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A review by book_concierge
Those We Love Most by Lee Woodruff
4.0
Maura Corrigan is walking her children to school when her phone vibrates, signaling a new text message. In the instant she spends smiling secretly to herself and beginning to formulate a witty reply, her attention diverted from her children, the unthinkable happens. How Maura, husband Pete, and parents Margaret and Roger deal with this tragedy forms the central theme of this debut novel.
A passage from the book seems to sum it up nicely: Please kept secrets. People built walls. It didn’t mean they couldn’t and didn’t love with all their hearts. … Maybe silence was a price we sometimes paid for loving so completely, the price we sometimes paid to protect those we loved most.
This is not a plot-driven novel, it is character-driven, and all these characters are flawed. Margaret is maddeningly controlled and controlling. Charismatic Roger cannot bring himself to face his diminishing skills and takes a mistress to keep himself feeling young. Pete has never outgrown his college-boy drinking. Maura bears the burden of a guilty secret, and cannot bring herself to forgive anyone else, let alone herself.
But flaws notwithstanding, they are an extended family and they love each other. The novel covers just over a year in their lives; as they try to recover from the tragedy, they alternately turn to or reject each other in their grief and distress. The reader can only watch them stumble along, hurting one another, understanding one another, forgiving one another.
A passage from the book seems to sum it up nicely: Please kept secrets. People built walls. It didn’t mean they couldn’t and didn’t love with all their hearts. … Maybe silence was a price we sometimes paid for loving so completely, the price we sometimes paid to protect those we loved most.
This is not a plot-driven novel, it is character-driven, and all these characters are flawed. Margaret is maddeningly controlled and controlling. Charismatic Roger cannot bring himself to face his diminishing skills and takes a mistress to keep himself feeling young. Pete has never outgrown his college-boy drinking. Maura bears the burden of a guilty secret, and cannot bring herself to forgive anyone else, let alone herself.
But flaws notwithstanding, they are an extended family and they love each other. The novel covers just over a year in their lives; as they try to recover from the tragedy, they alternately turn to or reject each other in their grief and distress. The reader can only watch them stumble along, hurting one another, understanding one another, forgiving one another.