Back in 2006 I wrote a book review of A Family Daughter for BookPage. I seriously fell in love with it. So much so that I turned around and read Meloy’s Liars and Saints immediately upon finishing. It’s been five years so I figure I can let you read the review here.
They’re back. Like a traveling circus whose painted trucks and trailers demand that we look, the Santerre family—let’s not forget that author Maile Meloy called them both liars and saints in her first novel—compel us to watch as their story unfolds … again. And in this intriguing contemporary tale we’re given clues to life’s largest riddles about the meaning of faith, the strength of family ties, and the hope of real and lasting love.
It’s 1979, and seven-year-old Abby, the youngest member of the close-knit Santerre clan, is trapped indoors with the chicken pox, bored and restless. When her grandmother enlists Abby’s uncle to help entertain her, events are set in motion that will span decades, touch every member of the family, and ultimately challenge the deceit that has lain at the heart of it. And even as she comes to terms with her elders’ notions of love and happiness, Abby must find a way to make her own.
Meloy is an exquisite writer: each chapter is practically a short story in itself, spare, elegant, perfectly composed. (This should come as no surprise to readers of her critically acclaimed collection of short stories, Half in Love.) A master of understatement, she speaks volumes with just one sentence, and never insults our intelligence with needless explanations; she knows we’re paying attention. In fact, we’re riveted.
One needn’t have read Liars and Saints to enjoy A Family Daughter (I hadn’t); it’s a beautiful book that I couldn’t put down at first and then rationed as I grew close to the end. But there are circles within circles here. The former presents a family desperate to preserve the appearance of happiness, even as each member struggles privately with sorrow. A Family Daughter reimagines the earlier story, as Abby begins to write a novel, trying to understand her complicated family ties. And what at first appears to be a minor side story in the Santerre saga gradually reveals a paradox central to the story at large: when every family member lives in his own fiction, what is the truth? Readers will enjoy pondering this question for some time.
I was blown away by these novels, kids. I was also new to book reviewing and didn’t understand that, like the New York Times, I could just say out loud how they are connected and why you’ll want to read both (it doesn’t matter which order, really):
Maile Meloy’s two novels are joined at the hip in a strange way. Both describe the same intensely complicated California family, the Santerres. Some aspects of the Santerre history turn up in both books.
But the reader’s perception of Liars and Saints, which appeared in 2003, will be greatly altered by the new novel, A Family Daughter. Initially, Liars and Saints simply looked like fiction. Now Ms. Meloy treats it as a semiautobiographical novel that has been written by a young Santerre and has rocked the Santerre world.
Meloy’s name came up in conversation this week. She’s got a brand-new book out, middle-grade fiction; that’s a category I also enjoy—and I love the cover!—so I’ll buy it with my Barnes & Noble Christmas gift card let you know about it later. She also has two collections of short stories, Half in Love, as mentioned above, and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. But you, dear reader, should check out A Family Daughter and Liars and Saints. You won’t regret it.
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