Did You Ever Have a Family

by Bill Clegg

The stunning debut novel from bestselling author Bill Clegg is a magnificently powerful story about a circle of people who find solace in the least likely of places as they cope with a horrific tragedy.

On the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's life is completely devastated when a shocking disaster takes the lives of her daughter, her daughter's fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend, Luke - her entire family, all gone in a moment. And June is the only survivor.

Alone and directionless, June drives across the country, away from her small Connecticut town. In her wake, a community emerges, weaving a beautiful and surprising web of connections through shared heartbreak.

From the couple running a motel on the Pacific Ocean where June eventually settles into a quiet half-life, to the wedding's caterer whose bill has been forgotten, to Luke's mother, the shattered outcast of the town - everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.

Elegant and heartrending, and one of the most accomplished fiction debuts of the year, Did You Ever Have a Family is an absorbing, unforgettable tale that reveals humanity at its best through forgiveness and hope. At its core is a celebration of family - the ones we are born with and the ones we create.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Family, Audiobook, Adult Fiction

293 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Bill Clegg is a literary agent in New York. He is the author of the novel Did You Ever Have A Family and the memoirs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days.

He has written for the New York Times, Lapham’s Quarterly, New York magazine, The Guardian, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Reviews

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up young in a house with your mother watching. And even if it's to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it.



June Reid's daughter Lolly, Lolly's fiance Will, her ex-husband and her now boyfriend Luke are killed in a fire while June has to watch. It's on the eve of her daughter's wedding.
The aftermath with the small town gossip about it possibly being Luke's fault since he is the half-black bastard son, who lost his college scholarship and went to jail for drug sales start buzzing. His mom Lydia is also left behind. She has always steeled herself from the talk in town. How otherwise would she have survived having a black child when at the time she was married to an abusive white man?

This book.
It's told from multiple viewpoints and sometimes that doesn't work for a story. This one is done so very right though. The characters in this book seem human and real. I feel like I could reach into the book and touch them. They are not always like-able. They have so many flaws. Like in the case of Lydia, your heart breaks for this woman but then you learn her story and I wanted to rage at her. I couldn't though because by then she was family.


And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why.

These characters will stay with a reader for a long time. Or at least this reader will carry them.

This story makes the reader realize that no matter how small a life or a decision might be that it touches multiple lives.

Probably, there will always be wrinkled noses, folks who make jokes about the Moonstone dykes or the little boy on the rez who likes to wear his mom's earrings, or me, the half-breed, bastard bitch who lives with her sisters. It stops when we die and goes on for those we leave behind. All we can do is play our parts and keep each other company.

Booksource: Gifted from a friend. Thank you so very much!

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a rare - exceptional- elegant- book.

It's quiet...
It's tragic...

I didn't cry...
I didn't laugh...
I was curious as hell...and intrigued as can be!
The writing is gorgeous
The characters - 'each' will surprise you with tales, memories, scars.

What distinguishes this novel from all others? It's a question that must be asked ...
.... Because even if you're not certain of the answer, you are certain that there is definitely a distinction!!!!

Do not miss reading this novel! It's absolutely one of the best fiction books this year!!!!

Here's a quote I just happened to like:
"When you see someone every day for a while, you settle into a rhythm and you come to count on them even if for nothing more than fifteen minutes each morning they spend sitting at your counter, on one of your stools, talking about the weather and giving you a big smile and thumbs up when they sink their teeth into a poppyseed muffin".

5 STRONG STARS! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

[Delee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a genre a read a lot...but when I find a book as good as this one...it always makes me want to scream from the roof tops- "READ THIS BOOK!!". Whether you want to listen...is completely up to you.



It's the perfect summer morning for a wedding...but June's daughter will not live to see it...nor will anyone else she loves.

June loses everything on this perfect summer's day.



She loses her daughter... her ex husband...her boyfriend...her house...



She loses her life as she knew it- but luckily she flees to a place that just may bring her back...



DID YOU EVER HAVE A FAMILY is a powerful novel- and one of the best things I have read this year.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

The truth will set you free......

This explosively tragic story of devastating loss has a complex narration told from many different perspectives that I found confusing throughout a good portion of the book.

There is a great story here though that comes together nicely in the last quarter, but overall, it was a somewhat frustrating read for me with an overabundance of minor characters who distracted from the main event.

Based on the high ratings and wonderful reviews, I'm feeling pretty much alone here, but really would have felt more connected had the storyline curtailed the players.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up in a house with your mother watching. And even if it’s to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won’t see coming will need you. Like a kid who asks you to let him help clean hotel rooms. Or some ghost who drifts your way, hungry. And good people might even ask you to marry them. And it might be your never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don’t think we get to know why.”
- Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family


Before we begin, let’s have a drink. This is just one of those books where it helps to have one. There’s a lot of sadness here, and everything is better with wine.

Did You Ever Have a Family was published just a few short months after the first great tragedy of my own life. It’s a story I told in my review for A Grief Observed, and I will not get into it again, except to say that I was in that gray phase of mourning in which the world did not seem like the world anymore, or that I was a mere visitor, unable to engage. Living felt like surviving, and so I opened myself to various pathways that might show the way forward. To that end, Bill Clegg’s novel about a house explosion that kills three people and leaves three devastated families called to me. I wanted to read it and I didn't want to read it. So I bought it, and it sat on my shelf, and sat, and sat.

For awhile, it seemed too painful a thing to start. The wound was too raw. It reminded me of Legolas in The Fellowship of the Ring: “The grief was still too near, a matter for tears and not yet for song.”

Time passed, months into years. And still the book sat. Now I didn't want to read it because I thought it’d be fake. Grief as filtered through the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Quirky literary creations wrestling with profound emotions and thesaurus-emptying thoughts. I didn't need that. I know what grief feels like, and it’s not best expressed through literary fiction. It is a feeling like the worst stomach flu of your entire life, and then, as you writhe on the bathroom floor, someone hits you in the crotch with a big-barreled TPX baseball bat, the kind that’s made of the same high-tech alloy that used to sheath doomed space shuttles.

But the book kept calling to me. It was a challenge, almost, or a thing I needed to read for closure. So I read it, finally, and it was absolutely stunning. A powerful little punch to the gut, filled with beautiful passages, poignant insights, and simple truths.

The animating event, as I said above, is a house explosion that kills three people. The victims are Lolly and Will, a young couple set to be married the following day, and Luke, who was the boyfriend of Lolly’s mother. The disaster is spoken about obliquely, never directly. It is always there, but – until the end – only described in flashes of memory, in scraps of detail.

Clegg tells this story through alternating viewpoint chapters. Fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire will be familiar with this structure. Each chapter is headed by a character’s name, and is told from their perspective, sometimes in the first-person, sometimes in the third-person. The viewpoint characters include June, who is Lolly’s aging, wealthy mother; Lydia, the trashier, down-on-her-luck mother of Luke; Silas, a young boy who used to work for Luke’s landscaping company; Dale, Will’s father; and Rebecca, a woman who owns a Washington motel where June ends up residing. A whole bunch of other people get cameo chapters, probably too many, but mainly this is a story about the mothers. June and Lydia are the twin poles between which most of this novel’s energy resides.

In all honesty, this took me a minute to get into. Too many characters are introduced too quickly, and all of them spoke in ellipses, withholding crucial information, speaking in riddles. My fears about this being an up-jumped MFA final project started to feel real. I could almost hear the creative writing professor whispering to Clegg: Don’t let anyone just explain what’s going on – that ruins the suspense! Many of the one-off chapters are unnecessary. For instance, a chapter is given to the wedding caterer, another given to the florist. Do I really care about the quaternary connection these people share with June and Lydia’s tragedy? Do I care that the caterer didn’t get paid? No – absolutely not. It’s almost insulting to compare their experiences to that of June, Lydia, and Dale, who lost their children.

I was rewarded for pushing onward. My confusion dissipated as I read further, learning more about the central figures, and their lives both before and after. Clegg lingers on memories and regrets, and that makes sense, since so much of life is just memories and regrets. There is also real beauty in the way that the dead – Lolly, Will, and Luke – are brought back to life by their parents. These three start as ghosts, and emerge, slowly, as vibrant and complex and flawed humans. Did You Ever Have a Family doesn’t ask you to care that these people died midsentence, with so much unsaid, unfinished; it shows you why you should.

What I loved most about Clegg’s writing is the precision of his details. At 293 pages, this is no epic. Once I got into it, I finished it in less than two days. Yet certain sequences, particular scenes, are so vivid and well-drawn that they blossomed in my imagination. Clegg can create entire lives out of a few polished vignettes that just perfectly capture the essence of things.

This had me in raptures. I connected with it in a way that goes beyond the objective qualities of literature. It hit me at the right time, in the right places. I wanted to recommend it to my book club (a.k.a., the Eastern Nebraska Men’s Biblio and Social Club), but I’ve already forced them to read Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (it’s over a thousand pages; they are angry).

That said, I hesitate to warranty quality or give it an unhesitating recommendation. Grief is very personal, and everyone does it their own way. The same with books about grief. You may very well read this and have the exact opposite reaction than me. You may well discover that what I viewed as insights, you view as the trite aphorisms of a Hallmark card.

When someone you love dies, especially in a sudden or violent fashion, you never get over it. There is never a moment when you wake up and realize: I’m healed! Instead, you’re just moving forward, getting by, and some days feel better, some days feel worse, and you are constantly molding your life around this yawing absence. Clegg recognizes that. He doesn’t give you redemption. But he doesn’t advocate giving up, either.

Towards the end, one of Clegg’s characters imagines Will’s family coming to visit her in the future, as the years start to pile up:

[They] will come back every year. I will make up their rooms and bring them cookies for as long as I can, and when I can’t anymore, they will still come, with children and grandchildren, girlfriends and boyfriends and spouses. They will knock on our door and I will be there, crooked and old, and one day they will knock and I will be gone. And every time they come, they will tell those who don’t know the story of the young man who was a boy here, who went away and came home and went away, who cleaned rooms and carved a canoe and on its prow painted the faces of a family. And the stories will change and the canoe will become a headboard and the family will be mermaids and the rooms will be mansions. And no one will remember us, who we were or what happened here.

But before spiraling off into existential despair, this character reminds us that new people will arrive, to take our place, to have their moment: “They will be in love, or they will be lost, and they will have no words. And the waves will sound to them as they did to us the first time we heard them.”

[Debbie "DJ" · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished, still tears in my eyes. Beautiful story full of meaning.

WOW, just WOW! I cannot believe how much this book completely hooked me right from the start. Just as I was getting to know some of the characters, I was thrown into a horrible tragedy. A wedding scene, an explosion, what went wrong? I felt I was already there with them, that immediate sense of connection, knowing each and every survivors life would be forever altered. I love character studies, and the author, Bill Clegg, makes each and every one feel so deeply real. And, speaking of characters, Clegg brings in many that are tangential. At one point I thought, how will I remember who is who? But, it was exactly at this point the story tightened. The connections become clear the further I read. Ones life is filled with people who may seem insignificant but are connected to us in ways we might never have imagined.

As the story tightens, each character has a story to tell, and don't we all? What really happened to cause the explosion? There are the small town gossips who are sure of their accusations. The secrets that can never be told, and the ones that now must be. That feeling of being completely alone, and where it can lead. Unexpected deaths can break us, or awaken us to what really matters in life. There is so much here, so much to question in my own life.

More than anything, this is a story of choosing life. One of how people can come together. How one must work to climb back out into the world. One that gave me a sense of hope and strength, and as Clegg so aptly states, "All we can do is play our parts and keep each other company."

Highly recommend!

[Glenn Sumi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did You Ever Have A Confusing Story, Generic Narrators And Forced Epiphanies? (2.5 stars rounded up to 3)

After a woman loses her entire family in an accident, she packs up and drives away, without telling anyone where she’s going or who she is. Through the perspectives of a dozen or so narrators, we have to piece together what happened.

It’s potentially affecting material, for sure, but the narrators all sound alike, whether they’re middle-aged women or teenage boys. Clegg, whose addiction memoir The Portrait Of An Addict As A Young Man was gripping and visceral, writes in a plain fashion that’s meant to be earnest and heartfelt. I often found it dull.

There’s disappointingly little range in his characters’ voices (hence it’s hard to tell them apart), and the book is nearly humourless. (I know, I know: how could tragedy be funny? Believe me, a born novelist would find a way to insert humour, if only for contrast.) And I’m not sure why some sections are narrated in the first-person and others are in the third.

Plus, call me a curmudgeon, but I’m getting tired of the interconnected story device, the “we’re-all-part-of-the-same-universe!” “isn’t-life-mysterious!” structure - whether it’s in film (Babel, Crash) or books.

I love genuine fictional epiphanies, but I hate when they’re forced, and what Clegg tries to pull off here feels slightly phony. It’s as if he’s exploiting a tragic subject for cheap emotion and profundity.

Still, there are a few passages of clear, simple prose that are effective, and I found the final pages – dealing with guilt and redemption – quite lovely.

Just a theory, but I wonder if a lot of the acclaim in publishing circles comes from the fact that Clegg is a powerful New York literary agent.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quiet, stunning novel about family and when tragedy happens, how it can stop our life suddenly, put it in reverse, then moving forward in slow motion, change it dramatically.

This is a story of tragic proportions. June Reid’s life is turned on its axis when an accident takes her loved ones. In her despair, she leaves - blinded with loss. In her wake, the small town talks. And feels. And grieves. What emerges are stories and memories, shared hopes and fears of those whose lives were lost and those who fight for a reason to live.

Did you ever have a family is a statement rather than a question. Maybe spoken as an exasperation or perhaps as a prayer. A reminder of being grateful for those who surround us, love us and come in all shapes and sizes. They can bring us much joy, hope, strength and also have the power to bring us to our knees in anguish.

A poignant and powerful read. One that reminded me how grateful I am for my family. Well done, Clegg. Well done. 5★ with much gratitude.

[Jennifer Masterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a beautiful piece of fiction! 5 Big Shiny Stars! I was so engrossed in the putting the pieces together of the characters before and after the tragedy. It was like 6 degrees of separation. Highly recommend, and that's not because the book took place in Connecticut and the author and I are both from Connecticut. It's because the writing, story and character development are so well done.

"Did you Ever Have A Family" begins after the most unspeakable of tragedies occurs to June Reid. An explosion completely takes away her family. June takes off in her Subaru across the country and then the story unravels from there. Short chapters told from many points of view and through these beautifully written chapters you find out the mystery surrounding those that died and those around them.

I especially liked reading about the one character, Lydia, the mother of Luke, June's boyfriend killed in the explosion. The word lottery will take on a whole new meaning after you read about her!

Read it!

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a bit speechless right now. This book was phenomenal, in so many ways. And for a majority of the book I was really enjoying it, but that ending--while not mind-blowing or particularly shocking--gave me chills. It's these kinds of books, ones that you can't put down, that bring you to tears, or resonate deeply within you, that stay with you the most. It makes you grateful for the community around you; friends, family, even the people you don't think affect your life, but at the end of the day are all part of your story. And I have a feeling that this story will last. 5 stars

[I also need to add that I was sent a galley copy of this by the publisher, but all thoughts and opinions in this review are 100% my own. Also I can't wait for this to come out and for everyone to read it on September 8, 2015. Seriously. It's so good. It better make the shortlist]

[Margitte · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT HAPPENED:
They were all preparing for a joyous wedding. The flowers were picked, the cake was baked, the tent stood majestically ready in the back yard of the old stone house. The guest were all in town already; the rehearsal dinner went exceptionally well. The happiness of the bride and groom was soft on the eyes, their love was unbelievably true.

Then ...

Four people died in an explosion. Lolly, Will, Luke and Adam.

On the wedding day a funeral was held instead. The volunteer firefighters was donated the cake; the hundreds of daisies in jelly jars, were used on the graves of the unfortunate four. Their voices forever silenced.

Rest In Peace. It was hoped. A mythical silence descended upon those who came to say goodbye. But for some of them, the four voices were raging from the graves, begging for their story to be told, calling them each by name. Only the truth could set them all free. But the trouble with NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH was that it had so many voices...

Hence, a town, a close circle of friends, family, and the local police had to deal with that very truth.

COMMENTS
Words escape me right now. I cannot explain the impact this book had on me. Five stars for all the right reasons! Most important one is that a deeply touching story can be told in 217 pages!(Tripple the stars for that alone!)

One of the best books this year by far. It was obvious right from the beginning that his book was a jackpot read for 2016. Emotionally it was ripping me apart. Like running my fingers up the scales of a piano, the emotions went from deeply touching, to raving mad, to devastatingly sad. Somewhere in the middle of this tragedy I wanted to hug them all and promise them that all will be okay.

Unexpectedly, unbelievably they were! Okay! They were okay! Free at last.

A striking title for a book exposing the microscopic building blocks of a small town in Connecticut which they all called home.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Bravo to this author. An absolute masterpiece.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the eve of her daughter’s wedding, June Reid loses everyone she holds dear and even some she does not, to a terrible tragedy. Reeling with grief and regret, June flees the town she has lived in for years, seeking refuge in a place where her daughter once knew happiness.

The title Did You Ever Have A Family asks that question and so much more. I don’t think you could read this poignant debut without examining the relationships with those surrounding us. The death of a loved one or of one we have once loved may bring feelings of sorrow, grief, emptiness, and even guilt. We may pull into ourselves not realizing the death, or in this case deaths, though personal, make rippling waves in those who also knew these deceased. Bill Clegg succeeds in showing us the devastation that a tragedy brings to many lives in a small community. Clegg accomplishes this by allowing a spattering of those effected to open their hearts to the reader.

Did You Ever Have A Family is at times heart wrenching, thought provoking, and presents an original eye to what lies in our hearts. Clegg’s lyrical writing touched me deeply.

[JanB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow....I love a book that touches me and makes me think. After a devastating explosion that kills 4 people, two of them on the eve of their wedding, we follow multiple characters who are affected or somehow connected to the victims. I was a little confused at first by the many characters, but, with patience, it all comes together. Every one of us alive has a story to tell, and in this book we get a glimpse inside the private lives and thoughts of the characters: their losses, secrets, regrets, and the private burdens they bear.

There's also a mystery to solve, although it isn't a major part of the narrative, When I learned how the explosion occurred, it packed an emotional punch. How quickly people judge or assign blame when they don’t know the whole story…it makes you think.

Despite the subject matter, the beautiful writing doesn’t resort to cheap sentimentality in order to evoke a reaction from the reader. I wasn’t as moved emotionally by the tragedy as much as I was moved by the human condition. Powerful stuff.

This will be on my all-time 'favorites list' and one that I would re-read. The last couple of pages are poignant and hauntingly beautiful (well, truthfully, that's true of the entire book). A favorite quote:
“Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part…. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won't see coming will need you….And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why.”

This book touched on all my emotional hot buttons - in a good way!

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I treasure this book. It has everything I want in something I choose to read. I generally am driven by the plot of a book, closely followed by the character development. Oddly, there is no plot in this book as the conflict at the center of the story took place before the book begins. Yet I love it. Quickly falling to character development, it's fantastic. Each chapter switches from character to character, some of which you understand the connection to the plot, some of which you do not. By the middle of the book, you know what actually happened to kick off the tragedy, but relating the story each character tells is where you find the soul of the plot.

I highly recommend you read this book over a few days, not all at once. Take time to think about the characters, how they relate to folks in your own life, and figure out what the meaning ultimately is to you. I wish we all had a Lydia Morey in our life. She can teach us a lot.

[Kelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a standout to me. I could have and desperately wanted to flip back to page one and read it all over again when I finished it. I am certain I would love it even more if I were to do this and I haven't yet returned it to the library, so there is an excellent chance that I will. That would be a first for me. This quiet study of grief and human connection rang honest and authentic. Had I not known better, I would have made the assumption that the author was female because of the skill and believability with which women's emotions were written.

I started out listening to this but found it both confusing and poorly read, so I got the hardcover instead. I do not recommend the audio but I do recommend this beautiful book. Many stories built around unimaginable tragedy work to instill the reader with a sense of hope. Perhaps this is done to offset the heavy theme or give a feeling of lifting the reader out of depression. This one was an effortless unveiling of each person's individual truth in the aftermath of tragedy. The ending left me feeling not so much hopeful as accepting and at peace. Bad things happen and sometimes all we can do is live our own truth and hold each other up.
5 star favorite.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 3.5, much anguish over whether to go with 3 or 4 stars. 4 stars won, but barely. Great plot and characters--it was the novel's structure that I had trouble with. An ex-editor can be a real pain in the ass.

[Read this paragraph only if punctuation can ruin your day.] For example, there’s the title. Only a crazy grammar Nazi would be annoyed that the book title didn’t have correct punctuation, but there you have it. I just want to know where the damn question mark is. (I have to admit that often I’m totally fickle and lax about punctuation. And some book titles are funny and they successfully throw punctuation caution to the wind. But this title is damn serious, you can just tell, and a serious title means serious punctuation, so where the hell is the question mark?) At first I thought it might be the publisher or Goodreads who listed the book title incorrectly, but no, the book cover is plainly missing the question mark. A horrifying thought is that Clegg intended and expected a question mark, had never even considered that the question mark would be omitted, but the printer blew it. Once the book was in print, the ebook version had to follow suit. (I tell myself this so as not to think that an author would ever promote or approve such a heinous omission.) The sad truth is, these days no one cares about punctuation marks. If I ever wrote a book with a question as a book title and the publisher forgot the question mark, I’d be fucked up for a long while, maybe forever. Okay, deep breaths. Besides, even without the question mark, I think it’s a lame title—it’s a mouthful, plus it has zero impact on me.

The real question, of course, is what I thought about the book, not about a damn AWOL question mark. The plot was a good one, a very good one. Actually, it was a mystery, which for me adds even a few more points to it. I spent the entire book super curious about how the event really happened, and I wasn’t disappointed when in the end, all was exposed.

Here’s the plot: A house explodes, killing all four people within it. Two mothers, from different sides of the track, struggle to cope with the death of their grown kids inside that house. (One of the kids happens to be the lover of the other mother, so emotionally it’s pretty complicated.) Each chapter is told from a different point of view—the two mothers, of course, plus some minor characters.

The book’s biggest strength is the well-drawn characters—they really got to me. What’s the book about? The book is about secrets, about lost connections with the children you love, about being truly alone in the world. It’s about gossip, prejudice, false assumptions, and false charges—and a look at the devastation that they all cause. It’s about the power of love and the power of death. And it’s all about grief: the guilt, the things you wished you had said, the missed connections, the what-ifs, the isolation, the catatonia. How death can be so sudden and shock you to the core, totally blowing your mind. So so much rich stuff here.

But as I said, there were structural problems that sent me downgrading my 4.5 stars to 3.5. Time to get out my chalk and start writing on the board.

Complaint Board

-Too many characters at first; many are tangential. Hard to follow.

-One of the people who died was an ex-husband. The writer should have either included him in the story more, or maybe excluded him from the fire?

-Some of the chapters are told in first person. In my book it’s okay to mix narration types, but in the first-person narrations here, the characters’ voices are too similar. (I have the same problem with Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, and it drives me crazy.) I think it’s a common problem with writers, an inability to move away from their own voice and create other unique personalities. A great writer is one who can create totally different voices, which makes the story and the characters real.

-The story moves back and forth in time, which I wouldn’t mind except it happens within a chapter and gets totally confusing (and annoying). The book starts with events happening right after the fire, and it set me up to think the time frame would be the same, or it would be clear when there was a flashback. Instead, the time periods seem to be convoluted.

-At the end, one of the main characters is heading to visit a man and a woman, on opposite coasts. She changes her mind and decides to only go see the woman. Either add a scene where she visits the guy too, or leave him out of the equation for that final journey.

-Sort of a logistics problem: One of the people who died in the fire was outside the house before it happened. The writer never had him reenter the house. We have to just conclude that he wandered back in, but I wanted to be told he did.

Pshew. See what I mean? Several complaints on my board there. Still, so much wonderful stuff: A good mystery, excellent character study, a solid study of grief. The technique of telling the story from various perspectives mostly worked—it was a cool way to talk about the tragedy and let us see it from many different eyes, and it was effective in making the characters juicily complex.

3.5, rounded up to 4. I’m fondly remembering this book—more evidence that the rounding up is warranted.

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

Ignore the three-point-eight-something Goodreads rating. Did You Ever Have A Family has an unheard of 4.36 from my friends and those people have some serious diversity when it comes to what they like and don’t like. It’s that rating that had me finally check this book out – but it’s also that rating that had me terrified to do so.

If you’re like me and Christmas is a major fake-it-‘til-you-make-it type of holiday, a book like this is the perfect choice. Rather than attempting to justify my melancholy I could blame it on a book and have an excuse to mope around the house Big Ang style . . . .



Win!

What a book this was. Nominated for both the Man Booker Prize and National Book Award Did You Ever Have A Family was most definitely literary fiction. On the surface this was the story of loss when tragedy strikes a family the night before there is to be a wedding. That alone was enough to have me test my head in the oven skills . . . .



But that storyline was only the beginning. This book wasn’t about the whodunit (you will probably know immediately) – it was about peeling layer after layer of this onion until everything you’d ever want to know (or not want to know) about the affected parties was revealed and it left me sad and happy and angry and forgiving and barking things at my husband like . . . .



Told by various narrators over various points in time, Did You Ever Have A Family was woven together nearly seamlessly. There were a few moments when I had to regroup and figure out if I was reading a Lydia or June chapter, but I blame it on trying to fit my head in the gasbox next to the turkey rather than a problem with the writing itself.

I don’t recommend a lot of books, but I’m recommending this one. Don’t want to take my word for it? I don’t blame you. Go read Shelby or Delee or DJ or Elyse or Jennifer or Diane or Larry or Vanessa or Zoeytron’s reviews instead.

Book received as a gift from the Wickedest Witch I’m lucky enough to call a friend.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book opens with a terrible tragedy and those affected will use different measures to ameliorate their deep grief. The book is narrated by those involved, many have regrets, some cannot forgive themselves and a young boy has a terrible secret. Like a jigsaw puzzle, with many pieces this book is hard to judge until the whole picture is assembled and the many meanings are revealed. Putting this whole book together in my mind, I realized how brilliantly constructed it was, how tightly plotted and so very well written and how rich in meaning.

How our lives touch each others, how one thing leads to another, how a small offering by a stranger can be remembered and how many different ways people have of finding solace. Families that are ours or the ones we put together, all is celebrated here.

ARC from Netgalley.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book kept me reading and interested, but I expected it to be so much more being that it won awards. Far too many characters to keep track of, I had to keep going back and refreshing my memory with who was who... a bit confusing..

[Zoeytron · Rating 4 out of 5]

'To be given a glimpse now was a bitter miracle, a ghostly caress that left more regret than solace.'

One minute you have a family, and the next you do not. It's too awful to even contemplate. In the aftermath, you are left to make some sort of peace with mistakes made, things taken for granted, words left unsaid. So much rides on seemingly unimportant decisions made each day, yet the result of just one of them can impact the rest of your life.

As always, human nature's fascination with placing blame borders on obsession. Wasting time wishing that things are different from what they are, and how much things change when looked at with older eyes.

Thought provoking, the story is weighing heavily on me, even finished. Glad I read it, but very ready to go on to something else.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having finished this I now think the eroteme-free title is to be asked in the same way that you would ask someone “Did you ever have pneumonia?” Because Bill Clegg makes it abundantly clear – this family thing can be rough. Oo-ee. The other thing I learned is that after great tragedy everyone involved is thinner. That’s something Weightwatchers never tell you.

This novel is mournful, miserable and mawkish. The lives of its intwined cast of small-town characters are intricate, inspissate and integumentary – so far, so good – but the novel is stuck in a no-man’s land between seriousness, sensationalism and sentimentality.
Well, I thought I might do the whole review like that but it would be contrived, constipated and yes, creepy.

The story has so many soapy elements it must have been sponsored by Persil.

Why should she let her past and her pride stop her from giving him what he wants?

Why indeed.

She understood bad choices made from fear, acted on out of a misguided sense of survival. She would never call the police to tell them what he told her.

Now we understand why x did y to z but never mentioned it to e, f and g. And why the guy didn’t realise that the son he’d never met was about to… etc etc. I think we have been here before.

What you get is short pieces by or about each character in turn, which edge the story along (slowwwly). Some are third person narratives and some are straight-to-camera interviews, sort of, but of course, this being a novel by a guy who knows what fine writing is, they drift towards elegant phrase-making. You can hear Bill thinking “could she have said that? Would he have had this insight? Hmmm hmmm”. This is a novel writing problem that isn’t unique to Bill Clegg but it does raise its head a lot here. Another difficult one is portraying a person doing stupid things but keeping the reader’s sympathy. Lydia gets involved in a lottery telephone con and the levels of idiocy are off the chart. But then she’s the other main emotional fulcrum of the whole story.

Bill’s idea of fine writing goes like this

She had never been so struck by the physical appearance of a man before. Women, on rare occasion. Some collision of hair and skin and angle of light amid an origami of fabric and jewelry. But in faded green T-shirt and worn Levi’s, this man who had come to clear branches away presented a riddle of bone and skin and eyes that left June speechless.

I too was speechless after that. How come to be sexy your T-shirt always but always has to be faded and your Levi's always but always have to be worn?

Well, it seems that I’ve kind of drifted into doing a hatchet job here, which actually wasn’t my intention. Horribly flawed as it may be, this novel’s heart is in the right place whereas I think mine has moved to the Kamchatka Peninsula, wherever that is.

Did you Ever have a Family is Bruce Springsteen mashed with Desperate Housewives where I was hoping for Tom Waits mashed with Modern Family.



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not



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[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well. That was unexpectedly moving.

This book just got better and better. I didn't like the format of the alternating narrators at first, with some in first person and some in second person, but once the book got rolling I forgot about it and got in the rhythm of the narrative.

The story starts with an unfathomable family tragedy and then gently pulls apart the tangled backstories of the main characters and others more peripheral to the story - but even the bit players are important here. I think that is the author's point - we all play roles in each others' lives, maybe more than we know.

Very well done. Loved the last chapter, especially this:

"Rough as life can be, I know in my bones that we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up young in a house with your mother watching. And even if it's to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won't see coming will need you. Like a kid who asks you to let him help clean motel rooms. Or some ghost who drifts your way, hungry. And good people might even ask you to marry them. And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why."

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful novel. On the eve of a wedding, a home in a lovely Connecticut town burns down. Inside are the bride and groom, the bride's father and her mother's boyfriend, and they are all killed. The mother of the bride survives. Clegg uses shifting narrators and viewpoints to tell this story of a number of individuals, related, interrelated, unknown to one another and of two towns, the one in Connecticut and one on the coast of Washington, the city of Moclips. Most of the book focuses on the survivors, though history is filled in for, and questions answered about, many characters. I don't get the description of the book as a mystery. There are questions about the fire and they are answered in the course of time but it's clear who among the survivors is responsible; it's just a question of degree. That does not detract from that character's story; it enriches it.

With firm hold of the material Clegg changes viewpoints and points in time with skill and clarity. I love a story told this way, when it's well done. "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water" by Michael Dorris and "The Sweet Hereafter" by Russell Banks come to mind -- they have some similarities, the most important being the writers' control of multiple narrators and the tenderness of the prose, which is spare, sentimental, and wise. Clegg loves all of his characters, and although he sets the stage with a huge tragedy he never resorts to misery porn. On the contrary; some of the relationships are so delicately balanced the characters have a kind of butterfly effect on one another. "Did You Ever Have a Family" has grace and heft. This is a novel to race through, then think back on, savor and admire.

[L A i N E Y (will be back) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But like most things, what seemed important and wrong on one day could barely be remembered the next. It stops when we die and goes on for those we leave behind. All we can do is play our parts and keep each other company”

Ponderous and very quietly melancholic.

How can a book with so huge a loss baked into the premise, a book about grief and tragedy ends up being one of the most un-overwrought novels imaginable will forever eludes me. But Did You Ever Have a Family beautifully managed to be just precisely that.

If books could be compared to people, this one would look very much like a very restrained, very composed and even subdued woman when she was anything but.

Bill Clegg is another male author who has the ability to write female characters so darn believable. They are a rare breed, aren’t they? I’m tempted to create a shelf just for these wonderful guys with the name like “men wrote women well” or something! I actually preferred his female characters than male ones here.

I distinctly didn’t like the choice of opening the novel with Silas’ pov although I understand the logic of it, having finished the book now. I think it somewhat detracts from the whole massive impact of the book overall. I, myself, almost didn’t continue since I didn’t find Silas’ voice grab me. And I got to wonder how many in the similar situation would decided to drop the book altogether... it would have been a real shame.

[Cheryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok, I really wanted to like this book for the fact that so many other readers loved this book. Yet I have tried and tried to give this book a fighting chance but I can't get into it. No matter what I do. At first I thought it was because of the environment that I was reading this book in so I changed locations. Then I thought it was because of my mood, so I tried to read this book when I could focus more time to this book. Yet I have come to realize it is not me but the book itself.

Yes the tragic event that displaced June is horrible. I would not wish it on anyone. Yet, I could not feel sympathy for June or any of the other characters in this book. This is the problem. This is the type of book that is supposed to evoke emotions from me the reader. So when this does not happen I can't find a reason to continue on with the book.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this story. A couple times I was tearful, a few times I was irritated but I really wanted to find out how it all was going to come together. This story has many narrators, some of which only had a chapter or two so it was a bit confusing at times. This book is an example of how life can change in an instant (as the horrible news around this world is proving). We should be sure to let people know we appreciate them and love them.

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bill Clegg's novel, Did You Ever Have a Family , is a lot like life itself—at times it's poignant and emotional, at other times it's vague and somewhat frustrating, and at still other times you find yourself shaking your head at the wonder of it all.

"I've learned that people will believe what they believe no matter what you say or do."

The night before June Reid's daughter is to get married, an unexpected tragedy takes the lives of her daughter and her fiancé, as well as June's ex-husband and her current boyfriend, Luke. Utterly unsure how to process a loss of this magnitude, she is emotionally overwhelmed, wracked with anger, sadness, and guilt. The only solution she sees to coping with those around her who feel the need to pass judgment on the situation and assign blame, even if they don't know the truth, is to run, as far away and as fast as she can.

As June follows a path across the country that her daughter once took, from Connecticut across the country, to an oceanside motel in tiny Moclips, Washington. Along the way she reflects on her rocky relationship with her daughter, and finally finding love again, with a much younger man, and the issues that arose from both relationships. Hers is a stoic grief, but one that threatens to consume her, little by little.

While June mourns, we get other glimpses of what led up to the tragedy, the people involved, and the aftermath. Portions of the story are narrated by Lydia, the town outcast and Luke's mother, who has secrets and regrets of her own; Silas, the teenage stoner who knows more about the tragedy than he has told anyone; the two women who own the motel where June settles in to mourn; and others with peripheral involvement in one way or another. Some of what is told is more gossip than anything, a slightly bitter version of Liane Moriarty's Greek chorus in Big Little Lies , but much of what is told is like participating in an archaeological dig, where an artifact (or the truth) is uncovered, little by little.

This is a book of tragedy and hope, of optimism and bitterness, and one of the strength of relationships of all kinds. Things start out vaguely murky, and it takes a little while to make sense of all of the voices and where the story really is. But once the plot starts to pick up steam, and connections and truths are revealed, at times you feel this story deep in your gut. Just like real life, it is amazing how life hinges on split-second decisions we make, and how the things we don't say sometimes can be more destructive than the things we do.

I had never read anything Clegg had written before, but there is a lyricism to his storytelling as well as a tremendous amount of emotion evoked by his words. This is a sad book, and it's not entirely satisfying, but I can't get it out of my mind.

See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Some people... magically surface in these horrible moments, knowing exactly what to do, which spaces to fill."

I had this book on my radar, even had read the Amazon preview after it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award last year. I was skeptical because Bill Clegg is a well-loved literary agent, and it felt a little nepotistic that his first novel should end up on such major award lists. So I didn't pursue reading it at the time.

I was glad to get the chance to give it another shot when it arrived in my mailbox as part of my postal bookswap. I love how the story is told through periphery characters, because June would have been a completely unreliable narrator due to her grief (her entire family is killed at the beginning of the book in a house fire.)

Another cool element to my reading of this book was that I read it at the same time as a reading friend on the other side of the world. She gave it a bad review, calling the layers of grief unrealistic and manipulative. I dunno, as someone who has had more than her fair share of grief lately, it resonated with me in a way it probably wouldn't have four years ago. It is a gift to not feel that resonance.

"We've learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it."

But both the reading friend and I had to try our hand at making that wedding cake that gets a few mentions. You can see both of our versions over on JennyBakes!.

"Some people... magically surface in these horrible moments, knowing exactly what to do, which spaces to fill."

By the way, another friend and I did a Reading Envy Podcast episode on grief, earlier in the year before I had read this. Had I read this book before that episode, I would have definitely included it. Now it feels like an omission, having had this reading experience.

[Brandice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have decided to change my rating of Did You Ever Have a Family to 4-stars. It’s been a few years since I read this book but find myself thinking about it — Not frequently, but enough to recognize it’s a powerful story. It was good, though a bit different than I initially expected and for awhile, it was a little difficult for me to keep track of who was who. I liked how the characters were woven together and especially, the last chapter, bringing conclusion to the story.

Did You Ever Have a Family is a testament to the power of family. It’s a reminder of how lucky we are to have them while we do, and to not take this for granted.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

***3.5 Stars*** I really enjoy novels with interconnected stories and big themes, such as grief, guilt and healing...as in this case. I realize that the multiple narratives were a way to convey the impact of a terrible tragedy on the families involved and even on their small community of friends. Still, some of the characters in this novel were so incidental that their stories often confused me. For this reason, I gave this well-written book 3.5 stars.