I admit I was distracted when I started reading this book. I bought it on impulse for my Nook. After reading the first 15-20 pages, I had to go back to the beginning and start over because I couldn't keep the characters and their relationships straight in my head. Once I got that settled, I really enjoyed this book.
The title has to do with simple arithmetic and addition, when you have to carry the one to the column on the left to proceed with the sum. In the case of the novel the one that need to be carried, is a pre-teen, Casey, who is killed on a country road, late at night, by a car full of drugged, drunk careless, young people. As is the case when you're young, there is really no realization or full awareness of how this tragedy will mark and be present in their lives.
The narrative centers especially around three siblings obviously smart: Carmen (the bride, a social activist, and then mother of Gabe, one of the minor characters), Alice (a painter whose works will gain her fame and fortune) and Nick
(a promising astrophysicist who lives prisoner of and succumbs to his addictions).
We follow the lives of these three people and their significant others through the course of 25 years and we see how they can't or won't forgive themselves for being in the car that killed Casey. They can't find redemption or self-forgiveness through their work, their achievements or the relationships they establish as they grow and mature. They are unable to identify and grasp the windows of grace as they appear in their lives. And they also have no sense of spiritual/religious faith that might aide them into letting go of guilt and give happiness a try (happiness, I sensed, was like an indecency, an offense, in light of the tragedy that binds them).
Anshaw writes clearly, precisely and with shrewd, compassionate humanity. I really appreciate how seamless she is able to weave into the story and with a non-judgmental voice topics that not everyone is comfortable with, say, homosexuality. Another topic discussed with matter-of-factness is drug abuse, the emptiness it creates, the lack of direction when you're holding on for dear life (or for the dear next fix, as might be the case).
And that little girl long dead, is a pervasive, constant element in our reading. Alice, the gifted artist, dedicates an excellent series of paintings to Casey as the subject, always dressed in the same clothes she was wearing the night she was killed, but in the paintings she appears to be growing and having a life. Nick visits Casey's family, almost like a pilgrimage, every year (at the end, Casey's mother is able to come to terms with him). Carmen dives head on into her causes and her social activism.
The person that sort of disappears early on is Olivia (Nick's then girlfriend), the car driver that ill-fated night to reappear again at the end to be part of one of the most touching scenes in the book for me that involves a dream and a slippery surface.
The book and its characters are a mess and they live messy lives. But do we, human beings, really have any other alternatives? 'Fraid not.
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