Mary Beth Keane, ASK AGAIN, YES

A beautifully written novel about two families who are next door neighbors in a small town outside NYC. Both fathers are policemen; but otherwise the families are very different. This book touches on mental illness, alcoholism, denial, dysfunction, young (clueless) love, mature love, parenthood, aging, and forgiveness. I read this immediately after Ann Patchett's THE DUTCH HOUSE and found similarities in themes and tone, in the shifts between scenes and synopsis (the books both cover decades), and the wonderful quality of writing. These are not plot-driven page-turners. They are nuanced explorations of how individuals and families evolve and get stuck, err and atone. As usual, I like to share a few lines that suggest the quality of writing: "They were apart long enough to know the shape of each other's absence." "Francis smiled but there was no light in it." And my favorite (maybe because it expresses the theme of how memories change, which is at the core of my own most recent novel) "They'd both learned that a memory is a fact that's been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room, anyone else who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole." Recommended for fans of Ann Patchett, Celeste Ng, and Anne Tyler.