Engaging and immersive. A recommended first purchase for collections where literary fiction is popular.

a poignant exploration of two privileged, intertwined white families, and all the betrayals that happen when keeping up appearances, connections, and smoothing things over take precedence over truth. A surprisingly quick read. I thought the end was especially great.

Quiet, desperate white upper-middle class family drama. Two men, Emerson and Amos, are best friends in their fifties. At Emerson's 52nd birthday party, angry and feeling impotent at his sprained ankle after playing tennis, he gropes his best friend's daughter in the laundry room. The second half of the book concerns the negotiation as to what the two families will do in the aftermath of this revelation.

Unfortunately this book was pretty mid. The writing style is extremely labored, the quality of figurative language is meh and gets kind of annoying, the characters somewhat blend into one another and have the MOST sketched out backstories (the book literally begins with ONE extremely brief and non-characterizing chapter of their meeting in college before jumping to the present day, giving us very little time to understand the nature of their lifelong and supposedly deep attachment), the bond between the best friends just isn't convincing or worth emotional investment in because of the book's structure, and the characterization work isn't particularly strong. (For example, we're told that Emerson will frequently just seem cruel and the book will give an example of a cutting line of dialogue that is like, okay that wasn't great of you to say, but also not memorable or even particularly terrible. Or it'll just be like, I glanced over and i could just TELL he was not thinking nice thoughts at that moment. The book does this multiple times, and the technique doesn't really work well to deepen our understanding of the nature of Emerson's cruelty.) Additionally, the names of the wives and daughters (Sophie / Anne / Claire / Retsy) are SO similar / easily mixed up and they aren't given enough distinct personalities for this reader to remember who is which wife / daughter, and which wife / daughter belongs with which husband, until distressingly far into the book. The roving 3rd person limited PoV doesn't really help with this characterization problem either. The book begins to finally pick up steam around the 50% mark when it gets to the actual conflict, and that part of the book is certainly better, and what ultimately earns the book a 3 star rating instead of 2.

It's clear that the book is trying to raise important questions about what people do in the aftermath of sexual assault that occurs at a blurred boundary / space re: belief, and the cost of such decisions to the families involved and the way that it is easier to just ignore / smooth over such decisions. Overall though, the execution was middling, and this book was a pretty forgettable contemporary literary drama.