The Cephalopod Coffee House - Did You Ever Have a Family?

Welcome to another edition of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse. The idea is simple: on the last Friday of each month, post about the best book you've finished over the past month while visiting other bloggers doing the same.  In this way, we'll all have the opportunity to share our thoughts and our books with other enthusiastic readers. Please join us:

This month I'm going to to tell you about this book:

This story is about a woman, June, who loses everyone she cares about in one fell swoop. Her lover, Luke, her ex, Will, her daughter Lolly, and her daughter's fiance, Will. Poof. Gone. Just like that. Then, not long after the funerals, she ups and leaves, just gets in her car and goes, with pretty much nothing but her wallet. At some point she finds her daughter's bags in the car, and an old journal which reveals itself as June heads west. Meanwhile, there's what she's left behind and the chapters move between the various viewpoints until we find out exactly what happened and how and what's left.

I read this book quite quickly because even though you know how everyone dies right off, there are still questions. And when June just gets in her car and goes, without a plan, with nothing except her wallet I had to find out where she was going, and where she would end up. Fortunately for her, she has money and can afford to take indefinite bereavement leave from life. Meanwhile, Luke's mother, Lydia--who thought she and June were beginning to be friends--is stuck in the same town with all the people who brag about their lives and their kids and think Luke was the cause of the tragedy, because according one snotty minor character, he was 'an ex-con, and black, not that it matters.'

Mostly the book is about June and Lydia, and how each of them deal with their own private hell, but there are other secondary characters who are just as interesting. Yes, it's sad, but sometimes it's good to read the sad books, too. Plus, it's the sort of book you think about after, and wonder where the characters are, hoping things are better for them.