The Blessings, by Elise Juska, begins with eighteen year-old
Abby, away at college in Maine, and missing her large family back in
Philadelphia. Yet when she visits for the holidays, amid the clatter and
chatter of her large Irish Catholic clan, The Blessings, Abby realizes she has
already become a separate entity from them.
At the novel’s outset, the Blessings are a Norman Rockwell
family portrait, but when one, then another family member dies, cracks on the
surface become more prominent.
In this realistic contemporary novel, each chapter is told
through a different family member’s point of view. The tale reveals a twenty
year look inside the machinations of family and key individual members of the
Blessing clan. Juska deftly makes each voice discernible from another, and
provides a full bodied portrait of this family. The structure and tone are reminiscent
of You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon, and Elizabeth
Strout’s Olive Kitteridge.
While there are no original discoveries here, the story
serves to remind us of our heritage, and how in different phases of our lives connections
to family strengthens and wavers, yet we cannot totally separate ourselves from
our birthright.
In the author interview at the end of the book, Juska says
she would like to develop some of her character’s stories further. I hope she
does. I’d like to find out what transpires next within the next twenty years of
the Blessing family.
The Blessings is available May 6, 2014 from Grand Central Publishing.
Happy Reading.
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