Alison EspachCritiques

Life is looking bleak for Phoebe Stone. Her mother died when she was born, she was raised by her depressed father, never progressed further than being an adjunct instructor, IVF has failed, her husband left her for one of his associates, and now her beloved cat has died. She decides to put on an elegant emerald dress that she bought but has never worn, book a room at a high end resort in Newport that she had wanted to go to with her husband, and take her life. At check in, she learns that the entire resort, except for her room, has been taken over by Lila for her million dollar destination wedding.

Initially she is mistaken for one of “the wedding people”. When Lila learns Phoebe’s intentions which will ruin the wedding, she befriends the lonely woman. And thus the reader is off to a rollicking six day visit with “The Wedding People.”

It took a while for me to get into this book, but once I did I found it a witty, satisfying contemporary read. I loved the colorfully, well developed characters and the astute, sometimes painful, often cleverly funny observations of life, family and relationships. Readers will find themselves cheering on Phoebe as she learns a lot about herself and comes into her own.

Incidentally, Tri Star has already acquired the rights to this novel.

Thanks to #netgalley and @henryholtbooks for the DRC.

This coming-of-age novel also encompasses themes such as the meaning of love, the effects of grief and loss, survivors' guilt, and developing a deeper understanding of our parents and the aging process. Katy dies at an early age, but the effects of her death go on for decades.
Some interesting and memorable quotes:
"I was a survivor...I had proof that we were all, in the end, exactly the same, and that anyone who pretends differently is lying.. and thinking of this- made me feel like I could say or do anything." (p.106)
"...now that you were dead, we could say anything we wanted. No swear word was ever going to be as terrible as 'dead'"(p. 111)
"That's what happens when parents die... All of a sudden, you want an answer to every question you never thought to ask them." (p. 321)

*sweet, emotional, feel-good book
*well-written and easy to read
*strong character development
*highly recommend

Feels to me like a well done MOR family drama/romance, the sort that you might expect to feature a cover blurb from People magazine. (Seinfeld)Not that there’s anything wrong with that.(/Seinfeld) Occasionally it threatened to get INTERESTING but would then snap right back into adult contemporary. Highly readable but not really a match for me.

Though the writing was witty and the plot kept me interested, I was ultimately a little disappointed at the end of this. How is Emily different at the end of this book? What's going to happen to her? It's kind of unsatisfying for a book to follow a character from age 14 to 30 and then just stop when the character's on the verge of maybe figuring some stuff out. Hmph.

I did like the twist with Mr. Basketball at the end. It almost made me wish the book were from his perspective, but I guess that would just make it a kind of modern day [b:Lolita|7604|Lolita|Vladimir Nabokov|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327871906s/7604.jpg|1268631], right? The part where he said, "I didn't want a child or a wife and I got what I wanted," was like a gut punch.

The things I'll take away from this book:

1. It horrifies me how fast some kids grow up. Stay young and innocent as long as you can, friends. Do not enter into some tragic romance when you're just a kid.

2. Prague sounds really cool.

3. Don't leave a plastic spoon by the stove.

4. The "What can you do with a _____?" game Emily and her dad played.

Odd Premise Exquisitely Realised

I'm seriously blown away by this short story that packs so much of a person and emotion into such a small, strange package! The concept is amusing, an interview from a car company representative with a dead person, but between the author and the lead performer a wonderful and raw story is elevated into a jaw-dropping audio play that truly hits the mark.

Genuinely one of the best of the many things I've listened to in the Audible Included library.

Bravo!

Espach is a Wizard of Intimate Pain & Emotion!

I'm gutted to have finished this trilogy of short stories because I have lobed them and the phenomenal performances so very much. Espach truly is a maestro of heartbreak and reflection with the posthumous product interview being such a glorious amusing and disarming framing device.

All three stories have truly been perfection in short stories/ audio dramas and performances. I'm in awe.

Excruciatingly Human (Complimentary)

This is the second story of this series I've read and I am so unbelievably in love with the concept, depth, writing style, and performances! The raw natural emotion this bizarre framing device creates for these little audio dramas is truly phenomenal.

This is an author I will be following closely.

The Wedding People is one of those books that a slight veer in one direction would turn it into mindless romance and a small push the other way into plotless navel-gazing, but Allison Espach expertly keeps it balanced perfectly between the two. Phoebe arrives at a fancy Newport hotel to realize that she is the only guest not part of an extravagant wedding about to happen there. She quickly finds herself caught up with the families and their drama while she deals with her own life that she left behind in St. Louis. Espach brings a lot of humor to some serious topics, and although predictable, still an enjoyable read for those looking for something a step above typical chick-lit with wit and substance.

Excellent book about loss grief love and families. Did we need a psychic in the mix. Loved the main characters.

Grief and guilt come together like a matched set. Where there's one, there's usually the other. So it is in Alison Espach's impressive first novel “Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance” (2022).

Although written in the style of a comic novel, the story rarely turns comic. The novel covers 15 years in the life of Sally Holt, who addresses her narrative to her older sister Kathy.

At first, 13-year-old Sally observes Kathy's infatuation with Billy, the handsome high school basketball star. Eventually Kathy wins Billy away from another girl, and Sally is almost as thrilled as her sister is. Then one day Sally demands Billy take her to her school, even though it risks making Billy and Kathy late for high school. Billy speeds, avoids a deer and hits a tree. Kathy dies in the crash, and Billy is badly injured, his promising basketball career ruined.

Thus grief and guilt overpower both Sally and Billy, not to mention the girls' parents. Having so much in common, the two teens are drawn to each other, despite their age difference. They hold long phone conversations in the middle of the night.

Years pass. Billy decides to become a friar. Sally moves to New York City, begins writing how-to essays for web sites and becomes engaged to a lawyer. Espach tells how she and Billy are brought back together by a hurricane — named Kathy.

Partly autobiographical, the novel holds power in part because of the author's deceptive light touch but mostly because it tells truth.

I read where the author of this book teaches creative writing, what a surprise. In New York, what a bigger surprise, Not. From the city of elitist garbage comes "The Adults" by Alison Espach.
This book was a huge disappointment. It was a "recommended If you liked" Jonathan Tropper" and when I saw it was on sale for $7.00 I bought it. I should have known better when I saw the quote/ hype/ recommendation on the back from The New York Times- " A fierce, tender adolescent narrative". As for the recommended if you liked Jonathan Tropper, comparing these two writers is like comparing the musical talents of Britney Spears to Mozart. The author seems to be incapable of writing clearly. Nearly every sentence is creative for creative sake, oftentimes either completely muddling the point of the sentence, or worse contradicting itself.
Example
" she was a skinny but doughy woman, like someone had ripped the muscles out of her body". Was she skinny or doughy? I don't know, and after the first 110 pages, I stopped caring.
James Lee Burke can write a descriptive showy sentence to describe a person or place, this author can't. This book is a perfect example of the type of books reviewers especially those at the New York Times Book Review, latch onto and love. The author narrates Emily (who at the beginning of the book is the 14 year old girl who is the "star" of this boring story) like a 50 year old blue blood would think and speak. Not one character in this train wreck of a book is likable, and most of the story is either disturbing or terribly far fetched. Another really annoying thing about this book is that most of the characters have dumb nicknames. With all the books that are published each year, it is sad that crap like this gets the attention and the hype.

When Sally Holt was eleven years old, her sister, Kathy, died in a car accident while Sally rode in the back and Kathy’s boyfriend, Billy, drove. Notes On Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach looks back on the events leading up to the crash and the impact on Sally’s life and family with an interesting narrative structure of Sally speaking directly to Kathy. It feels confessional and Espach really captures Sally’s voice and creates a complex character struggling with grief but wanting more. Notes is an excellent book about family, grief, forgiveness, and growing up that manages to find humor and love in the pain.

I like the exploration of grief, but three things don't work really well for me. First, some of the characters seem inconsistent in their motivations and personalities. Second, it feels a little too long and meandering. And third, novels always kind of lose me when they depict therapy sessions. They're just not something I enjoy in fiction.

3.5 stars. A story of sisterhood and loss in a coming of age story. An enjoyable read.

This was by far my favorite book in a long time. It is a coming of age story that grabbed my interest from the beginning. The writing was amazing to me and I was left with an understanding of the effects of trauma on a person that last for years. It’s not a romantic mystery, as I had originally thought, but it’s much much better.

The novel begins with the knowledge that the narrator's sister dies, but not when or how. It sets up a tension in the story as Sally recounts her life with her older, more popular sister. Each section of the novel moves the story forward, through the terrible events in which her sister is lost, then on to how their family collapses; their shared grief serves to separate them.

This is a very well-structured novel that seems superficially like an above average tear-jerker about a family tragedy, but the way that the author puts the novel together and how she evokes the different facets of grief elevates this novel. And she nails aspects of childhood with clear-eyed accuracy.

TW/CW: Death, grief, automobile accidents, mental illness, sex, language

RATING: 3.5/5

REVIEW: Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is the story of Sally, a young woman forced to deal with her older sister’s untimely death. The book is written in first person and directed to her (dead) sister.

First, this book is very sad. If you’re not ready to read a book about grief and grieving, maybe choose another book right now. It’s sad in a long-term way, though. It is very much about how loss lingers in insidious ways and hollows out the people who are suffering from it.

It’s hard to say that I enjoyed this book, as I’m not really sure that you’re supposed to, but I found it to be a quick read and I think there’s something in it it that will speak to everyone who has gone through loss.½

This book was a page turner. Sally’s older sister dies suddenly. This book details Sally and her family’s grief. Although I’ve never experienced this type of grief, I felt like this book did a great job of depicting all the different types of grief. How Sally continues to grow up with her grieving parents is sad yet inspiring. Sally continues to be in contact with Billy, the boy that was driving when Sallys sister was killed. The ending is just right.

Notes on Your Sudden Departure by Alison Espach is a 2022 Henry Holt & Co. Publication.

Sally adores her older sister, Kathy, a teenager who is in the throws of her first romance, with a boy named Billy. But when a horrible tragedy strikes, Sally is left to cope with the aftermath as she grows into young adulthood, refusing to approach grief in the same way as her other family members- who want to place blame, when really there isn't any.

Sally takes the reader on her personal journey through an unimaginable trauma and the effect it had on her life and the surprising irony of grief, life, and love...

Okay, first, this is going to be more of a ‘professional- critical thinking cap’ review and less of a personal one. I felt like the shelves this book was added to on Goodreads were very misleading and I was completely blindsided by the extremely heavy subject matter.

So, instead of marinading in my frustration at getting a book I was ill prepared for, I’m going to step back and analyze it a different way.

So that no one else makes the same mistake I did, this book is not a romance, nor is it a mystery or a thriller. It could fit in a YA/Coming of Age category, but be warned that it is not a happy book- not once- not ever- it is unrelenting in its dreariness, and if you are in a bad place, feeling depressed, or if gray, overcast days affect your mood, this might not be the book you are looking for.

Okay, that said…

The story is a well-written, and quite effective in describing how a tragic event can utterly upend a person’s life, turn them into someone else entirely, and how that also has a domino effect all its own.

I know I said I wouldn't make this persona- but I knew of someone who had a similar experience and carried so much guilt because of the misplaced blame they placed on themselves, and the blame laid at their feet by others who were struggling with their own grief. So, in a distant way I could relate to the situation written about here and understand the various emotions described in the book, and how over the years these feelings linger, ebb and flow with intensity- or morph into other things over time- with forgivenss and acceptance setting in- in the best case scenario.

This story also includes a love story of sorts- not a romance- at least not in the typical or traditional sense, but I'm comfortable calling it a love story. To say it’s complicated is an understatement, but it works spectacularly in the most bittersweet way imaginable.

While I grumbled through much of this story, whining at the depressing and heavy nature of the story, by the time I turned the final page, I did have a better perspective, and felt a bit of my own gloom begin to lift.

If I had known going in what to expect, I would have been better prepared emotionally and probably would not have struggled so hard with this one. But 'moods' affect my reading experience sometimes, and this is one such occasion. I wish the circumstances had been different in this instance because this is a thought-provoking, and powerful drama.

For that reason, I’m giving the book a four stars… but then I’m running as far away from this somberness as I can get!

4 stars

This novel is told by Sally, the younger sister of Kathy. It begins in the 1990s, and Kathy and Sally share stories and secrets. Both of them are in love with Billy, the local high school sports star. When Billy saves Sally at the pool, he is invited to join the family for dinner. Kathy and Billy begin dating and Sally basks in their relationship. When Kathy is killed, this ties Billy and Sally together in their shared trauma experience.
As the family tries to deal with Kathy's death, Sally enters into some destructive behavior, but always pines for Billy. Now, at age 28 and engaged, Sally must confront her feelings again.
This is a sad tale of a sisterhood cut short, and a love that begins as a crush but is cemented over the years. I would have enjoyed this more if it had been edited a bit, I felt it went on too long. Coming of age story.

This heart-breaking story is told from the point of view of Sally Holt and it is about her relationship with her older sister Kathy and how the entire family struggles to go on with their lives after Kathy's death. It's a sad coming-of-age story about first loves, grief, and family.

The book is also largely about Billy Barnes, who was Kathy's boyfriend before her death. Sally and Billy are both left broken and off and on over the years they find comfort in one another. The author makes some insightful observations about life. I loved every word!

The Short of It:

This book met all my expectations and then some.

The Rest of It:

Sally adores her older sister Kathy. They are about as different as two sisters can be, and yet they managed to do quite well in their shared bedroom. Sure, they squabble but Sally looks up to Kathy because Kathy always knows the right thing to say or do. She is sophisticated without trying and yet when they are alone together, she shares all her insecurities with Sally, which makes Kathy flawed just like the rest of them.

One summer, as they while away their hours by the community pool, Kathy catches the eye of Billy. A good looking boy, working at the snack stand. After some missteps, the two fall hard for one another, which leaves Sally to observe her sister’s new found infatuation from afar. She can’t help but feel a little jealous because one, she wanted to spend the summer with Kathy and two, what would it be like to have a boyfriend like Billy? She wonders if she will ever have someone like him.

As the summer unfolds, Sally finds herself attached to Billy in a way that no one wants. Linked by tragedy, the two struggle to find a way to move on and let me tell you, it’s heartbreaking and poignant but in such a good way. Memory and what could have been, had me re-reading passages as I slowly turned the pages. These characters leap off the page and you feel for them.

I loved this book. I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked it up but it’s good and I didn’t want it to end. It will be on my fave list at the end of the year.

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#FirstLine - You disappeared on a school night.

From that first line forward you will be entranced by this beautifully woven story about what it truly means to love, lose, grieve and try to make it through life when nothing is easy because you feel so broken. How can you put the pieces back together when some of those pieces are missing, seemingly impossible to find? You will be pulled into this story, into the characters lives…finding it hard to let them go even after you close the book! A must read!!!

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance from Alison Espach is one of those books that just kept pulling me in the more I read. I'm not sure any of the genres under which it is being marketed truly fits, in my world this is simply a character-driven novel about how people grieve, with the results making the plot move along.

I will admit that this probably won't work for everyone. It is written to the deceased sister, though that is not difficult to follow or grasp, but some people might just not care for it. Because it covers a long time period, we skip ahead and the intervening years are covered through reflection and the comments Sally makes to her sister in bringing her up to date (to the extent a deceased person needs to be kept current). It will be easy for some readers to act like whatever Sally sounds like during these moments is fully representative of how she has been in between. That doesn't, I think, follow from a better reading. These moments we actually visit are moments when people and events come together to make everything seem overwhelming. As the reflections mention, the other time, the vast majority of those years, the grief played a role but was largely compartmentalized.

I came to care about every character, especially Sally. Did I "like" them all? I don't know, they are fictional characters and I only know what is in the book. I certainly didn't dislike them. What I did feel was an understanding of them, an empathy for what they were going through. I don't have to either agree with nor think I would do the same thing in order to understand or feel empathy. What a narrow world if I could only understand or empathize with people who did what I would do or things I agree with. That is not really empathy anyway, it is too self-centered, one is then only understanding and empathizing with themselves.

The incidents and comments that affected me the most were probably the little mundane things that fill up all of our days coupled with Sally's approach to them. Sometimes snarky, sometimes genuinely curious, but always very human.

I would recommend this to readers who like character-driven novels and are less concerned with determining how accurately they fit into any given genre. Readers who want to read a novel rather than read a specific type of novel.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.