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A review by brucemri
Returning to Shore by Corinne Demas
4.0
I saw this book recommended as an example of young-adult fiction that also works for adults, and it is. This is a small but lovely, quiet story. The main character's a 16-year-old girl sent off for time with her father, whom she hasn't seen since she was three and has no memory of, while her mother's off on her third honeymoon. Clare peels back the layers of mystery around her father's life with her mother and his disengagement, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. It would have been easy to set up some standard pokes at Clare's mother's very much upper-class life against her father's much poorer life studying sea turtles in Cape Cod Bay, but the father's compassion undermines a lot of snap judgments.
There's a secret at the heart of it all which unfolds gently, and with a bunch of the messiness that so often characterizes real life. Knowing makes some things easier, others harder, and Demas does a great job with Clare's profoundly conflicted emotions, at her father, and at the surrounding world while she's trying to make sense of things.
Since it's tagged as LGBT fiction, the broad strokes of her father's secret will come as no surprise, but this is nonetheless a book very rich in discoveries. I'm glad I read it, and will be looking for more from Demas.
There's a secret at the heart of it all which unfolds gently, and with a bunch of the messiness that so often characterizes real life. Knowing makes some things easier, others harder, and Demas does a great job with Clare's profoundly conflicted emotions, at her father, and at the surrounding world while she's trying to make sense of things.
Since it's tagged as LGBT fiction, the broad strokes of her father's secret will come as no surprise, but this is nonetheless a book very rich in discoveries. I'm glad I read it, and will be looking for more from Demas.