Fabulous Fiction Firsts #244

Wed, 02/23/2011 - 11:55am by muffy

Winner of the 2008 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, Hannah Pittard's debut novel The Fates Will Find Their Way * begins with the mysterious disappearance of 16-year old Nora Lindell from the unnamed mid-Atlantic town, all the more eerie as it was Halloween.

Told from the first-person plural point of view of the boys who still long for her and the sister she left behind, the mystery grows kaleidoscopically as years go by, fueled by rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs.

Capturing teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, Hannah Pittard's beautifully crafted novel tracks the the boys as they "sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes, and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl–and a life–that no longer exists, except in the imagination."

This suspenseful and melancholy take on what it is like for those left behind will appeal to those who liked Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakopoulos, and What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and "The Guardian" First Book Award.

The author will be reading and signing at Nicola's Books, Wednesday, March 9 @ 7 pm. (Details). Don't be late for the party.

* = Starred review