- At first I was totally uninspired by this debut novel by American short story author Clare Sestanovich. We're immersed in the dull lives and tepid ambitions of quite ordinary and uninteresting young people. I thought there was a laziness about it, as if she were holding back.
- But halfway through I had completely changed my mind. The main character Eva is a loner, although likeable. We meet her in her teens and follow her to university and her subsequent early career as a journalist. She’s a quiet, retiring person, and we're absorbed in her everyday, rather mundane world.
- But Sestanovich regularly introduces new characters who have their own stories, and most of these people are very interesting. Eva likes them and they are attracted to her. One fascinating character is Jess, a newly elected politician in New York who is very AOC. They become buddies.
- And there's Jamie, an unhappy young man alienated from his rich family. He's completely at a loss, and sort of behaves like an alley cat. Sleeps everywhere in parks and protest tents and empty warehouses. And he discovers a Christian preacher and his community of believers. Eva, from a middle class family in Brooklyn, is initially attracted to him but his radicalism ends their relationship.
- Sestanovich reminds us this is America. There is a school shooting in New York that kills seventeen students. This is harsh reality breaking through. Their world is not really ordinary or mundane after all.
- Eva is eventually promoted to Wellness Editor, and her colleague Judy, an older and wiser woman, helps her see herself and her readers differently. ‘To be lonely is to doubt that you are enough….But might you be the one you are looking for?’
- If all this sounds pretty uninteresting, I guess on one level it is. But the novel is so beautifully written and insightful and it's about real people living ordinary lives. It sucks the reader in. The characters are just like us.
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