Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Matt Howard, Transit Lounge, $29.95.
This book is a poignant contemplation of regeneration, sorrow and clemency. At its core it’s a silent celebration of the transformative ability of connections. It may be difficult to comprehend, but what begins as a fragile comedy of behaviours develops into a multifarious and affectionate story about family ties and optional kinships.
Thrown together by family and circumstance, four isolated people are part of a fine-tuned production of daily lives. The result is a witty and heart-warming story.
Cast adrift by loss, Monica Sparrow is left stranded in her semi in Neasden, the so-called ‘loneliest village in London’, her home stuffed with nothing she needs. Perhaps, it’s time for her to finally get her house in order. The question is whether she can clear the junk and isolate what really matters. Will an unlikeliest set of contenders be fashioned into an entirely new family? Why? It’s too late for her family to be as they were.
Monica’s once-beloved sister, Diane, ‘already a right piece of work and looking to take it up a notch’, seems lost to Monica forever. However, a few unexpected diversions see her ‘careering in a most unanticipated direction’.
Xavier is a ‘master of minimalism’ and ‘discards people as easily as any other clutter’. An editor at a prestigious publishing house, he’s ‘lumbered with Monica – a wannabe writer spectacularly different from any he’s previously encountered’.
Having lived virtually family-free into adulthood, Jamie suddenly acquires Monica and Diane as elder sisters, and a job, a proper one. Used to living on the margins and unfamiliar with group dynamics, this proverbial black sheep might just become the most improbable anchor.
Howard is a master of the scanty, delicate drama of everyday lives, breathing life into characters of real substance. This story is about new starts and those opportune second attempts.
To win one of three copies of The Time is Now, Monica Sparrow, just tell us the name of the place where Monica is marooned?
Entries should be sent to [email protected] by Monday, 23 September 2019. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column on 24 September 2019.
