After losing first her mother then her father, Gemma is sent to live with her uncle and his family in Scotland. She’s incorporated warmly into the family until her beloved uncle dies, after that she is tormented mercilessly. She “flies” off to a boarding school, figuring it can be no worse there. (Margot Livesey’s interpretation…
The final book in St. Aubyn’s 5-book examination of a family takes place during matriarch Eleanor’s funeral as 50-something Patrick considers the fact that he’s now an orphan.
Shortly after 12 year-old Florine and her friends almost set fire to a Maine summer cottage, her mother disappears, never to be found. She moves in with her grandmother while her father takes up with old-flame Stella.
More like reading science (and philosophy) than a novel, Mr. g is the big guy who created the universe and all that fills it out of the void.
(Fictionally), Izzy’s Tim commits suicide and she tries– from A-W, not quite making it to Z– to puzzle why before she too “hits the wall” and so doing, kills herself.
Beloved Bee dies and left-bereft Edward is all degrees of available and unavailable to himself, his family, his life. His (step)kids put an ad in the New York Review of Books and he starts tentatively dating, remembering also Laurel leaving him at the altar.
Cal and Lara think they can admit to this attraction between them for two weeks–away, together– then go back to being married to Winnie and Ian (respectively, if not respectfully). Briefly. Well, for one year.
Margot, met in hospital in italics, is (aka) Janelle, pushed down the marble stairs by Lawrence– her how-to-read-faces teacher– though Potash, who she swindles of his life savings, is just as glad to have the deed done without doing.
Longish (16 years) married Evvie and Ben split, at his instigation, her freespiritedness finally having worn him out. She “tries everything” to get him back, so much so that the freespirt becomes institutionalized.
Newly graduated from college and without prospects, Esther moves back home with her parents and has no choice but to accept the job her mother finds for her : babysitting the 4 year-old daughter of a family acquaintance. Or is she babysitting the mother?, who is yellow-wallpaper grieving the unexpected loss of a younger daughter.