Read by Bill Clegg
6 hours, 54 minutes
Published September 2015 by Gallery/Scout Press
Publisher's Summary:
On the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's life is upended when a shocking disaster takes the lives of her daughter, her daughter's fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend, Luke-her entire family, all gone in a moment. June is the only survivor.
Alone and directionless, June drives across the country, away from her small Connecticut town. In her wake, a community emerges, weaving a beautiful and surprising web of connections through shared heartbreak.
From the couple running a motel on the Pacific Ocean where June eventually settles into a quiet half-life, to the wedding's caterer whose bill has been forgotten, to Luke's mother, the shattered outcast of the town-everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.
Alone and directionless, June drives across the country, away from her small Connecticut town. In her wake, a community emerges, weaving a beautiful and surprising web of connections through shared heartbreak.
From the couple running a motel on the Pacific Ocean where June eventually settles into a quiet half-life, to the wedding's caterer whose bill has been forgotten, to Luke's mother, the shattered outcast of the town-everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.
My Thoughts:
Well, first off I need to admit that I thought that Bill Clegg was Bill Bryson. I mean, I didn't think they were the same person; apparently I thought that there was only one author with the first name of "Bill" and I thought he was the guy who wrote At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Which I'm only admitting to so that you can understand that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into with this one. Even after I read the first paragraph of the publisher's summary. Which accounts for, to some extent, why it took me so long to get into this book, to be able to follow along.
In the early morning hours of the day of June's daughter's wedding, while June is out of her house, there is an explosion and fire at the house, killing everyone in it - June's daughter, Lolly; Lolly's fiancé, William; June's ex-husband, Adam; and June's boyfriend, Luke. Almost immediately, I was convinced I was listening to a mystery, because it wasn't clear to me why June wasn't in the house, why she was fleeing. It wasn't until a couple of hours of listening that it was truly clear to me that June had fled to try to flee her grief, to make some sense out of the senseless, as she travels across the country, using Lolly's journal's as a guide.
We gradually get the full story of the people involved and what actually happened through a variety of points of view: Lydia Morey, Luke's mother; Dale, William's father; the couple who run the motel June eventually ends up at; the maid at that hotel; and Silas, a young man who worked for Luke. Each of them has their own story to tell, their own sadness and grief to process. So many books that bounce from point of view to point of view leave me confused or wishing to get back to one or another of the characters - I never felt this way about this book, becoming completely absorbed in each storyline. Readers come to know and care about each of characters and I loved how everything came together, very unexpectedly for me, in the end.
Did You Every Have A Family made the longest for the National Book Award in 2015. I can understand why. Kirkus Reviews says this book is: "An attempt to map how the unbearable is borne, elegantly written and bravely imagined." It truly is an utterly unique way of exploring grief and the consolation we find in the smallest of things.
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