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The Fates Will Find Their Way

3.18 of 5 stars 3.18 · rating details · 2,225 ratings · 540 reviews

Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighborhood boys she's left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence.

As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs, Nora Lindell's story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship,...more

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published January 25th 2011 by Ecco

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Jan 28, 2011 Tony rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Without knowing anything about the author or the "buzz" for this book, I felt after reading it that it's destined to be a darling of the critics and end up on a lot of "Best of 2011" lists. My first problem is that it kept reminding me over and over of a much better book; Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides. Like that book, it's short, it's got a kind of dreamlike tone to it, the catalytic tragic event involving a teenage girl takes place in roughly the same era (the mid-1970s), the upper-cla...more Without knowing anything about the author or the "buzz" for this book, I felt after reading it that it's destined to be a darling of the critics and end up on a lot of "Best of 2011" lists. My first problem is that it kept reminding me over and over of a much better book; Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides. Like that book, it's short, it's got a kind of dreamlike tone to it, the catalytic tragic event involving a teenage girl takes place in roughly the same era (the mid-1970s), the upper-class suburban setting is similar, the unusual collective first-person narration by a group of boys/men from the distance of time is similar, and perhaps most importantly, like The Virgin Suicides, the book doesn't seek to provide answers. I'm not suggesting that this debut copies that one in any way, merely that it was so reminiscent of it (especially in tone), that I couldn't read it without constantly thinking of the Virgin Suicides.

What happens is that one Halloween in roughly the mid-1970s, Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell goes missing. The book spins out the consequences of this disappearance both in the direct lives of her family (especially her younger sister Sissy) as well as in the collective unconscious (and conscious, not to mention conscience) of the kids and parents in the neighborhood. The book unfolds in brief chapters progressing through time. Some of these offer a speculative story of Nora's life after the disappearance, while the others follow the neighborhood boys through the rest of high school and on into adulthood and middle age. The book does a nice job of capturing how groups of friends can return over and over to retell or dissect pivotal shared experiences form the past. However, it's very much about the group and how the group interacts and the idea of collective memory -- there aren't really any individual characters here to get invested in. The short chapters have the sparse, honed feel of fiction that has been "crafted" rather than written, always teetering on the brink of preciousness. I suppose in the end, I felt like the second-person voice and episodic vignettes were a carefully calibrated attempt to reach some kind of emotional truth, and for me that attempt failed. Results may vary -- I can easily imagine myself reading this back when I was in college and loving it.(less)

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Apr 19, 2011 Heather rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone!

Shelves: j-adore-favorites, coming-of-age-suburbia

"In your endless summer night / I'll be on the other side.
When you're beautiful and dying /All the world that you've denied ..."

What does Hole's "Boys on the Radio" have to do with Hannah Pittard's The Fates Will Find Their Way: A Novel (besides me wishing I'd written them both)? To me, both Courtney Love & Hannah Pittard (or perhaps Billy Corgan for Courtney Love) perfectly evoke a sense of youthful longing that is so incredibly intense, it's hard to move past it. Pittard's novel chronicle...more "In your endless summer night / I'll be on the other side.
When you're beautiful and dying /All the world that you've denied ..."

What does Hole's "Boys on the Radio" have to do with Hannah Pittard's The Fates Will Find Their Way: A Novel (besides me wishing I'd written them both)? To me, both Courtney Love & Hannah Pittard (or perhaps Billy Corgan for Courtney Love) perfectly evoke a sense of youthful longing that is so incredibly intense, it's hard to move past it. Pittard's novel chronicles a group of suburban boys as they repeatedly fail at moving past this longing -- even into their adulthood. As others have mentioned, it's a novel dealing with imagined "what ifs" in response to a neighborhood girl's disappearance. Oh, but it's so, so much more than that, and it's incredibly frustrating that I can't even begin to come close to describing how beautiful this novel is.

I should mention that the only reason I even picked this book up was because I saw it compared to The Virgin Suicides on two different sites. I read Eugenides' novel in 1999. It was such an ethereal & perfect read that I immediately categorized it as "one to save for a future re-read." I've yet to re-read it (I will soon!), but I can tell you that Pittard's novel comes extremely close to the perfection that is The Virgin Suicides. I want everyone to read The Fates Will Find Their Way: A Novel , seriously! If you're worried about it being depressing, just know that Pittard's look into the male adolescent brain is as funny as that scene in the junkyard in Stand By Me when the boys discuss Annette Funicello's "assets." I recalled that junkyard scene when reading one similar in tone in The Fates Will Find Their Way. The neighborhood boys contemplate the sexiness of one of their classmates' moms, and the narrator says this: "Mrs. Dinnerman was the hottest of all the moms. In some ways, it was a shame that she had to be called a mom at all. It seemed beneath her station." With zingers like this nestled on every few pages, how could you not love Hannah Pittard? This author is a keeper!(less)

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Feb 01, 2013 Chris Go marked it as to-read

Shelves: box-books

It's interesting reading this right after reading, The False Friend, as both deal with a girl who disappears. In many ways these two books are similar, and yet oh so different. While in The False Friend, no one really talks about the disappearance for over two decades, in The Fates, the characters can't stop thinking about it.

Once again though the reader is brought face to face with the question of why we want to know how stories end. In The Fates, the characters seem so desperate to know the en...more

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Mar 15, 2011 Jenny rated it 1 of 5 stars

I did not like this book. At all. Not one bit. I cannot find one minute piece of redeeming value in it. The sad thing is that I expected to enjoy it; as one of the book review blogs I read listed it as one of their favorite books they will probably read all year.

First of all, the narrator(s) of the book are a group of men, who grew up together and had one of their classmates disappear while they were in high school. And then they were obsessed with her the rest of their life (or at least for the...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Kate Woods Walker rated it 2 of 5 stars

Finely-crafted fiction that ultimately left me unsatisfied, The Fates Will Find Their Way was more performance art than story, more ambience than psychological insight, more melancholy goo than piercing insight. Many have compared Hannah Pittard's use of the first-person plural narration to The Virgin Suicides, and so did I, even before I read a single review, and despite having never read Jeffrey Eugenides's book. Perhaps it was a deliberate answer to the 1993 book, but to what purpose I cannot...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

The last time a book this good came along it was The Imperfectionists, a debut novel that has since become a household name in the literary world (everyone on this email alert remembers my calls about that book). Hannah Pittard’s brilliant The Fates Will Find Their Way, is certainly the best book of 2011. It’s very difficult to hold back my praise, as this novel demands your attention, and will stay with you for a long time.

I want to tell you this book is just like Songs for the Missing, but th...more The last time a book this good came along it was The Imperfectionists, a debut novel that has since become a household name in the literary world (everyone on this email alert remembers my calls about that book). Hannah Pittard’s brilliant The Fates Will Find Their Way, is certainly the best book of 2011. It’s very difficult to hold back my praise, as this novel demands your attention, and will stay with you for a long time.

I want to tell you this book is just like Songs for the Missing, but the missing girl never…well…I can’t spoil it for you. In Fates, Pittard uses a sparse and cliché free prose to deliver a widely expansive dissection of suburban life very similar to John Updike’s Rabbit series. At the center of this story is a very interesting unknown male narrator who tells the story of Nora Lindell, a girl who on page one has gone missing. In the first fourteen pages we find out about every single other person who has had contact with Nora, seen her on her last night, while our narrator describes her most intimate details. She might have been pregnant; the father could have been Trey, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who in the end…gets his…

Sissy, Nora’s sister, is a bit of a tart, and so much is revealed through Sissy, she is almost as important to the story as anyone else. What really impresses me is the voice that hints at the truth, but never really tells you what happened. Nora might have gone to live in Arizona, and this is where Pittard disappears from the novel, (she never really shows her hand) and we become completely engulfed in what could have been. The narrator also imagines the other boys in the town, a mass ejaculation (it is a great scene, funny, and so much a part of what it’s like to be a teenager), and then imagines that Nora went to another part of the world, and lived another life…but maybe she just died under the snow that piled over her body as she hid from the man who abducted her on page one?

There isn’t a neat path lined with white stones that will help you figure out what happened. Pittard wildly and with mature skill navigates a story told from all directions, different experiences and countless points of view. All the while, she tells us about life, and how much it can suck, or in some cases, be revealing. Would a teenage boy ever be the same if he once allowed a middle age woman to take advantage of him? What happens if your mother tells you to steal the family dog back from your father? These questions are asked and sometimes answered, and become part of the overall fabric of this incredible story. I savored the last ten pages and put them off as long as I could, but then I realized I could just start the book again when I was done, which I did. Will you ever find out what happened to Nora? Maybe…

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Feb 21, 2011 Matthew Allard rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not sure if I "really liked" this book, but I know that I "really liked" the writing. There are beautiful sentences and imagery and ideas strung out here. There is a kind of twinkling to Pittard's prose. ("It is that pink time of night. It's that time of night just before our wives come to bed. We can hear them rummaging about in the kitchen beneath us, turning off lights, returning a stray dish to its rightful place in the cabinet, giving the dog a final treat. ...where the streetlights fli...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Nina rated it 3 of 5 stars

The story opens with the disappearance of 16-year old Nora Lindell, and a speculation of her whereabouts. However, although she is present almost in the entire story, this is more focused on the life she left behind - the lives of her family, her younger sister and father, her friends, and especially the teenage boys who admired her from a distance. The book is filled with uncertain fates for Norah, all the while detailing the lives of those teenage boys until they grew to be men and start their...more The story opens with the disappearance of 16-year old Nora Lindell, and a speculation of her whereabouts. However, although she is present almost in the entire story, this is more focused on the life she left behind - the lives of her family, her younger sister and father, her friends, and especially the teenage boys who admired her from a distance. The book is filled with uncertain fates for Norah, all the while detailing the lives of those teenage boys until they grew to be men and start their own families, each still fantasizing about Norah at the back of their minds.

I cannot connect with this book. On some levels, I thought it was poignant, endearing, and funny even, but I just could not feel myself getting drawn into reading it. I finished this book for the sake of finishing it, but I never really appreciated its story much. Which is not to say that this is a bad book. Maybe we just lacked chemistry, maybe I just lacked the enough number of brain cells to relate to this one. If you've been planning to read this, don't let my opinions affect your decision - you might love this in spite of what I said.

Talking about the technical aspects of the story, this is very well-written and eloquent, compelling and wise. The story is told through a first-person plural point of view of those teenage boys, progressing through their adulthood. It did drag towards the middle, but the humor and the dreamy quality with which the narration was written would get you through the end.

The main theme here is 'maybe.' Maybe Nora died, maybe Nora went somewhere, maybe, maybe maybe. These teenage boys - though not really obsessed - would often wonder about her and what has happened to her, and conjecture about her disappearance are detailed in this book. Only the reader could decide which to believe.

What is very noticeable here, however, is how these teenage boys never really got past their young adult years. They went to college, took wives, had kids, but they could not finally and completely break free from the grasp of youth and in my opinion, Nora's pervasive presence in their minds was the symbolic refusal of their minds to turn adult. Most of the humor from this book would come from the fact that they never really got over their teenage lives, even fantasizing about a 'hot' mother of one of their friends, going through the same arguments with each other that they've been having since they were young, it was funny to read about grown men trying to act like boys, which hit me that not being able to let go of Nora's memory was equivalent to not being able to let go of their teenage years.

I know that there was so much to like about this book, but I just could not understand why I cannot relate. Maybe because I took this expecting a story more focused on Nora than these boys. Again with the maybe. This book has a lot of that and more, therefore, I say give this book a chance. Maybe it will end up your favorite.

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I received this book free of charge from the publisher, HarperCollins through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest and truthful review. This, in no way, affected my opinion or review of this book.(less)

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Jun 23, 2011 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Aug 12, 2012 Shelly rated it 2 of 5 stars

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Jul 30, 2012 Ricki rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book tried to be clever, but ended up unable to tell a story I cared about. The characters were flat and not fleshed out. I didn't care what happened to them. I just found this book tedious.

Here's where the book fell terribly short for me. The entire book is written as a narrative by one of the guys. You never know his name. A narrative approach may have worked, however the author had so many characters going on over the span of 20+ years, so there was essentially no character development t...more

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Jul 22, 2012 Elise rated it 4 of 5 stars

Truth be told...probably more of a 3 1/2 for me, but I did love some of the writing. Here were some passages I enjoyed:

On growing up:
"We'd grown out of Halloween. Our complexions had evened out; our skin maintained a perfect equilibrium. We learned discretion from girls, about girls. We packed our trunks and suitcases, prepared for our natural and necessary moves from home. Outwardly, we breathed sighs of relief at the somber comfort of growing up. Inwardly, we held our breath and tried to stand...more Truth be told...probably more of a 3 1/2 for me, but I did love some of the writing. Here were some passages I enjoyed:

On growing up:
"We'd grown out of Halloween. Our complexions had evened out; our skin maintained a perfect equilibrium. We learned discretion from girls, about girls. We packed our trunks and suitcases, prepared for our natural and necessary moves from home. Outwardly, we breathed sighs of relief at the somber comfort of growing up. Inwardly, we held our breath and tried to stand as still as possible, afraid we might be the only ones who didn't yet feel the promised calm of adulthood."

...

"We were growing up. It was one of those moments when you practically feel the adult pushing out, pushing forward into the world. Perspective suddenly existed where it hadn't existed before. This was just the beginning of our lives - our lives, things that we were responsible for, things that we could control. It seemed all at once too big and too simple an idea."

On summer:
"...they'd lived on the same block, gone to the same pool parties - those ageless affairs where mothers and fathers and high schoolers tolerated the company of middle schoolers, even lower schoolers, because they were related, because it passed the hour, the day, the summer. Time needed to be passed, days needed to go by. Pools needed to be swum, skin tanned, bellies fed. One pool party ended and the next was planned. It was that simple, that easy, that fun. And by the end of the summer, the fun was so monotonous that we were thankful for it to be over, for school to have begun again."

Regarding Danny Hatchett:
"He picked his face during class, sometimes until it bled, and the teacher would excuse him even when he hadn't asked to be excused. He was always saying things like, 'What'd I do? I just don't get it.' And, really, he didn't get it, you could just tell. There wasn't the willfulness in him to be a smartass. Teachers were always shaking their heads, saying things like, 'Oh Danny. Enought already.' Or, when he was apologizing for something he didn't understand, they might say, depending on their mood, something as snide as, 'Yeah, you are sorry, Mr. Hatchett. You certainly are sorry.' (Teachers were always calling us by our last names when they were mad or disappointed. Like it made it easier for them to tear us apart, break us down, if they pretended we were other adults.)" (less)

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Apr 10, 2012 Tahira rated it 2 of 5 stars

When I reflect on The Fates Will Find Their Way all I can think is "No". I understand that that is a strange response for what is supposed to be a thought process, but I was really unimpressed by this novel.

There is nothing that this review will say that other reviews haven't already said in much more charming and articulate ways, but I ultimately feel like this novel was so unnecessarily disappointing.

Clearly, Pittard has writing ability and I respect her for this. However, I do not think she u...more

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Jan 03, 2012 University of Chicago Magazine added it

Shelves: college

Hannah Pittard, AB'01
Author

Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighborhood boys she's left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence.

As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs, Nora Lindell's story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, captured magically in the disembodied plural voice of the boys who still l...more

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Oct 12, 2011 Suspense Magazine rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the most unusual book I’ve read in awhile, being in first person plural with lots of verb tenses that would be awkward for many writers. Not for Pittard, though. The story pursues the mystery of the elusive and enigmatic Nora through what-ifs, maybes and might have beens. Possible pasts are explored and discarded, though some are held onto by the group of boys as they progress through high school into adulthood.
It starts as an angst-ridden drama of newly hormonal teenagers. When one of t...more This is the most unusual book I’ve read in awhile, being in first person plural with lots of verb tenses that would be awkward for many writers. Not for Pittard, though. The story pursues the mystery of the elusive and enigmatic Nora through what-ifs, maybes and might have beens. Possible pasts are explored and discarded, though some are held onto by the group of boys as they progress through high school into adulthood.
It starts as an angst-ridden drama of newly hormonal teenagers. When one of their group, Nora, goes missing, the group considers alternate scenarios to explain to themselves, collectively, what happened to her. It’s an elitist bunch of boys who permit one “public schooler” into their midst, but only on the outskirts. In spite of this, we come to appreciate them and sympathize with their difficulties. Nora disappears on Halloween, and subsequent Halloweens are never again normal events for them. One of their female classmates is raped by a big brother of another classmate and they are tenderly protective of her. Nora’s younger sister, Sissy, is perhaps the mostly profoundly affected by her sister’s disappearance and unresolved fate. The boys close solicitous ranks around her, too, as much as they can.
The reader watches in fascination as the boys mature and become the men that their teenage years laid foundations for. And, always running through their lives, even as they marry and have children, are the questions surrounding Nora. The fantasies they form are fed by sightings over the years that may or may not have really been Nora. They create alternate lives she might have, would probably have or could have led.
There are some hilarious scenes, but most are serious and give the reader plenty of fodder for speculation and thought.
I hope you’ll enjoy this book as much as I did. In spite of the unusual literary style, it’s readable, even flowing and my interest never ever flagged.

Reviewed by Kaye George, Author of “A Patchwork of Stories”, for Suspense Magazine
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Sep 19, 2011 Joan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This short but complex novel is not for everyone. The unusual point of view is first person plural, that is, "we" did or thought or wondered the things that happened, or might have happened. The "we" is the close knit group of boys who were teenagers when Nora Lindell suddenly disappears. As they (very gradually) grow into men, her mysterious absence, and all that they feel about it, continues to preoccupy them. Some of these "might have been" scenarios are richly elaborated, yet still reveal th...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: one-time editors of the school yearbook

Shelves: 2011

Small town enthralled by the disappearance by a girl, Nora, during high school - private, catholic high school. It's like this book is narrated by a perceptive, likable, well spoken friend who remembers everything about your school days and the neighborhood - and was well liked by parents as well as kids. He's part of a gaggle of boys who stay close to home and close with each other as time marches on. As the past is recounted it is intertwined with growing up as adults, all the same people, all...more

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Jul 15, 2011 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: powell-s-indiespensables

I saw some not so good reviews of this book on Goodreads, mainly centering around how the mystery of What Happened to Nora Lindell doesn't get solved. To me, that's not really the point of the book. Sure, yes, I'm curious about what happened to her. Though just as well written, the part with living with the Mexican man and three children was...a bit weird. But I didn't finish it and think, Ahhh, what, was she living with the Mexican, did she die, did she end up in Mumbai with a beautiful woman,...more

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May 26, 2011 Schmacko rated it 2 of 5 stars

Hmm. This is a novel by a young woman who imagines a chorus of suburban boys – perverted, imaginative, creepy – as narrators. Everything here is told in first person plural. “We were creeps,” “We went to Danny’s basement apartment,” “We wondered what happened to her.”

It’s a nifty effect for a short story, but over the long haul of a novel, it presents problems. We quit caring. The narrators become two-dimensional, hollow.

The boys – six or seven, I’ve lost count – live in a nondescript suburb aro...more Hmm. This is a novel by a young woman who imagines a chorus of suburban boys – perverted, imaginative, creepy – as narrators. Everything here is told in first person plural. “We were creeps,” “We went to Danny’s basement apartment,” “We wondered what happened to her.”

It’s a nifty effect for a short story, but over the long haul of a novel, it presents problems. We quit caring. The narrators become two-dimensional, hollow.

The boys – six or seven, I’ve lost count – live in a nondescript suburb around, I think, the late 1970s. One Halloween when they are all roughly 16, neighborhood beauty Nora Lindell goes missing. She’s the girl they’ve all lusted after (and maybe slept with, though they usually tell each other details of every conquest.) From there, the boys grow older and older; other than that they don’t change or develop much. Each man possesses only superficial things that separate him from the others – no deep conflicts, no burning quests, no passionate dichotomies.

This chorus of boys imagines Nora’s life or death based on the gossip that swirls around her, rumors that they cull from their and their mothers’ suburban lives. Was Nora murdered? Did she get raped? Was she pregnant and ashamed, fleeing to Arizona, and then to other places across the globe? All of the possibilities are thin, mythical, and even somewhat unbelievable. Because boys are making this up – imagining where they lack concrete information – this approach works for many of these tangents away from the boys’ lives.

The problems are the boys. Their individual biographies should be rendered in full color, without sinking to some blanket stereotype that all boys are oversexed and under-civilized. In fact, that’s not the only sweeping generality about these poor boys. One of them has zits, smokes weed, has family tragedies. Another cheats on his wife. One of them is criminally sexually perverted. Other than those label-y descriptors, I couldn’t tell any of these young men apart.

There is a sense here that young author Hannah Pittard is searching for universal clarity. She is attempting to get into the collective heads of American teenaged boys, trying to represent them as a culture. She struggles to understand. But by her thinning them into a single “we” voice, she misses the point that each human – even a “pervert” teenaged boy – is an individual with unique wants, needs, viewpoints, and follies.

It’s not like the girls or the parents are treated that much better, in fact. Perhaps inspired by her “we” approach, everyone here is rendered a bit wispy and uninteresting.

It’s also not as if Pittard lacks a talent for words; descriptions of places are so vivid that you can draw maps in your head. She just hasn’t yet learned that her worlds need to be populated with real people, human souls we readers can care about.
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Apr 13, 2011 Cheri rated it 1 of 5 stars

Hannah Pittard takes us on an unusual journey - following the lives of several men from their youth to their middle ages (and the girls they bedded). I always wonder about an author who writes and delves into the minds of the opposite sex without first-hand knowledge. My first experience with this was Wally Lamb's "She's Come Undone." Perhaps it's the mark of a really good author or maybe not.
The Fates will Find Their Way bothered me, but not enough to quit reading. I had to see if it would get...more

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Apr 04, 2011 Tessa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fictive

My s.o. read this for his book club and really liked it. And he also mentioned that it, at least in part, had high school life in its plot purview. So I then had to read it.

The "we" narration (what's the lit term for this?) and dreamy-sad-nostalgic view of adolescence calls to mind The Virgin Suicides (yay). It also allowed the author to not have to pin down the chronology of things (bothersome because the things mentioned don't always seem to match up chronologically but you can't tell for sure...more My s.o. read this for his book club and really liked it. And he also mentioned that it, at least in part, had high school life in its plot purview. So I then had to read it.

The "we" narration (what's the lit term for this?) and dreamy-sad-nostalgic view of adolescence calls to mind The Virgin Suicides (yay). It also allowed the author to not have to pin down the chronology of things (bothersome because the things mentioned don't always seem to match up chronologically but you can't tell for sure.)

It's a fast read--I decided I was going to spend a lazy Saturday morning finishing it in bed--and for maybe that reason the group of guys in the book took a comparatively long time to grow on me. It took me until I was on page 168 to realize that it wasn't that I didn't like the book, it was that the book was so good at describing the solipsistic mindset of the permanently-adolescing male narrators, so I was confusing the two. They were kind of unlikeable, but not unrelatable, and so it made for a quick read with things left for one to chew over in one's mind.

Here's the passage that did it for me:

"The thing we wonder about now--turning on the grill in the backyard, getting the coals ready and the steaks marinated--is whether or not Trey knew his inclinations even then. ...Often it would take a wife's hand on the shoulder to pull us away from these reveries. 'Honey,' she might say, 'the coals. Are they ready? The kids are hungry.' And they would always be tender at these moments, always impossibly understanding,a s though they could see our thoughts, read our fears, our worries. Sometimes, it's like they almost understand how incredibly overwhelming it all is--to be a man, to be a father, a husband, a human being, responsible for the lives of others."

Yes, narrators, it certainly must be mindblowing that your mostly unnamed wives could imagine such a thing, seeing as how they live with you and are also responsible for the lives of your shared children.

Once I got that I didn't like the characters, then I liked the book a lot more.(less)

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Apr 02, 2011 Alex Templeton rated it 3 of 5 stars

Indulge me in a bizarre comparison for a moment, and allow me to say that I feel about this book the same way I feel about films like "Moulin Rouge": I would never award them a Best Picture Oscar (or the literary award equivalent), but I like the way that they try something unusual that, even if it doesn't quite add up in the end, is strangely compelling and memorable. This novel is, at surface level, about a group of teenage boys who grow up in the shadow of the disappearance of a female classm...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Verena rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel begins with the promise of a mystery in the disappearance of a sixteen year old girl on Halloween night. Stories, which are at odds with each other, about where she was last seen, circulate throughout this suburban community

It soon becomes apparent that the main story is about the boys who knew her and her sister. Their stories and fantasies about the girls continue to dog their memories as they grow into adulthood, even as the truth of the disappearance remains a mystery.

The narrator...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Shawn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I realize that two is a somewhat small sample size, but both of the published novels by the recipients of McSweeney's Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award (Jessica Anthony's The Convalescent and Hannah Pittard's The Fates Will Find Their Way: A Novel) have been quite good. I don't think Fates is as good as The Convalescent (which is one of my favourite books of the last few years), but it's a thoroughly engrossing read.

The problem with Fates is that it's basically a novel built on hearsay and ru...more

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Feb 22, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a small concept book, very short and insular in premise, that deepens and reverberates eloquently. When a sixteen-year-old high school girl goes missing one Halloween from a "mid-Atlantic" (and obviously small) town, she is mythologized by the people she left behind, especially a group of her male peers. The narrative covers several decades, in a non-linear but succinct, crisp structure. The narrators are a group of voices that become one voice, a collective consciousness of sorts. The r...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Maia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

A publishing friend sent me this last week and I read it in one go. I'd give it 2.5 stars if I could but actually, how easily this book is read and how much I disengaged from it halfway through is a good indication of a weakness I keep seeing at goodreads: that a star system really does not work well for literature. Silly hardboilers a la Dan Brown, maybe, but not 'literary' fiction attempting to be serious.

So I can't give this debut novel more than 2 stars here but does not mean I don't respect...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Samantha Harvey rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book reminded me so much of The Virgin Suicides in that the narrative is of boys who have since become men obsessing over two elusive girls: Nora and Sissy Lindell-Nora more than Sissy. They observe these girls too closely, obsess over them too deeply, while their wives are in the next room. They sit together and reminisce and they cling to Nora, who has been missing for years, wondering always what she has been up to all of these years- refusing to think too long upon what is probably true...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Rebekah ODell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Take the nostalgia of The Wonder Years, add the boys’ club feeling of The Sandlot, and mix in the dark and complicated narration of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, and you will arrive at an approximation of the tenor of Hannah Pittard’s debut, The Fates Will Find Their Way.

In a time that must be somewhere in the mid-Atlantic around the mid-1980s, a group of boys comes of age. Yet, in the midst of their growing up, a neighborhood girl, Nora Lindell, an object of their admiration, goes mis...more Take the nostalgia of The Wonder Years, add the boys’ club feeling of The Sandlot, and mix in the dark and complicated narration of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, and you will arrive at an approximation of the tenor of Hannah Pittard’s debut, The Fates Will Find Their Way.

In a time that must be somewhere in the mid-Atlantic around the mid-1980s, a group of boys comes of age. Yet, in the midst of their growing up, a neighborhood girl, Nora Lindell, an object of their admiration, goes missing on Halloween night. Her fate is never known. The boys — who later become young men, husbands, and fathers — are undeterred in their mental pursuit of her, spending their lives hypothesizing about Nora Lindell’s whereabouts. But while the boys take them as imaginary gospel truths, they are just that — ever-shifting hypotheses. Imagining Nora as the wife of an older Mexican man in Arizona, the narrator says,

“Let’s say it was a summer day. One that was uncharacteristically hot, even for Arizona. It was like this — it had to be like this — because heat alone — isolated, confined — can make a person crazy, can turn a good thing bad, if only for a moment. And don’t forget that we like the Mexican. We like him because, like us, he loves Nora. He has cared for Nora and her two babies. So let’s say it was hot. Let’s say there was enough heat to excuse any sing, any crime, any transgression, just this once.”

Beyond the hypothetical tone that permeates the entire novel, the most fascinating feature of this book is highlighted in the above passage — the use of a first person plural point of view. While the boys are named, the narrative voice transcends the point of view of any single young man; they are “we” as boys and “we” are adults. The narrative voice is none of them and all of them at the same time, perfectly expressing the follies of childhood from the safe distance of adulthood,

"We were sophomores, newly sixteen, a year shy of missing Nora Lindell terribly. We were creeps, jerks, idiots. We were boys; we couldn’t help ourselves."

Partially due to this narrative perspective, the novel lacks a linear plot. This isn’t a murder mystery. It isn’t a tale of boyhood adventure. Each chapter is more like a vignette, capturing a particular incident in this life of this group of friends — moments pushing them from childhood to the acceptance of their adulthood.

And that’s really what the Nora Lindell obsession is about — a hesitance to let go of the things of childhood and grow up. Preferring to obsess on their youth, the men age and accept adult responsibilities without emotional maturation.

This is a debut that, without a doubt, will catapult Pittard into the literary elite. It’s experimental and fresh without being self-conscious. The writing is impeccable … and exciting. This is a novel that creeps up on you in all the best ways. Pre-order a copy of this book! You won’t regret being among the first in your circle to devour this novel, and you’ll feel proud to have “discovered” this rare new talent!

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Jan 02, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Lately, there have been a plethora of books about missing girls and what they signify for those left behind. The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sara Braunstein and Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan spring instantly to mind.

In Hannah Pittard’s absorbing The Fates Will Find Their Way, this territory is mined again, and quite convincingly. Sixteen-year-old Nora vanishes one day and no one knows quite what happened. What’s left is a series of rumors, imaginings, suspicions, and what-ifs fr...more Lately, there have been a plethora of books about missing girls and what they signify for those left behind. The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sara Braunstein and Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan spring instantly to mind.

In Hannah Pittard’s absorbing The Fates Will Find Their Way, this territory is mined again, and quite convincingly. Sixteen-year-old Nora vanishes one day and no one knows quite what happened. What’s left is a series of rumors, imaginings, suspicions, and what-ifs from teenage boys whose lives she touched.

Ms. Pittard makes a risky choice in using the first person plural for narration – the “we” tense. It’s a hard tense to pull off, but she does it quite well. For instance, as the boys grow to men, she writes, “We owned homes, had wives. Some of us had more than one child by then. In many ways, we were kings. Everything was ahead of us…”

But is it? As the fates dictate that the boys settle down into preordained future roles, something is lost in each of them. At one point, the narrator looks back to a time when the future was more limitless: “Our only limitation was our imagination, and that school year – and every school year after – our imagination seemed to grow, to outdo, what we’d ever believed possible. We outran our wildest fantasies. That is, until Nora Lindell went missing…”

Nora is the fixed mark in time of all that might have been. Her life remains limitless, at least in the imaginings of her now-adult classmates; she took off to Arizona, she became pregnant, she married a much-older man, and so on. Their lives, however, are constrained by the realities of life, the wives and the babies and jobs and the homes as they sleepwalk forward. Ms. Pittard writes, “Certain outcomes are unavoidable, invariable, absolutely unaffectable, and yet completely unpredictable. Certain outcomes are that way. But maybe not Nora’s. Maybe she was the only one who escaped…”

This haunting and minimalistic book has but one flaw in my opinion: Nora is consistently a symbol and never acquires that real-life mystique and fascination that would cause these teenage boys to remain starry-eyed and reverent way into adulthood. The conceit overpowers the reality of the story.

That aside, there is some mighty fine writing from a debut author and some deep psychological insights that keeps the reader turning pages. The Fates Will Find Their Way is a lovely little gem.

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Dec 22, 2010 Newengland rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, finished-in-2010

The title comes from Virgil's THE AENEID (but of course!) and the premise is this: a 16-year-old girl named Nora Lindell, beloved of a gaggle of boys, disappears into fat air. The boys take to wondering -- in the first-person plural, for godssakes -- and a book called THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY is born.

First, the point of view. I have to invoke the name of Jay McInerney here, because I've read endless invective about his use of the second-person POV in BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY. It has been cal...more

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“We packed our trunks and suitcases, prepared for our natural and necessary moves away from home. Outwardly, we breathed sighs of relief at the somber comfort of growing up. Inwardly, we held our breath and tried to stand as still as possible, afraid we might be the only ones who didn’t yet feel the promised call of adulthood.” — 9 people liked it

“We were growing up. It was one of those moments when you could practically feel the adult pushing out, pushing forward into the world. Perspective suddenly existed where it hadn't existed before. This was just the beginning of our lives—our lives, things that we were responsible for, things that we could control. It seemed all at once too big and too simple an idea.” — 4 people liked it

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