What occurs when desires don’t pan out? That’s the query that Malcolm and Jess Gephardt each face after years of marriage in Mary Beth Keane’s engrossing fourth novel.
Like her bestselling 2019 novel, Ask Again, Yes, The Half Moon is ready within the fictional city of Gillam, New York, modeled after Keane’s hometown of Pearl River. While the occasions of Ask Again, Yes spans 40 years, The Half Moon focuses on every week or so within the Gephardts’ lives, exploring how occasions of the previous have led to their discontent and an final reckoning.
Malcolm’s lifelong dream has been to personal the Half Moon, the bar the place he’s labored for years. He lastly does, though menacing collectors are knocking at his door, and he doesn’t have the money to remodel it the way in which he’d like—years of futile fertility remedies have exhausted the couple’s financial savings. Early within the e book, he muses that “middle age was looming and he could already see the headline that would arrive with it: that a person could be extraordinarily good at something and still fail at it.” And he’s good—a gregarious man who’s bought the allure to handle any scenario.
Jess is a lawyer, though her coronary heart isn’t actually in her profession—or something, for that matter. After transferring out and away from Malcolm, she is attempting to determine subsequent steps. In flashbacks, we study that she has been more and more interested in Neil, a divorced lawyer who’s the first caregiver of his three younger kids and has lately moved to Gillam. In a battle that appears fairly actual, Jess desperately tries to stave off these stirrings, questioning if it’s “possible to dance at the edge of a precipice and keep dancing for the rest of your life.”
Then a blizzard descends on Gillam, paralyzing the lives of its residents and emphasizing the emotions of entrapment felt by not solely Malcolm and Jess but additionally a number of different splendidly portrayed characters who work in and frequent the bar. As the story unfolds, the various fascinating behind-the-scenes particulars about operating a bar vary from heartbreaking to humorous. It’s a masterful setup, specified by a cautious, intriguing method. The disappearance of one of the bar’s patrons in the course of the storm, lends a way of urgency to the plot and provides a layer of impending doom that performs out in each emotional and bodily phrases.
Keane’s down-to-earth characters in Gillam are reminiscent of Anne Tyler’s splendidly genuine Baltimore personalities. They’ll tug your heartstrings as they attempt to make their method via this world with steps ahead, again and sideways.
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