A short review as we’re on the slopes. Goldengrove is my first Francine Prose novel and compared to John Irving’s “Last Night in Twisted River’’s sweeping decades long drama and “In a Perfect World’s’ fascinating premise, this one was a sloooow as molasses. Devastated by the death of her older sister, whom she idolized, Nico, aged 13, spends the summer after Margaret’s tragic drowning accident moving through life with her parents in slow motion. None of them are quite able to function correctly, every room they enter, every day that goes by, reminds them that their daughter/sister has disappeared from their lives. “Our house had always been neat before, but now our possessions had taken advantage of our moment of weakness. … The only semi-comforting part was that we didn’t have to talk. We all dreamed of her. The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we keep trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.”
Nico becomes entangled with Margaret’s boyfriend Aaron, who, obsessed with the loss of his girlfriend, meets secretly with Nico, asking her to wear her sister’s shirts, put on her favorite perfume and watch the same movies they would watch. At first she finds Aaron a comfort, he’s the only one who truly understands what has been lost, but she soon realizes that this unhealthy relationship is turning into something very twisted. Maybe this particular subject matter during this happy holiday season wasn’t the best choice, but it was worth the time and I would recommend it to fans of good writing and intriguing topics.
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