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A review by lillimoore
The Guncle by Steven Rowley
3.0
I'd put this closer to 3.5 stars. At times I laughed, at times I cried—harder than expected—and yet, I was left with much to be desired.
Patrick O'Hara has been hiding away in Palm Springs for a few years now, away from his fame, his family, his past, and the pain demanding to be felt from all of those things. But he is abruptly confronted with it all at the death of his sister-in-law and the aftermath that sees his brother leaving for rehab and asking Patrick to take temporary custody of his 9-year-old niece Maisie and 6-year-old nephew Grant. His attempts to shepherd them through their grief force him to hold the mirror up to his own grief, surrounding not only the loss of their mother but also of his partner that passed away in a car accident years prior. He is also prompted to address the grief of the shifts in his career as a successful TV star, the boundaries others crossed during the peak of his fame, and the reality that he will have to proceed with life and still create a future out of a broken past.
There were so many things to love about this book. The dialogue, for one, was fun, witty, quirky, sassy, ebullient, and a joy. The scenes with the three stars of our book—Patrick, Maisie, and Grant—were definitely my favorite, and I loved how Patrick just spoke to them as if they were any other normal adult on the street and not children in his family. I think kids deserve to be spoken to and treated with respect and the assumption that they're well aware of the world they live in, and with Patrick's witticisms, it made for many laugh-out-loud moments. I also loved Patrick's polyamorous gay neighbors, JED, and would have loved to have seen even more of them in this book. I really liked the way the book ended as well, even if I couldn't find the road to that point to be believeable. Though this book deals with tragic life events, it is mostly a heartwarming and joyful book to read. The heavier moments carry so much tenderness that you feel more compassion than sorrow, and it's overall a happy read despite heavy content.
Alas, for as many moments I enjoyed in this book, there were as many that made me pause and go, "is this necessary?" "Does this make sense?" "Why should I care about this character?" and so on and so forth. For starters, I really didn't feel I got enough information about Sara or Greg, their relationship, and their inner lives to care about them. I know this story is about Patrick, Maisie, Grant, and their relationship. But it's also about their grief. I want to grieve with them. As a child that lost a parent not much older than Maisie, I know I wanted and continue to want to hear people speak about my mother in a way that makes her still feel alive in the people that carry her with them. So fleshing these characters out a bit more, as well as Clara and Joe, would have added so much more for me. Knowing Sara and who she really was and what those tender moments of motherhood looked like, knowing what she was like on her wedding day, knowing more about the early days she was dating Greg and how that impacted her relationship with Patrick, would have added so much more. And the author did show moments where he understood this task and he didn't completely miss the mark, but for me I just thought there were too many missed opportunities to develop those characters and relationships that would have really added to my reading experience—opportunities missed for the sake of including other, less necessary plot points. I thought too much was getting shoehorned into this narrative, with the loss of Joe, the loss of Sara, the loss of innocence, the loss of career, the loss of youth and appearances.
I guess what I'm trying to say with all of those observations is that I think maybe this novel would have benefitted from a trimming down of its subplots and a deepening of what remained following that trimming down. Either lose the romance with (Eafon? Eaton? Emory? Emory, that's it. Couldn't remember this character at all as he was SO one-note to me and there was absolutely no reason to believe the chemistry between him and Patrick), lose the whole exchange with the agent (Neil? I finished this book two days ago and already the auxiliary cast is just gone from my brain) and the new agent Cassie Everest, lose the passive-aggressive codependent relationship with Sara and just have her be your sister-in-law, change the death of Joe to just a dramatic divorce or breakup, lose the Clara subplot, just lose SOMETHING. Any of those things. I'm not saying they all had to go, or really even that any of these as a plot point were bad or didn't have potential to be interesting if they had all had more time to marinade and the flavors were a bit more developed. I'm just saying, again, is this all just felt so shoehorned into this narrative that it made it a) hard to believe and b) less poignant when something dramatic did happen. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it were just more details of the day-to-day lives of the children that summer and more focus was on trying to connect with them and their grief, without the additional subplots thrown in. Those intimate moments between an uncle and his nephew and niece were easily my favorite moments of this book. Just as I was getting into one part of the story, the focus changed to career, to flashbacks about Joe, to drama with his sister, back to the career. It just wasn't working for me and made me feel like I really had to power through some parts of the book to get to the parts that were so much more enjoyable to me.
Altogether though, I loved the three main characters, their pink Christmas tree, their quirky neighbors, and the way they connected and taught each other about grief, family, love, and hope. This was a very warm and fuzzy book and I'll definitely be looking forward to more warm fuzzies from this author in the future!
Patrick O'Hara has been hiding away in Palm Springs for a few years now, away from his fame, his family, his past, and the pain demanding to be felt from all of those things. But he is abruptly confronted with it all at the death of his sister-in-law and the aftermath that sees his brother leaving for rehab and asking Patrick to take temporary custody of his 9-year-old niece Maisie and 6-year-old nephew Grant. His attempts to shepherd them through their grief force him to hold the mirror up to his own grief, surrounding not only the loss of their mother but also of his partner that passed away in a car accident years prior. He is also prompted to address the grief of the shifts in his career as a successful TV star, the boundaries others crossed during the peak of his fame, and the reality that he will have to proceed with life and still create a future out of a broken past.
There were so many things to love about this book. The dialogue, for one, was fun, witty, quirky, sassy, ebullient, and a joy. The scenes with the three stars of our book—Patrick, Maisie, and Grant—were definitely my favorite, and I loved how Patrick just spoke to them as if they were any other normal adult on the street and not children in his family. I think kids deserve to be spoken to and treated with respect and the assumption that they're well aware of the world they live in, and with Patrick's witticisms, it made for many laugh-out-loud moments. I also loved Patrick's polyamorous gay neighbors, JED, and would have loved to have seen even more of them in this book. I really liked the way the book ended as well, even if I couldn't find the road to that point to be believeable. Though this book deals with tragic life events, it is mostly a heartwarming and joyful book to read. The heavier moments carry so much tenderness that you feel more compassion than sorrow, and it's overall a happy read despite heavy content.
Alas, for as many moments I enjoyed in this book, there were as many that made me pause and go, "is this necessary?" "Does this make sense?" "Why should I care about this character?" and so on and so forth. For starters, I really didn't feel I got enough information about Sara or Greg, their relationship, and their inner lives to care about them. I know this story is about Patrick, Maisie, Grant, and their relationship. But it's also about their grief. I want to grieve with them. As a child that lost a parent not much older than Maisie, I know I wanted and continue to want to hear people speak about my mother in a way that makes her still feel alive in the people that carry her with them. So fleshing these characters out a bit more, as well as Clara and Joe, would have added so much more for me. Knowing Sara and who she really was and what those tender moments of motherhood looked like, knowing what she was like on her wedding day, knowing more about the early days she was dating Greg and how that impacted her relationship with Patrick, would have added so much more. And the author did show moments where he understood this task and he didn't completely miss the mark, but for me I just thought there were too many missed opportunities to develop those characters and relationships that would have really added to my reading experience—opportunities missed for the sake of including other, less necessary plot points. I thought too much was getting shoehorned into this narrative, with the loss of Joe, the loss of Sara, the loss of innocence, the loss of career, the loss of youth and appearances.
I guess what I'm trying to say with all of those observations is that I think maybe this novel would have benefitted from a trimming down of its subplots and a deepening of what remained following that trimming down. Either lose the romance with (Eafon? Eaton? Emory? Emory, that's it. Couldn't remember this character at all as he was SO one-note to me and there was absolutely no reason to believe the chemistry between him and Patrick), lose the whole exchange with the agent (Neil? I finished this book two days ago and already the auxiliary cast is just gone from my brain) and the new agent Cassie Everest, lose the passive-aggressive codependent relationship with Sara and just have her be your sister-in-law, change the death of Joe to just a dramatic divorce or breakup, lose the Clara subplot, just lose SOMETHING. Any of those things. I'm not saying they all had to go, or really even that any of these as a plot point were bad or didn't have potential to be interesting if they had all had more time to marinade and the flavors were a bit more developed. I'm just saying, again, is this all just felt so shoehorned into this narrative that it made it a) hard to believe and b) less poignant when something dramatic did happen. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it were just more details of the day-to-day lives of the children that summer and more focus was on trying to connect with them and their grief, without the additional subplots thrown in. Those intimate moments between an uncle and his nephew and niece were easily my favorite moments of this book. Just as I was getting into one part of the story, the focus changed to career, to flashbacks about Joe, to drama with his sister, back to the career. It just wasn't working for me and made me feel like I really had to power through some parts of the book to get to the parts that were so much more enjoyable to me.
Altogether though, I loved the three main characters, their pink Christmas tree, their quirky neighbors, and the way they connected and taught each other about grief, family, love, and hope. This was a very warm and fuzzy book and I'll definitely be looking forward to more warm fuzzies from this author in the future!