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A review by dovesfalling
The Second Home by Christina Clancy
5.0
It's very difficult to believe that this is Christina Clancy's first book. It reads like it comes from a confident and seasoned author. While there are (of course) stumbles along the way, for the most part, I just loved The Second Home. I found it... beguiling. Both in its premise and its acute sense of place.
With one eye firmly on the past, The Second Home introduces us to the Gordons - Ed and Connie, the loving parents, Ann the elder sister, free-spirited Poppy, and their adopted brother Michael. While they live in Milwaukee, their hearts reside in their much-loved summer home on the Cape - and its there that the Gordons' lives change forever. During one summer, Ann develops a secret that threatens to tear the family asunder, and when the repercussions finally land, they are devastating - for both the siblings and their parents.
Fifteen years later, Connie and Ed have died, and it's up to Ann and Poppy to sort out what will happen to their beloved home on the Cape. When Michael makes an unexpected return - everything that the sisters believed to be true is up-ended, and their memories are opened up to reveal new truths, like prisms of light.
A caveat that much of the book rides on miscommunication, which is somewhat annoying - there's this sense of just TALK to each other). The ending is also very rushed, and I wanted much more time to savour the new relationships forming. In the beginning, I felt Poppy might be a waste of a POV - but over time, she became one of my favourites. Always searching for her place in the circle, always looking for inclusion. Never settling, never still, always riding that wave. She's a fascinating bundle of insecurities and bursting with love that she's never able to express.
Many reviewers have written about their dislike of Ann. While I agree she's not all that likable as an adult, I think what happened to her justifies that prickliness and distrust. At her most sensitive and at that cusp-age of just sixteen, she had everything ripped apart and scattered to the winds. It's no wonder that she struggles to reconnect with Michael, or Poppy for that matter. Everyone she loved went away, in the end.
I felt a real sense of grief over the deaths of Ed and Connie, and most of all, for Michael. It's Michael who is the true tragic figure in this story - on the brink of a family, and only to have it torn out from under his feet. I loved what Clancy did with his character, but I so wish he could have had that final moment with his parents, and again, I wanted so much more from his reunion with Ann. That ending is just too quick, like the blink of an eye.
(Perhaps that is a testament to the power of the book... I just didn't want to leave it)
Oh, but the journey toward that ending is gorgeous. The writing is slyly funny in parts and beautifully volatile and vulnerable in others. The descriptions of the Cape and Wellfleet and Milwaukee and even all of the exotic locales that Poppy visits - you could just sink into them, like a languid drowning, like the pond that Ann slipped into and never really returned from ... this story is like that, you submerge yourself only to be changed, the water like silk scarves, pulling you under and away.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
With one eye firmly on the past, The Second Home introduces us to the Gordons - Ed and Connie, the loving parents, Ann the elder sister, free-spirited Poppy, and their adopted brother Michael. While they live in Milwaukee, their hearts reside in their much-loved summer home on the Cape - and its there that the Gordons' lives change forever. During one summer, Ann develops a secret that threatens to tear the family asunder, and when the repercussions finally land, they are devastating - for both the siblings and their parents.
Fifteen years later, Connie and Ed have died, and it's up to Ann and Poppy to sort out what will happen to their beloved home on the Cape. When Michael makes an unexpected return - everything that the sisters believed to be true is up-ended, and their memories are opened up to reveal new truths, like prisms of light.
A caveat that much of the book rides on miscommunication, which is somewhat annoying - there's this sense of just TALK to each other). The ending is also very rushed, and I wanted much more time to savour the new relationships forming. In the beginning, I felt Poppy might be a waste of a POV - but over time, she became one of my favourites. Always searching for her place in the circle, always looking for inclusion. Never settling, never still, always riding that wave. She's a fascinating bundle of insecurities and bursting with love that she's never able to express.
Many reviewers have written about their dislike of Ann. While I agree she's not all that likable as an adult, I think what happened to her justifies that prickliness and distrust. At her most sensitive and at that cusp-age of just sixteen, she had everything ripped apart and scattered to the winds. It's no wonder that she struggles to reconnect with Michael, or Poppy for that matter. Everyone she loved went away, in the end.
I felt a real sense of grief over the deaths of Ed and Connie, and most of all, for Michael. It's Michael who is the true tragic figure in this story - on the brink of a family, and only to have it torn out from under his feet. I loved what Clancy did with his character, but I so wish he could have had that final moment with his parents, and again, I wanted so much more from his reunion with Ann. That ending is just too quick, like the blink of an eye.
(Perhaps that is a testament to the power of the book... I just didn't want to leave it)
Oh, but the journey toward that ending is gorgeous. The writing is slyly funny in parts and beautifully volatile and vulnerable in others. The descriptions of the Cape and Wellfleet and Milwaukee and even all of the exotic locales that Poppy visits - you could just sink into them, like a languid drowning, like the pond that Ann slipped into and never really returned from ... this story is like that, you submerge yourself only to be changed, the water like silk scarves, pulling you under and away.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.