Chorus

Starred review from December 20, 2021
Kauffman’s luminous latest (after House on Fripp Island) showcases her knack for delving into the hearts of her characters. The Shaw family is altered forever after the mother, who took to her bed sometime after the birth of her seventh child, dies in 1933, the result of “mistaking sleeping pills for nervousness pills. So they said. Or the other way around,” according to her two oldest children. In a seamless and sprawling narrative covering the early 20th century through the 1950s, Kauffman poignantly portrays all the Shaw family members, among them Wendy, the oldest, who falls into a caretaker role for her father after the rest of her siblings grow up and leave home; Jack, an alcoholic; Lane, pregnant at 15; and Bette, the youngest, whose husband dies in a freak accident when she is newly pregnant with their second child. Throughout, the author probes the ways the siblings are shaped by their mother’s death, a possible suicide. The siblings’ alliances, particularly that of Jack and Lane, are revealed via vibrant prose, as are family secrets such as the truth about Lane’s pregnancy. It adds up to a superbly executed saga.

January 1, 2022
A large family grows up in Virginia over the course of the first half of the 20th century. The Shaw family consists of seven children; a father, Jim, who works hard on the farm but is regularly forced to sell off land during the Great Depression; and a mother, Marie, who is often bedridden due to depression. After their mother's untimely death, the children are affected to varying degrees, and they're divided over whether the death was an accidental overdose or a suicide, a debate which creates a rift between the siblings. Told in short, nonsequential chapters, the novel follows individual members of the family during significant moments in each of their lives: a teenage pregnancy, marriages and losses of spouses, decisions to move away, enlistment in the Second World War, and their own lives as parents. Some of the children are eventually pulled back to the family homestead after Jim's death, and yet all navigate the distances--both physical and emotional--that have created lingering gaps among them. Kauffman has written a deceptively light tale about the heart of a family healing around a defining loss and siblings sustaining each other through adulthood, with lovely phrases and prose throughout. Though the sections are never weighty, together they form a satisfying story of complicated relationships against the backdrop of a "beautiful world [with] a forked tongue." A comforting and pastoral novel.

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February 1, 2022
In a rural Virginia farmhouse, seven children are born to Jim and Marie Shaw in Kauffman's (The House on Fripp Island, 2020) lovely fourth novel. Readable and compelling chapters move around in time, ranging from 1903 to 1959, and in perspective, exploring how Marie's death and one sister's pregnancy at age 15 reverberate in the unfolding of connected, yet individual lives. Some Shaw children thrive while others struggle, yet all are somehow affected. The novel's arrangement feels meaningful as turning-point moments in the siblings' lives take center stage, one after the other. In Henry's chapter, he spends an atypical day alone with his young daughter at the shore. The day is a parenting success, yet readers' hearts will break with empathy as they understand how Henry's own mother's death influences this time separated from his wife. As the title invites us to consider, perhaps the most profound meaning is not taken from a singular experience but from the collective of family members' voices. Kauffman's writing style renders complex dynamics in simple, impactful language and scenes.

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