When we meet Lex Gracie, she is on her way to the prison where her mother has died. Her mother has left the few possessions she has to her children. Lex is the executor of her will. Lex, though, wants nothing to do with her mother. We learn why as the novel continues: years ago, the Gracie children were freed from what the press has deemed a “house of horrors”, where the starving children were chained to their beds as their increasingly erratic father fell deeper into vaguely Christian delusions of grandeur and doom.
It’s a tale that pops up in the news every now and then. Mostly, we don’t hear the aftermath, yet that is what this novel focuses on. The Gracie siblings have been separated after they were freed from the house, and they have each gone their separate ways. Ethan, the eldest, works as the principal of a school. Lex is a successful lawyer working mergers and acquisitions in New York. Noah, still a baby when they were freed, lives with his adopted mothers and isn’t in touch with the others. Evie travels the world. Gabriel is locked in an institution; the only one of the siblings who, on the face of it, has suffered permanent damage. Of course, the scars run deeper than that.
When I was reading this I was reminded, oddly, of the execrable A Little Life. Sure, Dean lacks the writerly flourish of Yanagihara, but in many other ways this is a better book. It walks the tightrope between residual trauma on the one hand, and success and future happiness on the other. Barring Gabriel, all the Gracie siblings seem remarkably well-adjusted: people whisper about them at parties, incredulous at the fact that these seemingly well-adjusted people had such a messed-up childhood. Lex, like A Little Life’s Jude, is successful at work, less so at relationships, but where Jude’s life keeps getting worse and worse, Lex’s has its ups and downs. There is an ex-boyfriend against whom Lex holds no grudge, and a potential new suitor. Life goes on, the novel seems to say, while at the same time pointing out that you can never really escape your past.
I also liked that the book goes light on the horrifying details; Dean’s descriptions of the filthy house are horribly vivid, but much of the physical abuse that the children suffer are left up to the reader’s imagination. I appreciated that light touch. There is a propensity within the genre to be as brutal and visceral as possible (Yanagihara, again) but Dean neatly sidesteps that. Not that the details aren’t horrifying – they are – but they aren’t gratuitous. The only thing I really didn’t like was the plot twist that is offered near the end; it’s trite and predictable and it doesn’t befit the rest of the book.
All in all, this is a solid effort that paints a picture of a group of siblings who have gone through something traumatic together. It binds them even though they don’t want it to, and it is easy to slip back into their old patterns even after years apart. The death of their mother is what brings them together again, and much of the tension comes from Lex trying to navigate these delicate relationships while also being forced to face her past and discovering that some of her brothers and sisters had a very different experience of their childhood than she did. Importantly, it feels realistic rather than overwrought. It doesn’t appeal to cheap sentiment. It is bittersweet yet hopeful.