionately rendered characters. This is a fitting tribute to the man who brought boldness and emotional depth to children's literature: vivid without being simplistic, as grippingly readable as it is thoughtful.

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June 15, 2017

Tomasina (Tommy) Daulair gets a terrible shock when children's author Mort Lear, famous for the beloved classic Colorquake, dies unexpectedly. Tommy is Mort's longtime assistant, though she is actually more like a wife to the gay author--except for the sex, as Tommy's brother Dani snidely points out. Tommy shares Mort's home, but after his death, she is shocked to learn that Mort has left the house and his entire estate to her; she will also be his literary executor. Meanwhile, Meredith, a high-strung museum curator, insists that Mort's artistic holdings were promised to her. There's also a movie about the young Mort in the works, and the charming British actor who is starring in it shows up. The characters in this complex and fascinating novel find themselves coming to terms with secrets and torments from the past as they learn more about Mort's life. VERDICT Since her first novel, Three Junes, Glass has explored family dynamics of all kinds with a warm yet never sentimental sympathy. She excels at bringing her many characters to life and at imagining vivid scenes from the rarified world of art and entertainment in this excellent new book.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 27, 2017
A terrible attempt at a British accent for a minor character is actor Masterson’s only misstep in this otherwise winning performance. Beloved children’s literature icon Mort Lear has just died unexpectedly, leaving his longtime assistant Tomasina “Tommy” Daulair to pick up the pieces of his life, including a recently altered will and an in-progress biopic starring the British phenom Nicholas Greene. Reader Masterson excels when playing Mort in flashbacks; her gravelly and playful voice feels perfect for capturing Mort’s complicated impulsivity. She also skillfully portrays the self-doubt and crushed hopes of Meredith, the curator of a new museum devoted to children’s literature who received Mort’s verbal promises of his literary inheritance but was ultimately left in the cold. Where the performance falls short is in Masterson’s British accent for actor Nick Greene, which is awkward and inconsistent to the point of distraction. Listeners who are able to get past it will enjoy the layers of drama in this well-told story. A Pantheon hardcover.

Starred review from May 1, 2017
When the celebrated children's-book author and illustrator Mort Lear dies in a fall at his Connecticut home, complications quickly ensue. There's his will, for starters. In it, he leaves his estate to Tomasina Tommy Daulair, his personal assistant of many years, even though he had led Merry Galarza, curator of the Contemporary Book Museum, to believe the museum would be the legatee (it holds a large amount of Lear's work on semipermanent loan). Then there is the motion picture that is to be made of Lear's life, starring Oscar-winning British actor Nicholas Greene. The novel rotates among these three characters, interspersed with the occasional flashback that provides context, including the evolution of Tommy's troubled relationship with her younger brother. Glass has created a compelling story with fully realized characters, though there is a whiff of the roman a clef; Lear's work and the complications of his legacy will inevitably remind readers of Maurice Sendak, though there is much here that is different. But both real person and fictional character inhabited the world of children's books, which Glass nicely contextualizes, demonstrating that she has done her homework (though she confuses Library Journal with School Library Journal). The result is a fascinating look at a world in which a creative artist becomes a hot property to be both honored and exploited.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)