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In Between Days
by Andrew Porter (Goodreads Author)
by Andrew Porter (Goodreads Author)
** spoiler alert **
via NetGalley
In Between Days tells the story of a family falling apart. Elson, a recently divorced architect, is dating a younger woman but is pained over the loss of a close relationship with his children. Cadence goes to a psychologist she dislikes, and sleeps with the professor of her business class. Their older child, Richard, has finished his undergraduate degree; he is comfortable with his homosexuality, less comfortable with his identity as a poet (what will his father think? what if he tries and fails?). Chloe has recently returned home to Houston from her east coast college in the wake of a scandal she won't tell anyone about, even Richard.
The narration is third person, rotating between the four characters, so that the reader learns what happened at Chloe's college even as she is trying to escape it. She begs help from Richard and then swears him to secrecy; it is precisely his loyalty to her that causes him to lose her, for Chloe chooses love over her family. Whether the object of her love is worthy of it is uncertain; what is clear is that, had any of the four of them (but especially Chloe and Richard) made different choices, the outcome would have been drastically different.
The parents - the oddly-named Elson and Cadence - look on their pasts with some regret, but their children are still in the process of committing actions they might regret later, with only a hazy awareness that the choices they are making are not the only or the best ones (see second quote below). Although this is clear to the reader, the author successfully brings to life these troubled young adults, and the decisions seem authentic to their characters. In fact, Porter is such a skilled writer that the reader will likely be understanding of the characters rather than judgmental.
Quotes:
He wonders sometimes whether...anyone but the person who has written the poem can actually say what it means. And if the person who has written the poem doesn't know what it means, then is the poem even valid? (Richard, p. 17)
Maybe it was divine intervention, [Raja'd] said. Fate. Or maybe, she thought, this is what desperate circumstances could do to a person: cloud their judgment to the point where even the seediest of characters could seem like a savior. (Chloe, p. 133)
In Between Days tells the story of a family falling apart. Elson, a recently divorced architect, is dating a younger woman but is pained over the loss of a close relationship with his children. Cadence goes to a psychologist she dislikes, and sleeps with the professor of her business class. Their older child, Richard, has finished his undergraduate degree; he is comfortable with his homosexuality, less comfortable with his identity as a poet (what will his father think? what if he tries and fails?). Chloe has recently returned home to Houston from her east coast college in the wake of a scandal she won't tell anyone about, even Richard.
The narration is third person, rotating between the four characters, so that the reader learns what happened at Chloe's college even as she is trying to escape it. She begs help from Richard and then swears him to secrecy; it is precisely his loyalty to her that causes him to lose her, for Chloe chooses love over her family. Whether the object of her love is worthy of it is uncertain; what is clear is that, had any of the four of them (but especially Chloe and Richard) made different choices, the outcome would have been drastically different.
The parents - the oddly-named Elson and Cadence - look on their pasts with some regret, but their children are still in the process of committing actions they might regret later, with only a hazy awareness that the choices they are making are not the only or the best ones (see second quote below). Although this is clear to the reader, the author successfully brings to life these troubled young adults, and the decisions seem authentic to their characters. In fact, Porter is such a skilled writer that the reader will likely be understanding of the characters rather than judgmental.
Quotes:
He wonders sometimes whether...anyone but the person who has written the poem can actually say what it means. And if the person who has written the poem doesn't know what it means, then is the poem even valid? (Richard, p. 17)
Maybe it was divine intervention, [Raja'd] said. Fate. Or maybe, she thought, this is what desperate circumstances could do to a person: cloud their judgment to the point where even the seediest of characters could seem like a savior. (Chloe, p. 133)
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