Book Reviews & Giveaways – April & Oliver

Author: Tess Callahan

This poignant novel of losses startles with lovely prose and hard truths. April and Oliver are childhood friends, inseparable, soul mates. Oliver moves away to California and April stays in New York. When April’s beloved 18 year old brother, Buddy, dies in the car she has loaned him, Oliver moves back from California where he has found law school and a fiance. A promising concert pianist in his youth, Oliver remains the good son, pursuing what he thinks his family desires – the good, secure life. In exchange, his ability to compose and play his beloved piano is gone. In direct contrast, but on the same collision course, April seeks out men who abuse her, ending up with T.J., an alleged murderer and stalker. As these two protagonists dance to a sibilant drama, they ebb and tide around each other like ocean and shore. There are more complications. Oliver finds out just before his wedding to Bernadette, his perfect fiance, lovely and refined, that his adored mother had an affair with Quincy, April’s father’s partner in the bar business. Quincy is the man who sexually abused April from 14 to 17 when she worked in her father’s bar.

The family strains with the enormity of April’s choices and Oliver’s struggle to be the good son, in contrast to his brother Al, who is rowdy and drinks too much. Recognizing the strange bond between April and Oliver Bernadette demands that Oliver not speak to April PERIOD. Just before the wedding ceremony, Oliver confronts April, enraged that she has not told him of his mother’s affair. As the bridal party moves down the aisle, with the guests all smiling, April’s beloved grandmother, Nana, has a massive heart attack.

I will go no further as the novel ends circularly, coming back at the end to a transcendence that illuminates both the characters and the prose.

Tess Callahan is an amazing new author, and I will tell you that this is not an easy read. Like April and Oliver themselves, Ms. Callahan explores difficult topics in prose that en captures the reader, and presses through complex family relations to a pounding end. Almost ethereal, the novel reflects the non-linear outposts of loss and love and then returns to find itself as she brings her characters home.

This is not only a writer’s novel – I absolutely loved the depth and profundity of her prose style – but also a reader’s novel, as one falls, reluctantly sometimes, but deeply in love with her compassion for and her integrity toward her characters. A challenge that I highly recommend, “April & Oliver: A Novel” affected me deeply . Asher debut novel, I can’t wait for the next one!

Not a light read as the subject matter is sometimes difficult, but splendid if you press your way through, Callahan reminds me of Sue Miller, Alice Hoffman, Jane Smiley and Marguerite Duras, yet her voice is solidly her own.

Rating is based on a 5 star scale

Plot: 5

Characters: 5
Presentation: 5
Overall: Ms. Callahan is a writer’s writer.

“April & Oliver: a novel” can be purchased at Amazon.com for $16.31.

Review by Broad “A” – Ava

Giveaway

5 (five) winners will each receive a copy of courtesy of April & Oliver: A Novel courtesy of Hachette Book Group and The Review Broads

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