My favorite book of 2013 is about three grown-up siblings and their families, all of whom have one important thing in common: they aren’t where they wanted to be. They don’t feel at home in the choices that they’ve made. What’s remarkable about this novel is the way we see the characters — it’s almost like we get to look through a prism and view them from multiple perspectives. Here’s one example: “She felt she had been seeing only the front of Susan and had missed entirely the large white light of motherly disapproval that shone behind her.” (p. 104)
Elizabeth Strout, The Burgess Boys (New York: Random House, 2013), 12.